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New year, new goals, new presidential hellscape.

As we dig into 2025, a fresh USTA season, and a decidedly dangerous administration, I offer a reflection on how winning and losing are more alike than they seem.

The morning after the election, I had a match that drove home the many reasons I love playing tennis—or more specifically, why I love competing in tennis.

My family and I went to bed the night before feeling disheartened, incredulous, angry and wary of what the next four years would hold. We woke up with those same emotions, the election results now irrefutable. But we still had to get dressed, make breakfast, prep the lunches. I got ready for my City League match with conflicting feelings: Was it pointless to go hit a ball when the basic values that hold up society were now threatened? Should I be doing something more useful, like volunteering with the ACLU? In the face of looming autocracy, why did I still want to play tennis?

But every time you step on a tennis court, it's a fresh chance to learn something new about the game, about yourself and about others.

When I marked my availability for the match months earlier, I knew it fell on the day after the election. Depending on the outcome, my state of mind might be suboptimal. But that would never stop me from grabbing another opportunity to test my nerves and determination, take uncomfortable risks, and nudge myself closer to some sort of excellence (while also having fun).

This contest with myself is what’s propelled me onto the court four or five times a week for the past few years. I picked up tennis after getting laid off in 2019. I got hooked, flush with the dopamine rush of hitting the ball cleanly, powerfully. Each incremental gain in proficiency, and each time a tactic or pattern becomes clear, brings serious satisfaction and a little lightbulb flash. Make contact out in front for a groundstroke! Lay your racquet back 45 degrees for a volley! Hit up on the ball when you serve!?

It just keeps building. As you gain match experience, you’re rewarded with a nuanced understanding of the game. You figure out how to hit a decent serve, how to slice, how to best set up your partner in doubles. You learn the value of hitting crosscourt until you have a good reason not to. You become aware of body alignment, footwork, court position, and whatever the hell your opponent is doing on the other side of the net. You figure out your strengths and how to use them against opponents’ weaknesses. You become a competitor.

Of course, you can never achieve your full potential, because as the sage Coach John Wooden says, that would be perfection. It’s worth remembering, especially among tennis players who disproportionately tend to be Type A overachievers, that perfection is not in the cards. But you keep trying nonetheless. You put in the work and start to experience breakthroughs, moments of greatness. You come back from behind to win a set, win a match. You set up your partner for an easy smash. You commit to adjusting a stroke and then, after months of practice, rejoice to find it’s become second nature. You keep learning, and your hunger swells.

The match I played on November 6th was singles—for my team in the Greater Portland City League, a non-profit association formed in 1982 with a mission to promote women’s competitive tennis and develop camaraderie among players. At the time, just 10 years after the passage of Title IX legislation began equalizing girls’ access to sports in school, opportunities for organized women’s tennis were few and far between. Four decades later, nearly 2,000 women compete on 104 teams in 13 City League divisions across the metro area.

Before warming up, my opponent cautioned that she hadn’t slept a wink, too roiled by the red states marching across our screens. I’d been in the same boat in 2016, when the Trump stampede came as a shock. This time around, I’d been optimistic that the United States would finally elect a highly qualified and thoroughly sane woman. But I was also prepared for a different outcome.

I looked across the neighboring courts and took comfort in the predictability of deep green fields bisected by crisp white lines, the familiar thwack of the ball releasing from strings, the low hum of chatter. Look at all these strong, skilled women, diverse in age, background, and life experience but unified in their commitment to playing a demanding sport. Women who, despite juggling vast to-do lists and responsibilities, engage in an endeavour that asks so much of us emotionally, mentally and physically. These women are capable of anything.

We were capable of temporarily setting aside our despair; if you’re thinking about anything other than the point at hand, you’re done for. Despite her lack of sleep, my opponent was consistent, aggressive at the net, and precise with her lobs. I engaged in the battle but soon found myself down 1-4. My serving was solid, though, and I held the next game. Then she held for 5-2. True to the league’s spirit, we traded compliments of “Nice shot!” and “Great serve!” Then I turned up the intensity, going for more at the net, staying in the rally longer to wear her down, and fought back to level it at 5-5. Still, she prevailed, 7-5.

I made some adjustments for the second set: I went to the net, but gradually, so I’d be ready for the lob. I hit more balls on the rise and upped the pace on my forehand. We went back and forth until I was up 5-4—but then I lost a break and she was up 6-5. Agh!

I told myself that I only needed to make one good shot, stay loose, and believe it was possible. Without that, you’ve already lost.

I pushed it to a second-set tiebreak.

I’d had a hell of time with match tiebreaks lately, so my confidence was not high. I repeated my mantras even as I got down a few points. Then I was serving at 3-5 and had the opening for a low, crosscourt forehand on the deuce side—my favorite shot. She went for it but lost her balance and fell, landing on her quad where the ball was tucked in her pocket. Ouch. The tiebreak score was now 4-5.

After a moment, she got to her feet, a bit wobbly.

“Are you OK?” I asked, walking to the net.

“Oof, I’m not sure,” she replied, unsteadily.

“Do you want to take a medical break?”

“I don’t really have time; I have to do some things before my kids get home,” she said. We’d been playing for two and a half hours already.

“It feels … ow,” she said, taking a few steps. “I don’t think I can continue.”

We shook hands. “Great playing,” I said. “I’d hate to have to play you when you’re fully rested.”

Our result put my team just over the hump for a 6-5 team win.

It was a win but not a victory.

Both can be true.

","publishedAt","2025-02-15T23:25:00Z",[131],{"_106":132,"_108":133,"_109":110},"author","Christina Melander","image",{"_23":136,"_137":-5,"_138":139,"_140":141},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/mhall_loosing_victorious_ilio_8399f9c2-6454-41aa-98d0-54ddaef41810.jpg?v=1745451849","altText","width",2000,"height",1559,{"_97":143},{"_15":144,"_100":145,"_38":146,"_124":147,"_126":148,"_128":149,"_103":150,"_134":153},"gid://shopify/Article/560328212555","leaving-the-parking-lot","Leaving the Parking Lot","I watch the rain run across the rear, passenger-side window as we leave the THPRD parking lot, each streak eating droplets of water like Pac-Man. Tears accumulate at the bottom of my chin, waiting for the next round of shouting. I wish I could be anywhere but here.","

I watch the rain run across the rear, passenger-side window as we leave the THPRD parking lot, each streak eating droplets of water like Pac-Man. Tears accumulate at the bottom of my chin, waiting for the next round of shouting. I wish I could be anywhere but here.

“You NEVER listen to me!” my dad’s voice cracks through the car like thunder. I peek at the dashboard: 82 mph. “How many times have I told you! Place the ball! If you’re not going to listen to me, you should just quit!”

I lean closer to the window, hoping he can’t see me through the rearview. How did this happen again? I promised I’d be better, that I’d listen. I hope he lets me keep playing. I need to play tennis.

We drive the three hours back to Seattle in silence. I’m hungry, but I don’t dare speak up.

A week later, it’s afternoon and the sun is out. I grab my racket and a ball, and start hitting against the brick wall above our garage, as I always do. I’m careful not to break a light, window or vent (again).

Hitting on the wall is calming. It never yells. I will be better, I think to myself. I count how many I can get in a row.

A couple hours later, Dad comes outside. I hold the ball, nervous. He knows I’ve been out here for a long time. He gives me a small smile. “You really want to keep playing?”

I nod sheepishly.

“Okay.”His smile widens. He ruffles my hair playfully and then heads inside.

Beaming, I keep hitting until dinner. Everything is okay.

My love for tennis has compounded since those days hitting on the wall at my childhood home.

The red brick was a consistent, peaceful presence that soothed my sorrows. It also built muscle memory, for which I am forever grateful. When I play today, that muscle memory takes over and, for a brief moment, my mind goes silent.

I forget the roughly 50 times I got berated in the back seat after a loss. I forget the rain running across the window. Instead of freezing in fear, my body warms each time the ball comes back over the net.

For me, tennis is home, my heaven on earth.

","2025-02-15T18:12:00Z",[151],{"_106":132,"_108":152,"_109":110},"Daniel Park",{"_23":154,"_137":-5,"_138":155,"_140":156},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/Nate_Illo_racket_smash.png?v=1745444770",1742,1797,{"_97":158},{"_15":159,"_100":160,"_38":161,"_124":162,"_126":163,"_128":149,"_103":164,"_134":167},"gid://shopify/Article/560328179787","amateur-hour","Amateur Hour","It’s an odd group. Then again, aren’t they all? Alex is mathematical. He claims the analytics tell you it doesn’t pay to back off the second serve.","

It’s an odd group. Then again, aren’t they all?

Alex is mathematical. He claims the analytics tell you it doesn’t pay to back off the second serve. It’s futile arguing with him. He’ll respond to the tenth decimal point and likely pull the statistical references from his racquet bag. Predictably, he tape measures the height of every net. Less so, he’s the loudest grunter of the group. The thing I admire most about Alex is he loses virtually all the time without noticing. It’s not like he doesn’t care if he loses, like he’s just in it for the fun. That would make sense. This is harder to figure. For all his computational acumen, he just doesn’t seem to realize that, mathematically speaking, he’s the partner you never want to draw.

Then there’s Kyle. Damn him, he’s actually improving. Most of us will have our uncharacteristic glory days but quickly slip back into our finely honed senior citizen mediocrity. Kyle has added a nasty kick serve to an unpredictable array of slices, junk spin and drop shots. This was not supposed to happen. Kyle is cut furthest from the tennis mold. “Quirky” puts it charitably. He plays in standard-issue Old Navy cargo shorts paired with a weighty Goodwill hoodie ready, it seems, for whatever the thermometer reads. He’s got all sorts of crap in his pockets. Notes to himself. A phone. Some gizmo to count his steps. Bird seed wouldn’t surprise me. He plays in a bit of a fog. He’ll stop mid-game and check his appointment calendar. Kyle’s particular irony is this: he really likes to win, and he’ll push the boundaries of over-celebration, but he never actually knows what the score is.

T. J. is, well, everyone knows a T. J. He’s the invisible chess-club kid who found his competitive ninja, middle age, on the tennis court. He mainlines YouTube videos on court positioning. He sneaks in clandestine lessons. He has a library of strategic absolutes; he conferences between points, as if we actually had the ability to execute his three-shots-ahead vision. He’s thin and wiry. He poaches relentlessly and hops around peripatetically at the net. You so want to pass him, or scorch one into his abdominals, but mostly you just succumb. His antics turn your normal swing into a wristy spasm of frustrated ire. With his ascension from pocket-protector dork to one of the guys, he also trash talks actively, if not well.

Me? I’m a mixed blessing. Ever the cheerleader, I’m quickest with an encouraging word, parceling out “great shot” and “no worries” generously, as if they were stocking stuffers. On the other hand, I own the trophy for marginal racket abuse and excess theatrics. If I could only see myself, I’d never want to see myself. I posses a nasty cross-court topspin laser followed by a flag of surrender. Plan Bs are for wimps and overachievers.

Our foursome is actually a crew of seven or so. Dave, Carlos, Andy and Jonesy rotate in. After one match, Dave brought up a recent study comparing the life-extending benefits of various activities. You probably know it. In the eternal darkness of Covid, we clung to any light we could find. It concluded that tennis players outlive more likely aerobic superstars such as runners, swimmers and cyclists by a healthy margin (by about 90 years, in Dave’s highly embellished version). Why? Sociability. It’s the networks, my motley 7:30 a.m. congregation included, that matter.

I use the term “sociability” loosely. I don’t really know these guys. I’m not sure I want to. A few tidbits, on changeovers, slip out and blindside you. Andy was in Vietnam. Dave, who knew, is a retired surgeon. One guy works shifts at Dollar Tree. Somebody’s in recovery from something. They are friends, strangers, curiously anonymous, known mostly by the quirks of their game.

Sometimes, though, I wonder: Do they like me? Do they think I’m any good? I regret to report one lesson the years confirm: life is high school on perpetual loop. The eternal questions endure.

Finally, a confession. The people and incidents portrayed above are real. The names have been changed lest it jeopardize my spot in the rotation. I need these guys. I need this game. Like the longevity study and the old song says: all my livelong days.

",[165],{"_106":132,"_108":166,"_109":110},"J. Lee Carey",{"_23":168,"_137":-5,"_138":169,"_140":170},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/watch_for_website_9047f7e0-97e6-46bb-ada5-44fe76e75a3b.svg?v=1745448872",612,792,{"_97":172},{"_15":173,"_100":174,"_38":175,"_124":176,"_126":177,"_128":149,"_103":178,"_134":181},"gid://shopify/Article/560328147019","lets-go-down-to-the-tennis-courts","Let's Go Down To The Tennis Courts","The year is 2014. The soundtracks of the summer are Pure Heroine by Lorde and Channel Orange by Frank Ocean. You’ve just dropped off your resumé at Urban Outfitters and grabbed a disposable camera while you were there.","

The year is 2014. The soundtracks of the summer are Pure Heroine by Lorde and Channel Orange by Frank Ocean. You’ve just dropped off your resumé at Urban Outfitters and grabbed a disposable camera while you were there. Now you have to walk three miles home in your Adidas Stan Smiths, listening to Pandora on your cracked iPhone 5c, wishing your life was more like the one described in “Super Rich Kids” rather than “Royals.” But it’s okay—the Instagram photo you posted of your best friend lying on a tennis court in full American Apparel has racked up 60 likes. You may not be able to afford private tennis lessons, but the tennis aesthetic matters more to you than having a strong backhand.

\n
\"As the appeal of cosplaying as working class or Ivy League waxes and wanes, so does the tennis aesthetic\"
\n

There’s no questioning the beauty of tennis. The smooth, grippy green court adorned with bold white lines, white leather sneakers, short shorts, sweatbands and Lacoste polos. But the draw of tennis as an aesthetic seems more closely tied to the sport’s association with the elite class—the Upstate, Ivy League, white-collar players who dominated the sport in the 1970s and 1980s—than it does to the minimalist Americana clothing. As the appeal of cosplaying as working class or Ivy League waxes and wanes, so does the tennis aesthetic.

Ivy League style has been taking over Pinterest and TikTok for the last couple of years, probably as a reaction to the Realtree and Carhartt craze that started around 2019 and still refuses to die. As the rise of Affliction tees and torn, bootcut jeans continues, we’re going to need a posh alternative. For this reason, I wouldn’t mind if a healthy obsession with tennis and its elegant wardrobe followed us into 2025.

",[179],{"_106":132,"_108":180,"_109":110},"Alex Shelley",{"_23":182,"_137":-5,"_138":183,"_140":184},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/Alex_Shelley_art.png?v=1745448847",2692,2743,{"_97":186},{"_15":187,"_100":188,"_38":189,"_103":190,"_116":197},"gid://shopify/Blog/82991775819","fall-2024","Fall 2024",[191,193,-5,-5,-5,195],{"_106":107,"_108":192,"_109":110},"#504a49",{"_106":112,"_108":194,"_109":110},"#dde5f1",{"_106":114,"_108":196,"_109":110},"#a99e9c",{"_94":198},[199,214,225],{"_97":200},{"_15":201,"_100":202,"_38":203,"_124":204,"_126":205,"_128":206,"_103":207,"_134":210},"gid://shopify/Article/560010625099","we-all-hoisted-the-chapman-cup-by-scott-korb","We All Hoisted the Chapman Cup","Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the First-Annual Chapman Cup—what we called a mini-major, a hard-court/grass-court genderless doubles competition, hosted in Portland the final weekend of 2024’s summer—is that the origins of the tournament remain a mystery even to its head organizers.","

Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the First-Annual Chapman Cup—what we called a mini-major, a hard-court/grass-court genderless doubles competition, hosted in Portland the final weekend of 2024’s summer—is that the origins of the tournament remain a mystery even to its head organizers. I was one of those organizers, and for the life of me—and likewise for the life of PTQ’s editor, Tyler, my co-organizer—we can’t, with any exactitude, recall whose idea a tournament even was, though the choice of venue, those broken-down, cracked-up, weedy old courts in Wallace Park, behind Chapman Elementary School in the Northwest District, would have been mine.

When my family moved to Portland’s west side in 2020, my son enrolled in Chapman, and these were the first courts he and I played on in what this newsletter proudly calls “Tennis City, USA.” We hoisted a banner that said this, too—including the scare quotes—for the tournament weekend.

The other idea that would have been mine was to host the tournament to align with the seasonal roosting of the Vaux’s swifts, who each year, numbering in the thousands, spend evenings at summer’s end circling the elementary school before spiraling down for the night into Chapman’s tall brick chimney. Around dusk through these weeks, sizable crowds of people gather on the hill overlooking Chapman’s turf soccer pitch, cheering on those birds, booing the crow who each night snags a swift from the air, and my idea was that the end of our tournament days would surprise those Swifties with another form of natural beauty in the shape of serves and volleys, a gorgeous lob, maybe even a tweener, some hopeful human life on courts that have fallen into disrepair, in a city many bemoan has likewise fallen. I’ve only ever known Portland with much of its downtown vacant and obviously mismanaging humanitarian crises in housing, mental health, and drug use; but it’s nevertheless become our home over the past years, and those we see in crisis we see as our neighbors, and most of the problems the city faces are hardly unique to this place, and there’s life here—plant, animal, human, tennis—that gives me hope despite the times.

It was the summer of 2021 when I first stumbled into the players we figured would come out for the Chapman Cup, news I reported to a New York friend back when I found them: “There’s this group of people I’ve been playing tennis with. It’s possible people organize to play tennis this

way all over the place, though in all my life playing I’ve never experienced it: it’s a group of people aged mid-twenties through mid-seventies, who all meet at the same court on Portland’s east side every day, and it’s highly competitive, in that everyone plays hard, but not at all competitive, in that no one’s really out there to ‘WIN,’ if you take my point. From all walks of life, as diverse a group as I’ve seen here, or often in NYC, honestly. They rotate in and out, sometimes playing a set of tennis, mostly just playing around. Hitting HARD.” After that summer, what felt like an important return to tennis after probably a decade away—a common story among those I’ve met in Portland—I hadn’t returned to the east side to play, mainly hitting with my son in our own neighborhood. But Tyler played there, and when we decided to meet to begin planning for the tournament—a meeting I organized over Instagram, drawn first to the newsletter’s profile through a story in Willamette Week—I made a return, the courts were newly surfaced, and the doubles match I encountered that morning—Tyler and Jay vs. Benson and Logan—was just what I’d seen a few years earlier: highly competitive but not at all competitive. I’m not sure anymore who won.

There’s a scrap of notebook paper I have, something of Tyler’s, that tells a partial story of that first, or another, meeting (I can’t be sure). Among other things, these scribbles provide evidence of our earliest hope that we might draw enough players to create two brackets: “A & B levels,” Tyler wrote, even correctly anticipating the need for a “waitlist.” (All told, more than 64 players registered, and 32 teams played 30 official matches and as many consolation sets as we could fit in.) First in a list of several discarded ideas, including men’s and women’s singles draws, is the proposal for a “tug of war.” He hadn’t yet gotten the idea for the speed-serve competition, which we held—at our whims—between matches, and judged with a radar gun.

The top of this scrap contains the cryptic phrase “Holistically throughout the year,” an idea that wouldn’t have meant anything to me in the moment, but which I now know describes a hope that the Chapman Cup might be just one of a number of other events and activities that PTQ organizes, or covers, or promotes, within the greater tennis ecosystem, across seasons and surfaces, indoor and out. For our part, we’ve talked about moving the tournament back a week or two next year, since by the opening night of the tournament only a handful of Vaux’s swifts were still taking refuge in Chapman’s chimney.

Maybe we’ll host a mid-summer tournament, too. Jay suggested a concert alongside the tennis. Tyler decided not to play the First-Annual Chapman Cup, but I won a first-round B-bracket match with Bo, my original partner, and then when illness struck him overnight, Bo stepped out and I won a second-round match with Fraser. We then lost a tight semi. And, so the actual results aren’t lost to history, I’ll end with those (though I can’t for the life of me recall the scores): Rachel and Kate beat Craig and Greg to win the B bracket. Nick and Molly defeated Will and Jake in the A-bracket final. Benson hit the fastest serve at 98 miles per hour. And though the swifts were no-shows, we’ve got photographic evidence of at least one tweener.

","2024-11-17T04:13:00Z",[208],{"_106":132,"_108":209,"_109":110},"Scott Korb",{"_23":211,"_137":212,"_138":213,"_140":213},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/DSC04985.jpg?v=1745513148","Photo of the Chapman Cup tournament and the Portland Tennis Courterly Banner",1365,{"_97":215},{"_15":216,"_100":217,"_38":218,"_124":219,"_126":220,"_128":221,"_103":222,"_134":-5},"gid://shopify/Article/560010592331","slouching-towards-1-5-by-amy-lam-1","Slouching Towards 1.5","After months and months of playing with an off-the-rack aluminum stick with sad strings, I finally got a proper racquet so I could thwack red balls the size of grapefruits and hear a fat thump that’s somewhere in between the proper sweet-spot pop and the soft thud of a wool ball tumbling in a dryer.","

Sung to the tune of The Go-Go’s “We Got the Beat” chorus:

I got the pop
I got the pop
I got the pop
Yeah, I got the pop!

After months and months of playing with an off-the-rack aluminum stick with sad strings, I finally got a proper racquet so I could thwack red balls the size of grapefruits and hear a fat thump that’s somewhere in between the proper sweet-spot pop and the soft thud of a wool ball tumbling in a dryer. Green dots followed. Now, by the miracle of YouTube tutorials, I can sporadically hit a forehand with just enough whip and velocity to crack a clean pop from a regular Penn 4 or whatever. This may not seem a big deal for all of you rec players born with sweatbands on your wrists, but I’m the non-active type who took a walking class to earn required credits in my community college days forever ago.

It’s been more than a year since I stepped onto the cracked asphalt at the Essex Park courts for the first time—not one athletic bone in my flat-footed body—and I’ve since spent tens of hours flailing around our beautiful city’s public courts. I’ve hit in the shade of the towering firs at Mt. Scott; next to the porta potty at Woodstock Park; at the pristine Alex Rovello Memorial court; in the dark at Clinton City Park; at the Sellwood Park courts that had once been illegally converted to pickleball courts. I’ve taken lessons at Mt. Tabor, both west and east courts; admired the lush weeds sprouting from the base of the nets at Kenilworth Park; heard the roar of the Pickle’s crowd at Walker Stadium in Lents Park. Once, I tried to play at Colonel Sumner, but I was in a bad mood and there were three people waiting ahead of me so I stomped off like a cranky tennis Karen. Between classes, drills, and sweating like a maniac swatting at a ball machine by myself, I’ve spent the most time at PTC hitting out of bounds or into the net.

What have I got to show for all this time spent acquiring a repetitive stress injury sending me to the physical therapist? Let’s put it this way: Can I rally for more than a minute if my life depended on it? I prefer to be cremated. How’s my serve? Ha! What about tennis-induced negative self talk? Excellent. No coaching needed for this. I am a writer, after all, so I’ve been living with mental anguish like it’s a chronic condition without a salve.

And, yet, I persist, one split step at a time. Driven by some inexplicable desire to imperceptibly improve at something that doesn’t really matter, I keep buying shorts with big pockets. Maybe, just maybe, another year from now I’ll have a serve and you can hear me singing, to the tune of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”: First serve of mine, bum bum bum, good times never seemed so good.

","2024-11-17T04:03:00Z",[223],{"_106":132,"_108":224,"_109":110},"Amy Lam",{"_97":226},{"_15":227,"_100":228,"_38":229,"_124":230,"_126":231,"_128":232,"_103":233,"_134":-5},"gid://shopify/Article/560010559563","portland-athletic-club-a-k-a-pac-enters-new-era-by-jay-boss-rubin","Portland Athletic Club a.k.a. PAC Enters New Era","Don’t call it a comeback–Portland Athletic Club, or “PAC,” has been here for years. Marion Blackburn founded the business in 1977","

Don’t call it a comeback–Portland Athletic Club, or “PAC,” has been here for years. Marion Blackburn founded the business in 1977. He was then, as he is now, the only proprietor of a single-owner, Black-owned tennis facility in the Pacific Northwest. PAC is currently under the general management of Marion Blackburn’s daughter, Nikki Blackburn-Orr. She works closely with the club’s Director of Tennis Programs, Laura Conway, who is the daughter of Portland soccer legend Jimmy Conway. In many senses, PAC is a bastion of continuity. But following the club’s recent court resurfacing, recruitment of new pros, and renewed emphasis on youth tennis, PAC is also boldly entering a new era.

Longtime PAC pro Jack Neer (Neer is yet another Oregon sports icon) remembers a color change to PAC’s courts sometime in the 1980s. But this past summer marked PAC’s first proper resurfacing since the club opened its doors nearly five decades ago. Back then, it wasn’t called PAC. The club was originally called Tennis Town. The name later changed to Raleigh Hills Racquet and Health Club before settling on Portland Athletic Club—a better fit, as Raleigh Hills doesn’t technically begin for another half mile down the road.

The resurfacing took place in mid-July, at the same time as the resurfacing at Irving Park. While that’s a coincidence, PAC and Irving Park were both known for having some of the fastest courts in town, and for being focal points of local African-American tennis culture. Following the resurfacing, PAC’s five courts—bluish purple with white lines, and a vibrant green between them—have remarkable visibility. The new surface, which is Har-Tru, is notably slower. But it’s also “perkier” and “the ball sits up better,” in the words of Conway, who was previously with Oregon Youth Soccer Association and Tualatin Hills Park & Recreation District. The new surface has undeniably better traction. Courterly correspondents have investigated the new surface personally, and found that it lends itself to lengthy rallies and slowly sliding balls that might not have been reachable before.

The courts at PAC were actually slotted to be resurfaced several years ago. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, Marion Blackburn delayed the costly project; he used the money he’d set aside to pay his employees instead. Following the pandemic, PAC got three different bids for the resurfacing job, and ended up going with the local chapter of a national company called Beynon Sports. Though the estimate for the job was twelve to fourteen days, it took three and half weeks. In order to resurface five courts, and fill in the 3 ½’’ dip between Courts 2 and 3, 40,000 lbs of sand were brought in, along with 40,000 lbs of urethane. The courts now slope up ever so slightly from the lobby, which features couches and chairs in a viewing gallery, as well as a long “homework table” where kids can be found after school and in the evenings. Entering the courts, players step onto a gently raised plateau. All in all, the project cost $100,000. Half of that came from a USTA grant, but only after the USTA was satisfied that the courts would contain a full 18’ of backcourt between the baselines and curtains. Before the resurfacing, PAC’s backcourts were 16' 4’’ (To be eligible for grant funding, the USTA also requires 12’ of space between courts).

Notably, there is no pickleball at PAC. But Courts 3, 4, and 5 have blended lines for kids and juniors. In conjunction with the resurfacing, PAC has recommitted to robust youth programming. They run a huge junior academy that attracts over 200 players—the biggest program of its kind in the area, according to Conway. PAC also hosts an off-season league for high schoolers, in which over 60 kids come twice per week: once a week to train and once for matches. All of PAC’s various youth programs are affordable and accessible. With the recent addition of top Portland-area pro Lew De Leon, youth tennis at PAC is set to skyrocket to a whole other level.

***

While there is much to celebrate at Portland Athletic Club, the recent developments are undeniably bittersweet. Due to health reasons, Marion Blackburn is no longer involved in day-to-day operations. And his son, Anthony Blackburn, the club’s long-time head pro who touched the lives of hundreds if not thousands of Portland-area tennis players, retired from teaching in 2023, also for health reasons.

Most people speeding past the 5800 block of the Beaverton Hillsdale Highway likely have no idea of all the tennis and cultural history that lives on inside the club. If they glance down the driveway into PAC at all, they see a sunken parking lot. You have to look off to the side to notice the covered courts. And you have to look inside the building to get a sense of the business’s fuller story. When Marion Blackburn—who is originally from Huntsville, Alabama—moved to Portland in the 1960s, he was initially denied membership by the Irvington Club, even though he was a high-level player who lived nearby. It was only after the protests of Jack Neer, who was a pro at Irvington at the time, that Blackburn was admitted. When Blackburn decided to open his own tennis teaching business, he strung up nets in a concrete-floor, low-ceilinged warehouse on Macadam Avenue. Clients came by the dozen, but only to depart for fancier facilities after sharpening their skills. That venture, called Tennis Lessons Inc., was the predecessor to Tennis Town, which Blackburn built from the ground up.

PAC is currently in the process of putting together new USTA teams. And there may be some PAC tournaments on the horizon, as well. With the new chapter of PAC now officially begun, the club would also like to get more younger adults in the door. It’s the only private club in the area where you can literally “come in off the street,” Conway emphasized, and pay a modest guest fee to hit on an available court. PAC is waiting for you with the open arms of a multigenerational family business. Come see what this one-of-a-kind tennis facility is all about.

","2024-11-17T04:00:00Z",[234],{"_106":132,"_108":235,"_109":110},"Jay Boss Rubin",{"_97":237},{"_15":238,"_100":239,"_38":240,"_103":241,"_116":247},"gid://shopify/Blog/82991808587","juneteenth-special","Juneteeth Special",[242,244,-5,-5,-5,246],{"_106":107,"_108":243,"_109":110},"#3461a1",{"_106":112,"_108":245,"_109":110},"#9cd7c0",{"_106":114,"_108":243,"_109":110},{"_94":248},[249,260],{"_97":250},{"_15":251,"_100":252,"_38":253,"_124":254,"_126":255,"_128":256,"_103":257,"_134":-5},"gid://shopify/Article/560010494027","how-the-kids-n-tennis-fundraiser-became-portland-s-top-tournament-by-tyler-pell","How the Kids N' Tennis Fundraiser Became Portland's Top Tournament","","

Since its first iteration in 2004, the Juneteenth Classic has served up consistent support for non-profit tennis programming

Nearly four decades ago, Don Johnson and Andre St. James saw a glaring disparity in Portland's tennis community: very few children of color were learning to play the game. The duo were determined to do something about it.

Growing up, Johnson and St. James kept busy with a variety of sports—primarily baseball and basketball. “We couldn’t play tennis. We couldn’t afford to play tennis,” Johnson explained. “There was no accessibility to courts, no coaches.” Johnson didn’t learn to play tennis until he was serving in the military in the mid-1970s. He was a quick study. By 1979, he was out of the military, back home in Portland, and not just playing tournaments, but winning them.

Johnson started a long career as an educator at Portland Public Schools in 1983. He also had experience coaching youth sports. But even into the 1980s, opportunities for kids in Northeast Portland to learn tennis were close to nonexistent.

In 1987, Johnson and St. James officially launched Kids N’ Tennis, a free tennis camp for kids at Irving Park.

\n
“The premise was this: if African-American kids, other kids of color, and kids from low-income families were interested in learning how to play tennis, they could receive quality coaching from a cadre of coaches similar to the coaching and training kids were receiving in private clubs, country clubs, and other tennis facilities. Then those kids—our kids—could be successful and compete for tennis scholarships.” At that time, there weren’t any programs for Johnson and St. James to model theirs on. “So we did the research, we attended some meetings, we got some background,” Johnson described, “and we went for it.”
\n

After the inaugural camp, many of the participants wished to continue. Bolstered by support from the USTA and community leaders, Kids N’ Tennis acquired its 501(c)(3) non-profit status in 1992.

Current Kids N’ Tennis President Mike Navarro also works as an educator, at an alternative high school in Gresham. He’s been with the non-profit since meeting Johnson at Irving Park 1999. Navarro believes that what really makes Kids N’ Tennis unique is the sense of inclusion they offer. “We're super culturally responsive to kids and families. We’re mostly coaches of color and we really focus on non-traditional and BIPOC populations where we can leverage our experiences on our kids' behalf.”

In addition to their eight-week summer classes at Irving Park, Kids N’ Tennis offers year-round weekly tennis lessons at Portland Tennis Center, as well as more intensive training during winter break.

While Kids N’ Tennis does produce high-level youth players, to Navarro and Johnson the measure of success is far more broad than a tournament podium; they want to grow the game and all the good that comes with it. “Tennis is one of those sports that, the more you learn about it, the more you learn about yourself and about how you can make decisions in life that will really benefit you.”

Navarro remembers one particular camper whose family had a history of diabetes. “One of my favorite memories was when his mom thanked me and Don for helping him out when he was younger. Now he's in his 30s and tennis has helped him find a lifestyle that has kept him healthy and fit.”

In addition to their summer camps and weekly training programs, the annual tournament that Kids N’ Tennis puts on, the Juneteenth Classic, has grown into one of the biggest and most beloved in the city. The first Juneteenth Classic was in 2004. This year’s tournament is the 11th Juneteenth Classic. Despite some fits and starts in its early days, the Juneteenth Classic has now earned a reputation as ‘the’ Portland tennis tournament for adult recreational players of various levels.

Kasi Muthu won the men’s open division at the tournament in 2021. Even though Muthu has won other, bigger tournaments, his Juneteenth title means just a little bit more to him. “To win a tournament that’s being run by people who look like you, it was incredible,” Muthu reflected. “I felt the love. I really think the reason I won the tournament is because I had coached a lot of those kids who go to Kids N’ Tennis camps, and there was like a karmic energy that elevated me.”

The Juneteenth Classic attracts about as many participants as the adult recreational tournaments at the USTA-run Vancouver Tennis Center across the river in Washington. To Muthu and many others who look forward to the Juneteenth Classic, the tournament is truly unique. Not just because it marks the unofficial start of Portland’s summer tennis season—it’s the environment where the camaraderie, love, and passion of a vital segment of the Portland tennis community is most palpable.

While Kids N’ Tennis continues to serve children who are less likely to have access to the game of tennis, time has brought many changes to the organization’s makeup. After Johnson retired from Portland Public Schools, he moved to Texas and started a sister organization, called Kids N’ Tennis - TEXAS. But he still comes back to Portland for each year’s Juneteenth Classic and for the start of the summer camp.

His friend and fellow Kids N’ Tennis founder, Andre St. James, passed away in 2018. St. James was not only a pillar of the local tennis community; he was a remarkable upright bass player, a cornerstone of Portland’s jazz community. The work that Johnson and St. James did together in the early days of Kids N’ Tennis created the momentum that helps power the organization today.

“We try not to lose sight of who we are and what we’re good at,” Johnson stressed. “We know how to build programs and design pathways and options for kids within the infrastructure of the program.”

For 37 years, Kids N’ Tennis has thrived on collaboration, partnering with numerous community, regional and national entities. These partnerships don’t just promote tennis, they emphasize health, nutrition and education. Kids N’ Tennis has successfully engaged tennis enthusiasts of all ages in mentoring, community service, and fostering a safe, positive environment for youth to build confidence and self-esteem.

To date, more than 2,000 young players have benefited from the organization’s efforts, with many alumni graduating from college, and quite a few of them becoming tennis teaching professionals in the Portland area.

For more information or to get involved, visit the Kids N’ Tennis website (www.kids-n-tennis.org). Your support will help Kids N’ Tennis continue and expand their mission of opportunity and empowerment through tennis.

","2024-06-16T02:48:00Z",[258],{"_106":132,"_108":259,"_109":110},"Tyler Pell",{"_97":261},{"_15":262,"_100":263,"_38":264,"_124":265,"_126":266,"_128":267,"_103":268,"_134":-5},"gid://shopify/Article/560010461259","tournament-director-kofi-asare-konadu-man-of-many-hats-by-jay-boss-rubin","Tournament Director Kofi Asare-Konadu: Man of Many Hat","If you’ve signed up for the 2024 Juneteenth Classic, you’ve already had communications with him. At the tournament itself","

If you’ve signed up for the 2024 Juneteenth Classic, you’ve already had communications with him. At the tournament itself, you’ll find him manning the registration table; he’s in charge of the city’s funnest, most diverse recurring racquet-sport event. But “tournament director” is just one of many hats worn by Kofi Asare-Konadu.

Kofi is in the upper echelon of Portland-area tennis players. He works full-time as a research assistant at OHSU, and is a professional model on the side. On the side of that, he recently started his own fashion label that’s an expression of his cultural heritage. If this sounds like a description of Portland’s most eligible bachelor, you’d only be wrong about one thing: Kofi won’t be in Portland much longer. Shortly after this year’s Juneteenth Classic, he’s moving to Melbourne, Florida, where he’ll matriculate into the Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine. That’s right: goodbye Kofi, hello Dr. Asare-Konadu.

Of all these claims to fame, none may be as unique as this: Kofi Asare-Konadu is the living, breathing connective tissue of Kids N’ Tennis. He binds the organization’s past and present to its future. For the kids who participate in Kids N’ Tennis programs, Kofi is the poster child for who they might become as young adults: master practitioners of the game of tennis and the game of life.

***

Kofi and his two older sisters Adwoa and Akua (who you might see beside him at the registration table) grew up Ghanian-American in Beaverton, Oregon. After graduating from Beaverton High School in 2014, Kofi attended Seattle University, where he earned a B.S. in Biology. He didn’t play college tennis (“unfortunately,” Kofi adds), but right now he’s playing some of the best tennis of his life. “My game changed dramatically,” he concedes, “when I met Amahal Barbee.” The two have been training together since 2020. Kofi credits Coach Amahal, who he describes as “skilled in player development,” with the significant strides he’s made. Meanwhile, Coach Amahal has joined the coaching staff of Kids N’ Tennis, where he heads up the junior program.

Years before he began playing in open tournaments, Kofi’s talents would’ve been indistinguishable from those of the other summer campers beginning their tennis journeys at Irving Park. “Kids N’ Tennis was the very beginning of my tennis education,” Kofi relates. “We,” by which he means he and his sisters, “were complaining endlessly about the lack of summer activities, and my parents heard about the camp from a friend.” His groundstrokes, footwork, discipline and dedication to mentorship all have Kids N’ Tennis in their DNA. “I've always seen Kids N' Tennis as a community and not just a tennis program,” Kofi elaborates. Upon his return to Portland, after college, Kofi became both a PTR-certified tennis coach and the Vice President of Kids N’ Tennis. His trajectory demonstrates how the goals of Kids N’ Tennis are long-term and generational. Just as Kofi was a promising young camper of yesteryear who now helps run the organization, the future of Kids N’ Tennis lies in those campers who will show up to the free camp in 2024 and beyond, and dedicate themselves to the game.

“I accepted the role of VP because I wanted to give other children the same type of formative experience I had,” Kofi explains. “It's really rewarding to see other children enjoy the experience as I once did. But now I am curating that experience for them.”

***

While his qualifications for modeling are self-evident, there’s more of a narrative to Kofi’s clothing line. It’s called INSHRA. That’s a phonetic rendering of Kofi’s middle name, Nhyira, which means “blessing” in Ashanti Twi. INSHRA is all about intersections, translations and fostering cultural exchange. This includes the name. “By using the phonetic spelling,” Kofi elaborates, “I’m staying true to the idea of translating African concepts to an audience abroad. The name also serves as a constant reminder that I'm blessed to be in a position to pursue my dreams.”

Ghanian and West African cultural concepts are just a starting point; Kofi’s fashion sense is influenced by cultures across the globe, including what he’s seen on recent travels to Dubai and Japan. “INSHRA is a reflection of my own life,” he shares. “I am always trying to figure out how to reconcile what it means to be Ghanaian yet American, essentially trying to merge two separate identities. I think a lot of folks can relate to living between two different identities,” he expounds, “be they cultural identities, gender identities, socioeconomic identities or other ones” (INSHRA’s home online is inshra.com; it’s on IG and TikTok @inshra_co; you can find INSHRA on the Flip App simply by searching “INSHRA”).

When asked if his interests in tennis and fashion might intersect directly, Kofi responds in the affirmative: “I would love to eventually do a tennis-fashion crossover project.” He’s made time over the past year to study sewing, and learn more about garment design and manufacturing. He acknowledges that INSHRA won't be the main item on his plate while he’s off at medical school, but he does plan to keep growing his design skills and expanding the brand.

What about adding a fashion show to the events that accompany the annual tournament weekend? “What I love about Kids N' Tennis,” Kofi responds diplomatically, “is that we can set our own agenda, since we are a small organization without much bureaucracy. A fashion show could be a cool idea. Another great idea could be doing more KNT apparel. I would love to create custom clothing that reflects the values KNT espouses,” he adds. “This would perfectly merge my interest with fashion and tennis.” Whether or not a tennis-themed fashion show is on the agenda for 2025, the swift, forward motion of this kind of thinking represents the Asare-Konadu approach: serve, split step, arrive at the net, and volley over a winning shot.

***

In the years to come, Kofi would love to see Kid N’ Tennis develop a more robust, elite junior academy, one that can “assist underprivileged talent in reaching the next level.” That would mean expanding the indoor junior program, currently held only on Saturdays, to multiple days per week, he acknowledges. It would also require hiring more great coaches like Amahal Barbee. Kofi’s advice to this year’s Kids N’ Tennis campers, and to all players stepping onto the court for the first time, is to prioritize having fun and “realize that tennis is just a game. It's counterintuitive,” he explains, “but by adopting this mentally you remove the pressure and anxiety associated with results. Then you can focus on becoming the best player you can be.”

Pressed for a connection between tennis and life, Kofi responds without hesitation: “It's all just a game. Life is continuous progression, as is tennis. Best not to take everything too seriously, and enjoy each moment as it comes.”

As he starts medical school in July, keeps developing his clothing line, and continues training and playing in competitive tournaments, you wouldn’t think that Kofi would have much time for personal reflection. But amid the whirlwind transition into life’s next chapter, and the next step in his career, Kofi is well-aware that he’ll be missing the connections he’s made and the community he’s built here in Portland. That community will be on full display at the 2024 Juneteenth Classic. Call it Kofi’s going-away party. Even though, as tournament director, he’s sure to have his hands full.

","2024-06-16T02:46:00Z",[269],{"_106":132,"_108":235,"_109":110},{"_97":271},{"_15":272,"_100":273,"_38":274,"_103":275,"_116":282},"gid://shopify/Blog/82991874123","spring-2024","Spring 2024",[276,278,-5,-5,-5,280],{"_106":107,"_108":277,"_109":110},"#000000",{"_106":112,"_108":279,"_109":110},"#ffdfed",{"_106":114,"_108":281,"_109":110},"#d6bbc6",{"_94":283},[284,294,305],{"_97":285},{"_15":286,"_100":287,"_38":288,"_124":289,"_126":290,"_128":291,"_103":292,"_134":-5},"gid://shopify/Article/560010428491","excerpt-from-an-international-crime-novel-with-a-tennis-subplot-by-jay-boss-rubin","Excerpt from an International Crime Novel with a Tennis Subplot","When I came to, my vision was still cloudy from the chemicals that had been sprayed in my face. I tried not to panic.","

When I came to, my vision was still cloudy from the chemicals that had been sprayed in my face. I tried not to panic. You trust your intuition more than your eyesight, I reminded myself. On the tennis court, I use to hit volleys without looking anywhere near the ball. My immediate preoccupation wasn’t visual. As usual, it was linguistic. I knew I was being held ransom, but I didn’t know what to call the thing I was being held in. While I waited for my vision to return, I reached out with my fingertips and felt for clues. Matofali. The bricks surrounding me were damp, almost clammy, as if they’d been rubbed with something. Instead of meeting at right angles, they curved around in a circle. Slowly, I steadied myself and got to my feet. I craned my head back and, over the course of what felt like several minutes, I detected starlight. There was an opening at the top.

Was I in a shed? A cell? Maybe it was more like a shell? The word shell reminded me of a riddle I learned back when I was an introductory Swahili student: nyumba yangu haina mlango. My house has no door. That’s what I would call it: yai. I was being held inside an egg.

I banged with my fists but the walls of the eggshell refused to crack. I tried shimmying up the shell’s convex sides but they were too slick with albumen. Defeated, I lay down with my back against the packed sand and extended my legs upward. Blood rushed to my head and I thought of the riddle again. In East Africa, riddles were used to educate children and keep them occupied while their mothers cooked dinner. But the egg was also bound up with that terrible Western riddle. Gazing out through the opening, I felt the old conundrum of causality creeping up—the original problem I had hoped to dodge, or defuse, with knowledge gained in Tanzania. What came first, the chicken or the house with no door?

Confusion wasn’t the right word for it. It was more like an anxious inner monologue: A, B, A, B; cause, effect; chicken, egg. English poked and prodded. Every thought split into its constituent components, positive and negative, before and after. Neither side ever won. The score always added up to zero. Swahili provided a sweeter, more sociable soundtrack—but it hadn’t succeeded in drowning out that other voice in my head.

Deep in the night, transfixed by the stars, I recalled an image that had nothing to do with the criminal case that had brought me back to Tanzania on short notice and nothing to do with Swahili. And yet, it had everything to do with learning another way of being. It was a sign posted at the private athletic facility where, decades earlier, I first recognized my intuition on the tennis court. THERE ARE WALLS BEHIND THESE CURTAINS, the sign read. All of a sudden, I was a boy again, staring up at the laminated warning. The words and concepts morphed and inverted. How did I know there weren’t more curtains beyond the hidden walls? And beyond that, more walls covering up another set of curtains? Wall, curtain, wall, curtain—what was real and what wasn’t; how was I supposed to deduce the difference? Stop worrying over that sign, Rock. I heard the comforting voice of Lamont Turner, my old coach, as if he were right beside me. What you ought to worry about is your footwork. The years I’d spent training at Teaneck Tennis Center had never been in direct dialogue with the period of my life when I became a Swahili speaker. The two aspects, formative and transformative, batted the ball back and forth. The rally was long and semi-cooperative, but it was also excruciating. Inside the yai, nothing was separate. English, Swahili, Tennis in an American suburb, a cartel caper that stretched from a jail on the Brooklyn waterfront to bustling Bongoland. I couldn’t keep any of it walled or curtained off from the rest. My mind was a house with no doors.

Faces appeared in the starry sky, as if projected from within me. My former lover, Zuhura, who was there when I’d been taken captive, and who I hoped was searching for me now. My client back in America, Feruzi Fahari, who radiated pride even from within his roomy prison jumpsuit. And from a much earlier chapter, connected to the storyline at a level deeper than language: Lamont Tuner, Tennis Professional.

A lone gull overhead interrupted my reverie and signaled it was almost morning. Seagulls first came to the Coast Region on German ships, like stowaways. Of Fahari and I, neither of us were stowaways, but we both went looking for something we lacked. Msafiri, traveler. Swap the “s” and the “f” and it becomes mfasiri, translator. Travelers across oceans and continents. Travelers across taps of the tongue and gulps of the glottis. My mind roamed and rearranged, right up until the arrival of the mosquitoes.

I had to get a hold of whoever my captor was. I had to break out of the egg. I’d seen men in this part of the world scale coconut trees that were nearly vertical. I tried climbing, but the bricks were too slippery for me to get any traction. “Unisaidie!” I screamed, but my throat was too dry for sound to project. The mosquitoes swarmed in on me. I crouched down, buried my face in the sand, and covered the back of my neck with my hands. How far away was my jailer? What were my captors demanding in exchange for my release? A snake slithered across the back of my eyelids. An eagle swooped down and clawed at the gash on the top of my head. My brain felt like an overripe jackfruit, festering and about to burst.

Sleep, if you can call it that, came just before sunrise. After the buzzing abated but before the blazing began.

","2024-04-21T02:33:00Z",[293],{"_106":132,"_108":235,"_109":110},{"_97":295},{"_15":296,"_100":297,"_38":298,"_124":299,"_126":300,"_128":301,"_103":302,"_134":-5},"gid://shopify/Article/560010395723","losing-pretty-by-aspiring-tennis-professional-coach-logan-corcoran","Losing Pretty","Ok, I’ll admit it: I don't win tennis matches that often. See, dear reader, when I take to the court, I'm strictly focused on trying to hit the ball with the grace of a swan. Or a tennis pro.","

Ok, I’ll admit it: I don't win tennis matches that often.

See, dear reader, when I take to the court, I'm strictly focused on trying to hit the ball with the grace of a swan. Or a tennis pro. Or both. Why? Because there's no greater feeling than a clean ball strike. The sensation. The sound. The movement of the ball. The dopamine it releases is so potent I should have to pay. It makes me feel like doing a thumbs-up just thinking about it. Yup, just did one. But, because I obsessively hound for this one feeling, the other stuff falls to the wayside. The other stuff is \"winning.\"

I don’t play tennis just so I have a chance to win at something. To me, tennis is an attempt to brush up against an art form I can hardly begin to comprehend; a skillset I'll never acquire, no matter how \"aspiring\" I may be. Don’t you want a small nibble of that revelation, too?

C’mon, allow me to wax poetic for a bit. What other sport utilizes slow-motion replay to such an extent? Watching on TV, they cue it after almost every point. We humans will go to great lengths to examine the heights of athleticism, vaulting these feats into a realm akin to beauty and art. It’s only natural to hold the gaze of something mesmerizing for as long as we can in the vain hope that intangibles are revealed and find purchase in our muscle memory. That's not how it works but, wow, isn’t tennis nice to look at?

So here's my question: As an adult with an adult job and adult responsibilities and adult struggles, why would you play tennis simply for the sake of winning? What exactly will you win? At the end of the day, are you not still an adult stricken with the aforementioned plagues of adulthood? Maybe I just lack the competitiveness needed to be \"a winner,\" and this quasi-spiritual grasping at the lovely intricacies of the game is my roundabout way of dealing with it. It's something I used to worry about. But now? Eh, life is hard enough without losing yourself in the dark art of winning > all else, so who gives a flip? ;)

I recently played a doubles match against an old timer (I lost) who told me afterward that I had a \"youthful\" game. While I may have been a youth to him, to an actual youth, I'm not, so I think what he meant is that I made a shit-ton of unforced errors trying to hit the ball loud as opposed to his method of trying to hit the ball in. Hey, man, you wouldn't tell a painter how to paint, would you?

I'd rather die, or in this case, lose, than sully my practice of this beautiful game. It's my life's WIP masterpiece, even though instead of oil paints, my abilities only allow me to work in crayon.

And therein lies the rub. I'll admit it, Mr. Brad Gilbert, winning is indeed more fun. But in the pursuit of the W, when does tennis cease to be Tennis and become nothing more than a war of ball-pushing attrition? Don't you know in war there are no winners.

That's why, dear readers, it all comes down to this: I guess if I can't bring myself to win ugly, I can still, at the very least, attempt to lose pretty.

View Issue PDF Here

","2024-04-21T02:24:00Z",[303],{"_106":132,"_108":304,"_109":110},"Aspiring Tennis Professional Coach Logan Corcoran",{"_97":306},{"_15":307,"_100":308,"_38":309,"_124":310,"_126":311,"_128":312,"_103":313,"_134":-5},"gid://shopify/Article/560010362955","big-willie-style-by-tyler-pell","Big Willie Style","“Willie leaves these behind the backboard for us when we need to use ‘em,” my new hitting partner, Harrison, explains.","

“Willie leaves these behind the backboard for us when we need to use ‘em,” my new hitting partner, Harrison, explains.

Harrison walks toward the backboard at Colonel Summers Park and his right arm disappears behind the big green wall.

“Willie?” I wonder, as Harrison withdraws a hand holding two push brooms.

“You don’t know Willie? Older guy with a long white beard? He rides around town on an old mountain bike?”

I try to put the breaks on my mind conjuring an image of a roving, tennis-court-maintaining Santa Clause, but to no avail.

***

That Portland’s public needs help maintaining its outdoor tennis courts isn't much of a surprise to people who play on them. A 2021 study by Portland Parks & Recreation found that only thirty of the city's 103 total outdoor tennis courts provide the bare minimum of a “surface with conditions that are safe and enjoyable.” The majority of them are in Southwest Portland.

According to KGW, Parks & Rec has a 615 million dollar backlog of deferred maintenance projects. Parks and Trails Planning Manager Brett Horner lamented the sad state of the city's outdoor tennis courts while also acknowledging his department can't do much about the crumbling infrastructure.

“We do have some maintenance money that we can use,” Horner explained, “but we only get a few million dollars a year. Most of it ends up going to emergencies or park roofs that need to be redone—you know, more safety-related things.”

For some Portlanders who rely on public parks for their intrinsic social, recreational and environmental benefit, the no man’s land between emergency maintenance and deferred maintenance presents, if nothing else, opportunity.

After Harrison put me on to Willie’s guerilla stewardship, I started seeing evidence of his handiwork all around Portland. Most of the east side’s popular tennis courts bear at least one of his trademark improvements.

My favorite repair in his repertoire is his repurposing of long, narrow scraps of wood to fill in gaps at the bottom of chain link fences that surround courts. Chainlink, as it ages, curls up at the bottom, leaving just enough space for a tennis ball to roll under, making their retrieval a pain—sometimes impossible. Willie has endeared himself to users of outdoor tennis courts all over Portland with these kinds of creative but common-sense solutions.

I decided I needed to track him down. I asked Ben Doan, a local pro and former manager of Players Racquet Shop on NE Sandy Blvd., about connecting with Willie on the telephone and he laughed. “Willie doesn’t have a phone.” No email address, either. But Willie is far from off the grid, I learned. He lives on a busy commercial strip, above an old typewriter repair shop. But proximity to the printed word doesn't make him easy to communicate with, especially not remotely. If you want to talk to Willie, your only option is face to face.

When I finally met him, it was on his turf, last September at Laurelhurst Park.

***

“Willie?” I ask, leadingly, through the chain link fence. He nods. I told him I’d been trying to track him down.

“I know,” he said.

He told me he had just finished sweeping up some broken glass. He was reticent, at first—not at all interested in expounding on his pro bono maintenance and custodial work. But he was eager to show off his new racquet: a red, ceramic Dunlop from the 1980s that he unsheathed from a bag atop his tricked out three-speed Huffy beach cruiser that doubles as his tool chest.

Willie has long gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, and, as Harrison previewed, a white beard. He is dressed in loose-fitting jeans and running shoes, with his Timex safety pinned to his blue oxford shirt. I notice his shirt has a few patches on it. Some of the patches seem like mending work, others—the peace sign—like creative flourishes.

Many of Willie’s improvements are so subtle that they’re invisible to those who don’t directly reap their benefits. As we walked around the courts Willie had just swept, he groaned over the removal of one of his recent installations: “I put hooks up so people could hang their stuff from the fence. They were all over the court.” He described something that looked like old metal coat racks that could hold six to eight hooks each. “Not only did they”—city maintenance crews, I intuited—“take the racks, but they took down all the little hooks.”

Willie shows me one of his repairs. “If you notice the benches here, both the welds broke on both these ends, and it was all falling down.” Willie used old shoe string and metal wire to repair the broken welds.

While we're talking, a handful of tennis players trickle onto the courts. Each of them says hello to Willie as they enter. A few are there to hit with Willie, actually—as they do every Friday morning, weather permitting.

Before I leave Laurelhurst that day I’m able to meet a few people in Willie’s tennis circle who don’t share Willie’s aversions to telephones.

One of his hitting partners, Craig, lives near the park and has been playing tennis with Willie for years. “This is why I will always say, ‘never judge a book by its cover,’” he told me a few days later. “Not in a million years, looking at Willie, would I think that he’s about to play tennis. He doesn't have that tennis attire, the tennis look.”

Most people who play tennis with any kind of proficiency are products of expensive lessons from pros at private clubs. But the more you hang around public tennis courts, you learn that is far from the only story.

***

Willie grew up in San Francisco’s Mission District. He spent most of his free time playing sports: the “big three” of football, basketball, and baseball, mostly. When Willie and his friends visited the neighborhood tennis courts, it was only to retrieve the abandoned balls they would bring back home for games of stoopball: chuck a ball off the steps of an apartment building and then chase after the rebound.

Some of his family members played a bit of tennis. An uncle who was training to be a priest played tennis in seminary. “I never played with them,” Willie explained. “But just knowing that they played opened me up to the game.”

Willie learned how to mend and repair by “helping the old man fix his car.” He broadened and deepened his skillset as a young man, most profoundly when he lived on a 163-acre commune in Tennessee. “It was a basic, back-to-the-woods kind of project.”

Not until the 1990s, while Willie was living in Fremont, California, did he finally catch the tennis bug. He played on the city’s public courts—constantly, almost religiously. First he just hit against backboards; eventually, he built a network of people with whom he played against and honed his game.

When he arrived in Portland, about fifteen ago, he began applying the skills and the ethos he’d developed over his lifetime to the city’s public courts. For Willie, to love something is to work to improve it.

***

I meet Willie at a bar where he likes to watch tennis. He doesn’t work at the bar but he looks after its sprawling dining room, clearing tables, pushing in chairs, and helping to tidy up while he watches whatever sports are on. The bar’s owner has entrusted Willie with the remote control and he adjusts the sound on whichever screen has the most action.

As we split-screened the Miami Open and women’s college basketball, Willie’s awareness for all things tennis came more into focus. He has real affection for particular oddities of Portland’s tennis court inventory, like the older net-post crank mechanism at the Lair Hill courts, and the pristine surface at the Berkeley Park’s Alex Rovello Memorial Tennis Courts. He also likes to dream, asking me at one point: “Do you ever think about pooling money together to buy some land in town to build a huge geodesic tennis dome?”

***

Ben Doan, the local pro who warned me it wouldn’t be easy to track Willie down, is a product of a more organized public tennis program. He grew up in an underserved section of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and bemoans the opportunities lost to Portland’s crumbling public tennis infrastructure: “I wouldn't be a tennis player, or coach, or industry professional to any extent if it weren't for parks programming.” Doan didn’t begin playing until he was a teenager. He was introduced to tennis through a program in Ft. Wayne called Lifetime Sports, which offered free tennis, golf, and swimming lessons in public parks during the summer.

When he was the head boys coach at Franklin High School, from 2019 to 2021, a foot-sized hole in one of the courts at Clinton Park often interrupted practice. “Parks programming can be so powerful,” Doan described, “but if you’re not allocating resources to support programs then those opportunities don't mean as much. Most courts in Portland are completely unplayable.”

Franklin’s boys team has since moved their practices to Mt. Tabor—another park that Willie has unofficially adopted—but the team hasn’t been able to outrun issues with Portland’s playing surfaces.

At one of Franklin’s first practices of the season, Willie was there with his hoe, digging a shallow ditch into the hillside above the courts so that spring water would stop seeping onto the baseline. He dropped a handful of seeds as he dug to foster the growth vegetation to help absorb water. This was a big job and a job that truly needed doing—not some minor, whimsical fix. Last year, Willie paid a houseless person out of his own pocket to help divert water away from the courts. This year, he did it by himself.

While Willie’s generosity and altruistism make for a good character study, he can’t be expected to make up for the shortfall in Parks & Rec’s maintenance budget. Even if Portland had multiple Willies, a few individuals’ time, energy and good intentions aren't enough to overcome system-wide shortcomings. As for ordinary players, and the city’s future Ben Doans who don’t even know yet that they have a talent for learning and then teaching high-level tennis? They can keep sweeping off leaves and broken glass with the brooms Willie stashes around town, but a healthy public tennis ecosystem shouldn’t have to depend on enigmatic benevolence. It takes a functioning city government to keep court surfaces in good-enough condition that they are worth sweeping off in the first place.

View Issue PDF Here

","2024-04-21T02:21:00Z",[314],{"_106":132,"_108":259,"_109":110},{"_97":316},{"_15":317,"_100":318,"_38":319,"_103":320,"_116":327},"gid://shopify/Blog/82991906891","summer-2024","Summer 2024",[321,323,-5,-5,-5,325],{"_106":107,"_108":322,"_109":110},"#d10000",{"_106":112,"_108":324,"_109":110},"#ffe675",{"_106":114,"_108":326,"_109":110},"#d94747",{"_94":328},[329],{"_97":330},{"_15":331,"_100":332,"_38":333,"_124":334,"_126":335,"_128":336,"_103":337,"_134":-5},"gid://shopify/Article/560010526795","medicine-ball-by-jamie-melton","Medicine Ball","My Grandma Nancy was an Oregon high school state tennis champion. As a memory of our connection and her strength, I hold close her heirloom gold tennis ball char","

My Grandma Nancy was an Oregon high school state tennis champion. As a memory of our connection and her strength, I hold close her heirloom gold tennis ball charm engraved with 1956, the year she won. I think about the 1940s and 50s, when she played, and what she had to do to get on the court in rural Oregon, when tennis was one of the only competitive sports that was socially acceptable for women. I am curious about who she looked up to. I wonder if she witnessed and supported Billie Jean King’s advocacy for women and queer rights on and off the court; and would she have accepted me for who and how I love? I’m interested if she and my other relatives supported Althea Gibson as she rose to success as the first Black woman to win a Grand Slam in 1957, and later to the world's number one ranking. Did she care about what that meant for Black women? For human rights? For sport? She died of pancreatic cancer when I was 3, so the questions and stories mostly exist in the shape of wonder. After she died, her husband, my Grandpa Larry, used to drop-shot me at the courts where we would camp as a family in the Oregon summers, which made me want to play basketball instead. Their daughter (my mother, Jenne Jo) played during my youth, toting a 90s-era Wilson Hammer and sporting permed hair. Her “serve and volley” vibe spoke to how she walks through life as much as her success on the court.

Given the familial connection to the sport, it’s surprising that tennis and I didn’t find each other earlier. As a kid and adult, I was keen on chasing balls that blended me into the fate of a team, the power in numbers, rising and falling together. I appreciate that I have the choice to follow the balls I want to. In some sense, tennis and I unioned at just the right time.

My mom gave me her spirited Wilson hammer when her joints retired from tennis and it mostly sat underutilized in my sports gear pile, brought out for the annual-ish swing in a park with friends. I played with it until last year, when my relationship with tennis sparked a need for a new racket that could hold the growth of an emerging love—the kind that slicks your skin and strikes to the core with depth, fading life’s fears, if just for some moments. It was medicine I didn’t know I needed.

In Spring 2023, I was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer and got lobectomy surgery, changing my health forever. I was 40 at the time and it felt premature. I was scared and sad and confused. I recalled my grandmother’s fate, and though my diagnosis was highly survivable, I wondered if our gravestones would read the same:

R.I.P. NAJ & JJM:

active, creative, patient, loved food, chased balls around, died in their forties of cancer.

Instead of dwelling on this shared diagnosis and potential destiny, I started playing tennis. It gave me hope and a sense of vitality to challenge my body and honor my grandma’s legacy. I was going to be a champion, just like her! And I was going to survive cancer, just like …

Most people probably wouldn’t sign up for an international tournament after being in recovery and playing for just 6 months. I wasn’t in an average situation. I wanted to feel alive as the possibility of death crept in. I signed up to play tennis in the Gay Games in Guadalajara, Mexico, a quadrennial event with a storied history bringing together queer athletes from around the globe since 1982. The tennis competition was part of twenty-plus sporting events over ten days in the Mexican city known for birria, tequila and smelling like earth. My decision to compete in tennis was secondary to my desire for Spanish immersion; I had studied the language, off and on, since my mid-20s. The Gay Games and tennis provided a foundation for the community I met and the Spanish I spoke on courts with Zira (amor iguales), around dinner tables with families, and on walks or at cafés with Locha (esta chido!).

The GLTA (Gay & Lesbian Tennis Association) hosted the competition. Like a lot of queer organizations, it wants to do things differently. It has its own rating system and a worldwide tournament circuit bringing esteemed 2SLGBTQIA+ tennis players into queer-friendly places. I self-rated as a Women’s B (3.5+) for singles and a C (3.0+) for doubles.

My first matches shared the same venue as the Guadalajara WTA 1000 tournament. Expansive murals of Jessica Pegula, Elena Rybakina and other top players watched over me as I took to the court to face my first opponent: Lori, of Northern California. I didn’t know anything about her until warmups. I struggled with her slices and short balls to my feet, wondering why I couldn’t get a ball like we do in the drills.

While playing, my new friend Wendy, a gold medal swimmer, met Lori’s wife in the stands. She learned that “the wives” had done research and discovered that I worked in nonprofits and had no traceable competitive tennis history. Really intimidating resume! Lori has been to every Gay Games since 1982 (before I was born) and has taken a medal home from every tournament! Playing an elder icon of gay tennis in the blazing sun at over 5,000 feet above sea level—while experiencing the psychological challenge of singles for the first time—was a blended beverage I had not yet experienced. I lost my first match to experienced slices, perfect placements, and new-to-me nerves. Somehow it helped when I imagined Lori as Grandma Nancy. It’s totally fine to lose to my dead grandmother.

Despite all of the challenges, I enjoyed the ride and played decently after the nerves of the first match. Each match, I found my breath, developed a serving ritual, and wore grandma’s tennis ball charm close to my heart. My doubles partner, Kristi, and I played “the wives” in the finals and lost; we succumbed to the same alchemy. For mixed doubles, we had a limited draw, and I played with some highly skilled folks who gave me some of my first lessons at the net: just hold out your racket and don’t look scared.

After nine matches in five days, I won the consolation championship in singles, a bronze in mixed doubles, and a silver in women's doubles. I think Grandma would be proud.

More profoundly, I developed a love for a game that invites me to be creative, see possibilities, play, enjoy, and move through challenges. This past year of tennis and the connections along the way have been true healing gifts ✨ 🎾

","2024-07-21T02:54:00Z",[338],{"_106":132,"_108":339,"_109":110},"Jamie Melton",{"_97":341},{"_15":342,"_100":343,"_38":344,"_103":345,"_116":352},"gid://shopify/Blog/83677053003","winter-2024","Winter 2024",[346,348,-5,-5,-5,350],{"_106":107,"_108":347,"_109":110},"#2d2d2d",{"_106":112,"_108":349,"_109":110},"#daa520",{"_106":114,"_108":351,"_109":110},"#d6c293",{"_94":353},[354,363],{"_97":355},{"_15":356,"_100":357,"_38":358,"_124":254,"_126":359,"_128":360,"_103":361,"_134":-5},"gid://shopify/Article/560010330187","agassi-s-rock-roll-tennis-camp-a-novel-by-aspiring-tennis-professional-coach-logan-corcoran","AGASSI’S ROCK & ROLL TENNIS CAMP: A NOVEL","

Author's note: Back in the early 90s, I was working up the ranks as a junior intern at the Rick Macci Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, FL. My job entailed printing Mr. Macci's famous inspirational quotes on large vinyl banners that would hang all over the academy. While reading quotes like \"BELIEVING IS MAGIC\", \"PRESSURE IS MY BEST FRIEND\", and \"HIT THE BALL SO HARD THAT YOU GIVE IT BRAIN DAMAGE\" (a quote of my own rejected by Mr. Macci, who made me destroy the banner immediately and reimburse the academy the $49.97 cost of printing) was like attending a $100k per year elite academy unto itself, the financials of the job didn't pay much on account of it being an unpaid internship. So, to scratch up some coin for a new can of balls and food, I began writing novelizations of popular tennis television adverts of the era for those who preferred to read about, rather than watch, the newest product offerings from the biggest brands in tennis. And while I vastly overestimated the size and interest of this particular tennis audience, in honor of the first Portland Tennis Courterly of 2024, I've graciously dipped into my archives to re-release the novelization of what I consider to be the finest tennis advert of all time: Nike's game-changing and very real 1990 TV commercial AGASSI'S ROCK & ROLL TENNIS CAMP. Enjoy!

CHAPTER 1: AN UNLIKELY HERO

Andre Kirk Agassi couldn't help but fear for his life. It was 1990, the cusp of a new millennium, and tennis was quickly becoming the world's number one bloodsport. In today's world, people all but demanded rock n' roll with their tennis, and young Andre was their messiah.

Even though his 20-year-old lips had yet to touch his first legal drink of alcohol, nor had his heart (also age 20) experienced the soaring heights and crushing pains of true love, he was once again fighting for his life at ROCK & ROLL TENNIS CAMP, the post-apocalyptic challenge court of death featuring quintessential California rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers. A truly harrowing event coordinated simply for the delight of their overlords - Nike, Inc.

But even with the reaper rapping upon his door, Andre exuded nothing less than carefree, cool calm. After all, image is everything. The rules were simple: survive as long as you can battling upon the killing court while Flea and the gang play a live show for a stadium of screaming funk-punk/tennis fans. Andre methodically did that thing where you spin the racquet horizontally on one finger, which is really hard to do, in an attempt to enter the flow state. One thousand 1200-watt spotlights illuminated the concrete and steel grating of the modern-day gladiator arena around him.

Atop the white, wooden monolith of the umpire chair sat none other than Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis. He did not have a shirt on. Next to him, as always, was Flea, wearing a white Stetson cowboy hat and pants made of various stuffed animals. He, too, was without a shirt. Making eye contact with Andre and, like a quality questionnaire, they began with a question: \"Wanna play rock and roll tennis?\"

Turning to face them with stony resolve and a multi-print Nike Challenge Court headband accessory that most likely held a hairpiece topper in place, Andre smirked. A single gold triangle pendant dangled from his left ear. \"Let's dance.\"

CHAPTER 2: LET’S DANCE

Anthony Kiedis and Flea (real name Michael Balzary) screamed as a cacophony of elite tennis and rock & roll fusion exploded forth. While the funky monks orchestrated roiling chaos upon a stage, a screaming crowd watched in anarchic ecstasy as Andre found himself in the battle of his life. Backhand, backhand, forehand, another backhand. He sent the onslaught of balls right back at his unseen opponent with equal verve and ferocity. A frenzied Flea could hardly control himself. \"Hit the ball as LOUD AS YOU CAN,\" he shouted as a battle mantra, contorting his face into a grotesque mask for exclamation.

Another backhand. And another. Yet another backhand. Andre was smashing a surprising amount of backhands, most likely because it made his radical new Nike Challenge Court tee in the neon green colorway really pop.

On stage, Anthony Kiedis whipped his flowing hair around and around as if to say, \"Gaze upon the glory of my natural hair, world, for you will find no hairpiece toppers here.\"

CHAPTER 3: BLOOD SUGAR SEX MAGIK

\"LIVE for you fans!\"

The words had barely escaped Anthony Kiedis' lips before he leapfrogged over a bass-slapping Flea, sending himself six feet into the air above the stage. Andre wasn't the only one with formidable athletic prowess. Oh, and RHCP guitarist John Frusciante and drummer Chad Smith were also there on stage, but just in the background. No close-ups. They were basically there because without the full band playing together, the entire idea of a quasi-futuristic warehouse tennis match battle in the middle of a punk rock show wouldn't make a lick of sense.

Andre charged forward to the net and attacked the open court with a textbook backhand volley. His incredible footwork only made better by the neon green of his built-in compression shorts, available now from the Nike Challenge Court line of apparel. The crowd went wild.

CHAPTER 4: BREAK(ING) POINT

Each backhand burned. Every step felt like it could be his last. Andre didn't know how much longer he could keep this fight going. Could this be the final match for The Las Vegas Kid?

Sensing his struggle, Anthony Kiedis and Flea proclaimed the pervading ethos of our era in a last-ditch attempt to rally Andre: \"Never, never, NEVER sign with a bogus label!\"

That was all Andre needed. A new energy filled him with the power of one thousand Gil Waters running through his veins. With every step, Andre's Swoosh emblazoned crew socks provided sweat-wicking capabilities, allowing him to tear up the court in his neon green Nike Air Tech Challenge III tennis shoes (suggested retail $69.99).

The battle reached a fever pitch. While the Peps rampaged the stage, so did Andre on the court. Smashing guitars, smashing forehands, running circles around the opponent, running circles around the drums. The line between championship tennis and rebellious youth blurred into a single ethos: sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll tennis.

With Flea's plea echoing in his mind, Andre ran around another backhand, set up a forehand down the line, and hit the ball as loud as he could. Winner. Game. Set. Match. He had vanquished his opponent, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers had put on one hell of a show. He dropped his racquet and looked to the sky as if speaking to God himself. \"Any questions?\"

CHAPTER 5: LOVE MEANS NOTHING

Anthony Kiedis, Flea, John Frusciante, Chad Smith, and Andre held each other and cried. The memories of today's events would take weeks to fully process. \"Hell, grown men aren't supposed to cry,\" Chad Smith said, struggling to swallow his emotions, \"It just ain't right.\" Andre smiled. \"You're wrong, Chad Smith. For the true measure of a man does not lie in the strength of his muscles but in the strength of his feelings.\" Chad Smith let out a guttural sob in relief.

Bidding the band goodbye, an exhausted Andre Agassi walked off the court holding not just a victory, but a new lease on life. And through it all - all the danger, all the drama, all the near-death experiences - a single thought remained:

Just do it.

THE END

(Find the entire spring ‘91 Nike Challenge Court collection at a tennis pro shop near you.)

$\"\"$

","2024-02-18T03:15:00Z",[362],{"_106":132,"_108":304,"_109":110},{"_97":364},{"_15":365,"_100":366,"_38":367,"_124":368,"_126":369,"_128":370,"_103":371,"_134":373},"gid://shopify/Article/560010264651","public-tennis-instruction-monolingual-no-more","Public Tennis Instruction Monolingual No More","Linguistic diversity has arrived to the City of Portland’s public tennis programming in the form of ball machine drills conducted in Spanish and in Japanese.","

Linguistic diversity has arrived to the City of Portland’s public tennis programming in the form of ball machine drills conducted in Spanish and in Japanese. Conversations about how to better serve the city’s underrepresented language communities started within the Bureau of Parks & Recreation’s leadership team. In September 2023, Portland Tennis Center (PTC) began offering a recurring “Clase de tenis con maquina lanza pelotas en español,” taught by Coach David Rojas, a pro who is bilingual in Spanish and English. Spanish is by far the most widely spoken language in Portland, other than English. But once the multilingual gato is out of the bolso, the figurative feline is free to roam. The following month, Coach Wakana Turner began teaching a ball machine class in Japanese.

Eventually, PTC hopes to expand its non-English offerings into different age groups, types of classes and additional languages. Recreation Coordinator Ezra James explained that ball machine drills were the best type of class to begin with, in terms of access, because they’re “low pressure,” don’t require a rating and can accommodate players of various skill levels. Previewing languages that could be added, James noted that among coaches working at PTC there are also speakers of Vietnamese, Italian, Portuguese and Tagalog.

¿Alguien puede registrarse? While no sort of “language rating” is required to register, James pointed out that the online description of the Spanish-language ball machine drills, which Coach David came up with, is entirely en español. This makes for somewhat of a self-selecting group. Does that mean anyone curious about Spanish can sign up, even if they don’t know their derecha from their revés, or think “globo” refers only to a literal balloon? James stopped short of discouraging the use of the classes for language-learning purposes; they emphasized that the new offerings are intended to be safe spaces for members of the given language communities. Parks & Rec is still in the process of getting the word out to Portland’s Spanish and Japanese speakers. For the time being, there is ample room in the classes for multilinguals, players less proficient in English, heritage speakers and aspiring polyglots alike.

Not that those categories are mutually exclusive or cut and dry. Linguistic identity, like athletic ability, is famously fluid and dependent on context. The potential for any confusion around questions of inclusion will be at least partially limited by the fact that tennis is an increasingly diverse and globally minded sport. It’s a game with what Iranian-American poet and translator Roger Sedarat described as “universal referents.” Sedarat, who is an English professor, avid doubles player, and author of a book of tennis poems called Foot Faults, added that only a few words are needed to play an entire match. “The shared understanding of scores, faults, et cetera,” he explained, “naturally invites attempts at interlingual communication. Whatever language that's spoken between players already has a better chance of getting across, or rather over, the net.”

Multilingual communication plays a role in rooting on professionals, too. What Alcaraz fan, advanced at Spanish or not, hasn’t shouted “¡Vamos Carlitos!” at their televisión during some armrest-gripping turn of the tide?

While tennis translates well across languages, variation within languages is as common as variation within groundstrokes. One Spanish-speaker’s vocabulary isn’t necessarily the same as another’s, even when it comes to terms used for the same sport. A participant in Coach David’s class observed that the instructor, who hails from Colombia, uses the terms “bola” and “pelota” somewhat interchangeably, and does the same with “cancha” and “campo.” In the participant’s previous experiences with tenis en español, at public courts in Union City, New Jersey, a coach from Venezuela used only “pelota” to refer to the ball, and never anything but “cancha” to refer to the court. The same participant—who is conversant in Spanish, but not a native speaker or heritage speaker—found the application of familiar words in new contexts helpful and refreshing. Coach David’s tip to maintain “más distancia” between him and the bola, for instance, was easier for him to internalize and put into practice than the corresponding advice in English, which turns on “position,” a word that’s arguably more subjective.

On some level, even tennis played exclusively in English is actually a furtive multilingual experience. John McEnroe recalls, in an early episode of McEnroe’s Places, that when we say “love-love” to kick off a game, that’s not a nod to on-court amore; “love” comes from the French “l'œuf,” or “the egg,” he says. While Merriam-Webster disputes this theory as “folk etymology,” anyone who’s ever gotten goose-egged at Colonel Summers Park knows that the shape of an œuf resembles a zero. Could PTC’s embrace of tennis across languages spill over into multilingual pick-up matches? If you hear players announcing “huevo-huevo” or “tamago-tamago” before blasting their opening serves, you’ll know the answer is affirmative.

The Courterly plans to report back as PTC’s offerings in languages other than English expand, settle into monthly slots and attract greater attention. Does this amateur dialectologist anticipate any matata resulting from the city’s efforts to increase access and enrich linguisticity in the dunia of Portland tennis? In a word—or in a series of words, all corresponding: いいえ; không; não; hindi; нет; لا; no.

","2024-02-18T02:38:00Z",[372],{"_106":132,"_108":235,"_109":110},{"_23":374,"_137":-5,"_138":155,"_140":156},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/Nate_Illo_racket_smash_539b6a15-73e7-4811-9761-9e30f7a3d65b.png?v=1745444872",{"_97":376},{"_15":377,"_100":378,"_38":379,"_103":380,"_116":387},"gid://shopify/Blog/83928612939","pickleball-issue","Pickleball Issue",[381,383,-5,-5,-5,385],{"_106":107,"_108":382,"_109":110},"#080707",{"_106":112,"_108":384,"_109":110},"#edede8",{"_106":114,"_108":386,"_109":110},"#fcdd17",{"_94":388},[389,404,418,433,448,462,476,489,504,518],{"_97":390},{"_15":391,"_100":392,"_38":393,"_124":394,"_126":395,"_128":396,"_103":397,"_134":400},"gid://shopify/Article/560470786123","poetry-submission-untitled","Poetry (untitled)","Hello my dear reader. Hope you're doing fine. For me, I'm still French and still weirded out by some strange Americanisms : ranch dressing everywhere, lacrosse, presidents over 80, and most importantly today, pickleball.","

Hello my dear reader. Hope you're doing fine. For me, I'm still French and still weirded out by some strange Americanisms : ranch dressing everywhere, lacrosse, presidents over 80, and most importantly today, pickleball. I hope you play tennis, otherwise you might be unhappy with my opinion. Here is my poetic two cents as a foreigner.

\n
Pickleball, I have nothing against you—but today
I say to you with respect: please go away
I’m happy you exist for the old heads who wanna play
But I stay out of my sight, cause you really don’t slay
\n
Umpire just hit their serve out, like a clown
You're getting smashed and pounded after every rebound
Watching this is so, so embarrassing
Please, please let Tennis be King!
\n

In all seriousness, pickleball is a chance for a lot of people to play and I appreciate that. Sport is an important part of everyone's health and bringing new people into the fold is always good. Hopefully, new pickleball places can be built around the city without destroying the current tennis infrastructure. My final word will be a small observation : pickleball is a very American sport.

","2025-05-15T18:23:14Z",[398],{"_106":132,"_108":399,"_109":110},"Clément Daube",{"_23":401,"_137":-5,"_138":402,"_140":403},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/Mona_Lisa_BW.png?v=1747420450",2550,3300,{"_97":405},{"_15":406,"_100":407,"_38":408,"_124":409,"_126":410,"_128":411,"_103":412,"_134":414},"gid://shopify/Article/560470753355","farewell-to-the-dying-embers-of-a-truly-groovy-local-scene","Farewell to the dying embers of a truly groovy local scene","“We’re about to get started,” I said. “So …” I didn’t have to add shuffle off to Buffalo for the Qigong-er to get the gist.","

“We’re about to get started,” I said. “So …”
I didn’t have to add shuffle off to Buffalo
for the Qigong-er to get the gist.

“Why do you have to play on this court?” he asked. Implying:
Couldn’t we just hit on the open court next to the one he had claimed?
How far back do you want me to go? I thought to myself.
Prior to the resurface? Before the bioswales?
(I wasn’t here for it—wasn’t even born yet—
but someone should tell him about the day
Arthur Ashe came to play.)

Instead of engagement, I judged the combative spiritualist
unworthy of the story’s long version. I answered him curtly: “
This is where we usually play tennis.”

“This is where we usually do Qigong,” he volleyed back.
I see. He, too, was part of a we. Yes, I started to recognize,
he was the group’s instructor. The instructor paused,
bit his lip, could not resist escalation.
“You people are neurotic!”

I felt proud to be associated with whoever the “you people” were—
others who had asked him to get off the court? I sent a wobbly half
volley back: “Qigong, huh? I’d be curious to … learn more about that.”

“You could use some!”

* * *

Farewell to the rainbow coalition that’s been on these courts since at least the 1960s. Farewell to our multiracial, multilingual, multigenerational, socioeconomically diverse tennisocracy—rare anywhere, and rare as The Devil’s cognac-soaked signature steak here in Portland, Oregon.

We were never quite a democracy, ‘cause there was royalty, and we were too cool to vote. And it wasn’t anarchy either, as much as we pretended it to be; we adhered to the customs of the sport.

If you’re passing by, look for our remnants scattered across the courts—out there with the dog walkers, pickleballers, nannies and roller skaters. We still get on to hit. Two here, four there.
But there’s nothing quite like playing the game all together.

Everyone can do whatever they want, people tell themselves, so they don’t have to acknowledge the reality:
when we all do whatever we want,
no one’s doing much of anything at all.

","2025-05-15T18:21:22Z",[413],{"_106":132,"_108":235,"_109":110},{"_23":415,"_137":-5,"_138":416,"_140":417},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/IMG_0151_a3e452d4-7f0c-45ae-9910-11caf59b4cd5.jpg?v=1748459674",4032,3024,{"_97":419},{"_15":420,"_100":421,"_38":422,"_124":423,"_126":424,"_128":425,"_103":426,"_134":429},"gid://shopify/Article/560470720587","merchants-in-the-house-of-oz","Merchants in the House of Oz","Almost anyone who loves pickleball and religiously follows the sport has had one ofthose jaw-dropping, eye-popping moments watching Ben Johns dumbfound opponents to the point of puking with his “knuckleball” serve (clocked at a record speed last year of 53 km/hour), or experiencing Anna Waters-induced-vertigo from the impossibly backspun RPMs she puts on the ball.","

Almost anyone who loves pickleball and religiously follows the sport has had one of those jaw-dropping, eye-popping moments watching Ben Johns dumbfound opponents to the point of puking with his “knuckleball” serve (clocked at a record speed last year of 53 km/hour), or experiencing Anna Waters-induced-vertigo from the impossibly backspun RPMs she puts on the ball. I, however, have not. I ventured to the US Pickleball Championships in Naples, Florida, for a different reason: to track down a few former professional tennis players now funding their lavish retirements with seemingly little effort: prize money from pickleball. In fact, I knew nearly nothing of the grace and tenacity of these athletes. But I quickly learned I wasn’t the only one seeking a slice of the pie.

Journalistically speaking, there is no hot news from the pickleball scene. It’s one of those rare phenomena that continue to build momentum while viewership stagnates, a concern shared by Jimmy Barr, CEO of Bowflex and founder of ‘The Championships’: “Just wait till this thing kicks off,” he tells me with a chuckle. “We’re using a small percentage of each ticket sale to launch a brand-new, professional pickleball gambling app that automatically downloads to the fan’s phone.” I think I’m picking up what he’s putting down.

Beauty isn’t the goal of professional sports, and pickleball is no different. Anyone who has attended the US Open will remember being greeted at the gates by Flushing Meadows locals hawking bottles of water and “cheap” beer for $10 a pop. But here in Naples, the hustle is characterized by retirees seemingly dissipating into their beach chairs, colorful spreads of grey-market pharmaceuticals such as insulin and ibuprofen (discounted at nauseating enormity) arranged on folding tables before them. First-aid supplies, portable blood pressure cuffs, and tanning lotions decorate the most appropriately named aspect of The Championships’ campus: “The Yellow Brick Road” (in fact a bike path converted to pickleball courts* which now lead to “Oz”, the fans’ affectionate nickname for Pritchard-Bell Arena, named after two of the three inventors of the game). Let’s just say being fed up with Rite Aid prices is as good a reason as any to become a Pickleball fan.

To my mild surprise, my Portland Tennis Courterly press pass was denied at entry. I attempted to reason with security, pleading naively under the impression that perhaps someone there had heard of the esteemed publication that I represented, and had mistook me for a satirist when in fact I’d come to sincerely cover the action. But my attempts proved futile and I was told that any and all tennis press were expressly forbidden on campus, especially in “Oz.” As I dejectedly gazed through the chain-link fencing, imagining what feats of athletic wonder could be taking place inside the emerald stadium, I heard the sound of snapping bubblegum and the pop-hiss of an aluminum can cracking open behind me: “What’s up, man? Portland Tennis Courterly, what’s that?” I stood in awe for a moment, face to face with Jack Sock and Andre Agassi. I managed to spit out a question: Could they just tell me about their forays into pickleball? Jack: “Yeah, it’s been great except there’s no beer here. I’ve been living off Werther’s Originals for three days,” he lamented, referring to the title sponsor of The Championships. I should tell him about the discount insulin. Agassi: “Dunno if you read my book but I hate it more than I hated tennis. And my bald wig keeps falling off.”

*I interviewed one of the three cyclists currently living in Naples. He’d staged a four-day demonstration against the repurposing construction. “I’ll take the riot police any day,” he said. “The sound of that fucking wiffle ball hitting the mallet is torture—worse than tear gas. We weren’t prepared at all.” They lasted three hours.

","2025-05-15T18:20:08Z",[427],{"_106":132,"_108":428,"_109":110},"Harrison Harb",{"_23":430,"_137":-5,"_138":431,"_140":432},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/tennis_is_superior.png?v=1747754625",2732,2048,{"_97":434},{"_15":435,"_100":436,"_38":437,"_124":438,"_126":439,"_128":440,"_103":441,"_134":444},"gid://shopify/Article/560470687819","we-played-pickle-ball-in-p-e-today-and-it-was-so-nbsp-fun-and-easy-and-now-its-my-favorit-game-by-lil-addie-anderson-age-7-and-a-half","WE PLAYED PICKLE BALL IN P.E. TODAY AND IT WAS SO FUN AND EASY AND NOW ITS MY FAVORIT GAME! By Lil’ Addie Anderson, age 7 and a half","HI❤️ im lil Addie ANderson and Theres this new game that i played today in PE class called pickle-ball and its so much fun 😻","

HI❤️ im lil Addie ANderson and Theres this new game that i played today in PE class called pickle-ball and its so much fun 😻and the perfect game for kidz like me! Our teacher Mr. coach Zach siad its the perfect game for little kids because im still developing something called hand-eye coronation and you dont need a lot of that to play the game! ,,Picklesball is the perfect litttle kids game!

All u need to play the game is a board with a handle and a whipple ball! Then you just hit the ball to the other player and it isnt fast or scary❌you barely have to even move cause the court is so small and the gsame is so easy. Mr. Coach Zach said grown ups🤡 soemtimes play the game professionally🤔. I laughed and laughed cause Mr Coach Z is so funny and is always telling jokes!

Then guess what after school today i got off the bus and walked past sum grown-ups playing my favorit game picklball! They were acting so silly 🤪and pretending to be angry and serious. It was funny to see grown-ups pretend to play a little kid game like that and try so hard at a kids game👶🍼 i laughed and i liked it. The only thing i didnt like was it was so loud! When they hit the ball🙅♀️. I hate tha.t. Sometime mommy gets headaches💆♀️ and i have to be quiet and the growne ups pretending to play a kids game gave me a headache to😡 Oh and guess what the game i like called pickle’bal isn’t just for little kids like me. Its also for old grandma and grandpa!👵🏸

I hope Mr. coach zack let’s us play the game pickelball tomorrow but floor ball or flapping the big parachute would be OK too cause those are way more fun actually.The end👯♀️

By Lil Addie🌟🏓

🩷🧡💛💚💜

","2025-05-15T18:17:54Z",[442],{"_106":132,"_108":443,"_109":110},"Logan Corcoran",{"_23":445,"_137":-5,"_138":446,"_140":447},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/IMG_0148.jpg?v=1747342868",2405,2702,{"_97":449},{"_15":450,"_100":451,"_38":452,"_124":453,"_126":454,"_128":455,"_103":456,"_134":458},"gid://shopify/Article/560470622283","tennis-is-booming-in-the-pnw-infrastructure-busting","Tennis is Booming in the PNW — Infrastructure Busting","Last year, another 1.9 million people began playing tennis in the United States. That increase—a striking 8%—brings America’s total number of tennis players up to 25.7 million. That’s an incredible 46% jump from 2019 levels, proving that the sport’s post-pandemic growth is not just holding steady but accelerating.","

Last year, another 1.9 million people began playing tennis in the United States. That increase—a striking 8%—brings America’s total number of tennis players up to 25.7 million. That’s an incredible 46% jump from 2019 levels, proving that the sport’s post-pandemic growth is not just holding steady but accelerating. What some saw as a temporary trend has clearly become a lasting shift in how Americans spend their leisure time.

Of all the regions in the U.S., the Pacific Northwest has had one of the largest increases in tennis participation, with 15% annual growth over the last five years. Portland now claims 84,000 active players. But there are also 78,000 Portlanders who want to play tennis but lack access. Here in “Tennis City, USA,” of all places, tennis’s growth has coincided with a troubling reality: a decline in the number of available courts. Some of these losses stem from the closure of private clubs with publicly accessible courts: Eastmoreland Racquet Club (RIP 2015; 11 courts) and Portland Athletic Club (RIP 2025; 5 courts). Other losses are due to permanent tennis-to-pickleball conversions, with precious park space at Gabriel Park (2 courts), Westmoreland Park (2 courts), and Sellwood Park (2 courts) no longer devoted to tennis.

Beyond these outright losses, the number of usable tennis courts has been further reduced by courts that now prioritize pickleball on certain days or times. Columbia Park and even the indoor courts at Portland Tennis & Education in St. Johns have designated pickleball hours, limiting when tennis players can access these spaces.

What these numbers don't capture is the state of the courts that still technically exist for tennis only, but are unplayable due to neglect—courts at Burlingame and Northgate Parks sit abandoned, lacking nets or suffering from severe disrepair.

New courts are expected at the new Parklane Park, near the border with Gresham—but that’s nowhere near enough to offset the over 20 courts lost in the past 10 years. The overall erosion of key tennis infrastructure like benches, backboards, and functioning lights has only exacerbated the problem. And with existing courts being repurposed and prioritized for pickleball, tennis players are left with fewer and fewer places to play a sport that’s exploding in popularity.

And then there’s this troubling development: facing a $65 million shortfall, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson’s proposed 2025–26 budget would cut operating hours at Portland Tennis Center (PTC)—the city’s only public indoor tennis facility with both indoor and outdoor courts—by one hour per day. The move would reclassify PTC as a general “community center” in order to save just $14,000. While a loss of one operating hour per day might sound insignificant, consider that there are now just 14 publicly accessible indoor courts to serve those approximately 150,000 Portlanders who either play or want to play tennis. For close-in residents who depend on PTC during the rainy season, this proposal feels like a slap in the face.

Community members have until May 21 to raise concerns about proposed cuts to the PTC’s operating hours before the city council votes in June on the 2025-26.

","2025-05-15T18:15:25Z",[457],{"_106":132,"_108":259,"_109":110},{"_23":459,"_137":-5,"_138":460,"_140":461},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/Public_tennis_courts_art_973db757-36c9-4d06-95c1-998608f7c6db.jpg?v=1747444394",2382,1552,{"_97":463},{"_15":464,"_100":465,"_38":466,"_124":467,"_126":468,"_128":469,"_103":470,"_134":472},"gid://shopify/Article/560470589515","quite-the-pickle","Quite the Pickle","Lisa and Kevin Scott have lived in their relatively modest, Cape Cod-style home in Portland’s Irvington neighborhood home for over 45 years. Both retired, they spend the majority of their time there.","

Irvington Club vs. Lisa and Kevin Scott
\n

\nI. If a tree falls in the forest and only two people hear it, does it really make a sound?\n

Lisa and Kevin Scott have lived in their relatively modest, Cape Cod-style home in Portland’s Irvington neighborhood home for over 45 years. Both retired, they spend the majority of their time there. In the spring and summer, Lisa, a performing pianist, plays and occasionally teaches in their living room. Kevin is home even more than Lisa; he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease a few years ago.

The couple had been on good terms with their nextdoor neighbor, the Irvington Tennis Club, since they moved into their house in 1980. In 2019, the 120-year-old club converted an alley-less, singles tennis court on the northern edge of its property—less than 15 feet from Lisa and Kevin’s home—into two pickleball courts. The relationship soon began to sour.

The Scotts’ living room, which doubles as their music room, is on the side of the house closest to the pickleball courts. So long as “the sun was out,” Lisa explained, “pickleball was being played.” In the summer, that meant up to ten hours a day. The sound made their outdoor spaces unusable. Inside, the combination of closed windows, white noise machines, and noise-canceling headphones couldn’t keep the steady staccato of pickleball from penetrating their ears.

The acrimony reached a fever pitch in early 2022. The tennis club accused Lisa of “not being a good neighbor.” That might’ve had something to do with the dubious claim that the Scotts sprayed pickleball players with their garden hose; it definitely had something to do with the huge vinyl banner Lisa hung in exasperated protest.

“There was nothing on there that was defamatory,” Lisa said of the banner, which had the phrases Irvington Club Pickleball and 11 feet from my home! sandwiching a custom image that her neighbor helped design. It featured a distressed-looking emoji with its fingers in its ears, surrounded by falling pickleballs.

II. Pickleball's ascension

In 1965, Joel Pritchard, a politician from Washington State who went on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, returned to his vacation home on Bainbridge Island with his friend Bill Bell and found their families “sitting around with nothing to do.” This is the backstory to pickleball’s origin story; Pritchard is known as the inventor and “Father” of pickleball. The game resulted from the combination of boredom and a concoction of other games that had lost their luster: badminton, ping pong, and wiffle ball.

In 1975, the National Observer published what may have been the first article about pickleball. A year later, in 1976, an article about “America’s newest racquet sport” graced the pages of Tennis magazine.

For approximately 40 years, pickleball had little to no institutional support or momentum outside of middle school P.E. classes and correctional facilities. Then, about ten years ago, pickleball started gaining traction. No one knows how or why. In 2020, 50 years after it was invented, pickleball was hailed “the fastest growing sport in America” by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.

Pickleball’s ascension has been thoroughly reported upon. A survey of New York Times headlines from recent years provides a reliable record of pickleball’s entry into the zeitgeist. “What is Pickleball?” wondered the Gray Lady in early 2022.

In February 2022, The New York Times declared, “Pickleball Is Ready for Prime Time.”

Two months later, in April, a headline asked, “Can Pickleball Save America?”

They continued wondering aloud, asking in September of that same year, “Why is Pickleball so popular?” On the very same day, they filed a story under the headline: “Game On: It’s Labor Day weekend, the perfect time to try—you guessed it—pickleball.”

One month later: “Move Over … Everything? Here Comes Major League Pickleball”

And that same October, the first hint of discontent: “Pickleball Is Expanding. Tennis Is Mad.”

Pickleball coverage appeared to go dormant in the winter of 2023. But a few months later, as the air warmed and playing surfaces dried, The New York Times reminded its readers: “In Spring, New Yorkers’ Thoughts Turn to Pickleball.”

Finally, after years of unequivocally positive press, the long-awaited upshot: A June 2023 headline read: “Shattered Nerves, Sleepless Nights: Pickleball Noise Is Driving Everyone Nuts”.

* * *

The vibe-shifting June 2023 story wasn’t actually the beginning of a new epoch; the pickleball backlash had been fermenting for some time. The noise issue didn’t appear, suddenly, as if by magic. The noise issue had been there from the very beginning.

In June 2022, about 12 months and a dozen positive pieces before The New York Times first suggested that, well, not everyone was enthusiastic about pickleball, The Los Angeles Times ran a story under the headline, “Pickleball noise is fueling neighborhood drama from coast to coast.”

Portland was no exception. In July of 2022, Oregonian columnist Steve Duin wrote of the “Pickleball crisis” in Lake Oswego.

That the wealthy Portland suburb was Ground Zero for a noise dispute should surprise exactly no one. Issues around noise, bus routes, swimming and boating access, and social services generally break along class lines. And when members of a wealthy bedroom community are aligned in what they want, they seem to have little trouble accessing the levers of power.

By January 2023, Lake Oswego City Council voted to shut down the city’s only pickleball courts: the ones at George Rogers Park, not far from Lake Oswego’s downtown area and just up the hill from the Willamette River. The George Rogers courts—once beloved, now maligned—took the place of tennis courts at the same site in 2015. Just eight years after it began, the party was already over. Still, the City Council committed to exploring a potential new pickleball facility in LO, approximately five miles to the west of George Rogers Park, on the site of Westlake Park’s tennis courts. Following a lengthy public process of neighborhood meetings, traffic and noise studies, and community feedback, the Council opted not to proceed with the tennis-to-pickleball conversion. Instead, they redirected the focus toward a long-term solution, incorporating pickleball into the broader Parks Plan 2040.

In Portland, a city with more socioeconomic diversity, where the right—and the power—to exercise one’s political will is far more diffuse, the pickleball crisis has proven thornier.

Five miles downstream from Lake Oswego, on the east side of the Willamette, is Portland’s Sellwood Park. For decades, the park has had two tennis courts down low, beside the Springwater Corridor riverside bike and foot trail, and two more tennis courts up high, on level with SE 7th Avenue. Between June and August 2021, a renegade group of neighborhood pickleball players took it upon themselves to refurbish the two upper tennis courts and turn them into pickleball courts. Members of the group claim they had permission from Portland Parks & Recreation, though who at the department gave them permission is unclear at best.

The rogue pickleball group, heavy on retirees, was rich in both financial resources and spare time. They hired a consultant to advise the group on resurfacing outdoor sport courts; that advice informed their purchase of tools and materials. Then, over the course of several months, they resurfaced the courts themselves— locking the publicly owned courts at night to keep trespassers from interfering with their self-declared construction site.

Henrik Bothe is a Portland pickleball player and world-famous plate spinner who was involved in the takeover. “We had gotten permission, but had we gotten permission from the highest ups in Portland Parks and Rec? That was in a gray area,” he recalls. “It was more the local park that had given us permission, the local management at Sellwood Park.” he explained. The distinction between permission coming from the “highest ups” at Parks & Rec and the “local management” is an important one. And Bothe clearly understands the nuances of overlapping terminologies. Speaking to his professional background, he volunteered: “What I do is a mix of juggling, comedy, magic, and plate spinning. In Europe, people would call what I do ‘clowning.’ What I do is circus and skill based. Getting out of a straight jacket, unicycling, juggling golf clubs, things like that.”

Not long after Bothe and his comrades completed their guerilla operation, complaints about the increased acoustic emissions reached those higher-ups in the Portland Building. They had—perhaps not shockingly—been in the dark about the whole situation.

According to Parks & Rec’s Public Information Officer, Mark Ross, the city issued a Non-Park Use Permit, through the bureau’s Property Department, but there was a “misunderstanding about expectations and scope.”

Unfortunately for Parks & Rec, local TV stations found out about the situation at the same time. Innocent neighbors were just a chainlink fence away from the incessant sound of all-day pickleball. Television news covered the growing dispute with relish and enthusiasm.

The City acted quickly. In late June of 2023, they began restoring Sellwood Park’s upper courts to their original “Tennis Only” designation, and designating the lower, riverside courts as pickleball courts. The pickleball courts are farther from neighbors’ homes, but close enough that they can still hear the steady popping sound of soft plastic balls against players’ hard plastic paddles.

Some neighbors, speaking anonymously out of fear of retribution from the local pickleball club, told me that they only stopped protesting the pickleball noise because, as renters, they were afraid that further protest might affect their housing security.

Home-owning neighbors are fearful to speak out, as well. They worry about direct retribution from the local pickleball players. One neighbor shared anonymously: “No one should have to dread rather than anticipate the joy of a nice day. But when they play in your personal space, at a distance recognized as dangerous to health, it means not opening a window. Not using [your] yard. All because a handful of people are too selfish and inhumane to avoid playing where it ruins lives. I would not call our issue resolved, but I don’t want to revisit the trauma.”

III. The local and national precedents

The Scotts’ neighbor, Martin Leima, now retired, worked for Cisco Systems for 15 years, managing the development of acoustics and digital sound-processing algorithms. In the summer of 2022, Leima measured 80 decibels of sound in the Scotts’ backyard. The site’s concrete walls effectively amplify the sound of a pickleball being struck, which produces an exceptionally loud noise, even by pickleball standards.

Although he lives just across the street, Leima wasn’t bothered by the noise. As he explained, sound decay over distance follows an inverse square law. For every doubling of the distance from the noise source, the sound level falls by 6 dB. Distance is key! he followed up in an email. Distance (or the lack of) is why the Scotts Situation is untenable.

At the core of this noise dispute, like so many other such disputes, is the issue of control. When we choose the sound, it can be pleasurable; when forced upon us, it’s intolerable. Sometimes the act is unconscious: people don’t realize how loud their speakers are, or they assume that everyone loves their music as much as they do. In that sense, noise is an imposition that often reveals underlying power dynamics. Whether intentional or not, projecting sound into someone else’s space can be an act of aggression. We tend to tolerate the sounds of those we like, but disputes over noise can expose deeper social divides—something “the fastest growing sport in America” has been demonstrating throughout its rapid ascent.

In September 2023, Centennial, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, passed what may have been the country’s first law specifically regulating pickleball noise. Centennial’s new ordinance forbids any permanent outdoor pickleball courts with play that exceeds 47 decibels within 250 feet of a residential property line.

After the debacle at Sellwood Park, Parks & Rec adopted a new policy to help quell disputes between neighbors: public, outdoor pickleball would courts would not be built or converted through a redesignation process within 300 feet of any residence; and courts that fall between 300 and 600 feet of a residence would only be considered after conducting sound studies and thorough public outreach. But this is just a policy, not legally binding city code. Unfortunately for the Scotts, the policy doesn’t apply to pickleball played on private property. The Irvington Club is not beholden.

Lisa Scott hoped to find an ally in the City’s Noise Review Board, which has established a 55-decibel limit for general noise in residential areas such as Irvington. But the City has repeatedly cited Title 18.14.010—an exemption to one of their noise ordinances, which allows “Athletic Events” to disregard the 55-Decibel limit. It’s the same exemption claimed by the Portland International Raceway. The raceway opened in 1961, to the chagrin of the Portlanders who lived within earshot. In 1989, after decades of back-and-forth, North Portland neighborhood associations agreed to stop issuing noise complaints, and in exchange the raceway limited its loudest races to four events a year, put a portion of ticket sales into a trust fund for the neighborhood associations, and promised to honor city noise limits the rest of the year.

But unlike the 75 decibels that affected the entire Kenton neighborhood, and beyond, the Scotts are basically alone in their predicament with the Irvington Club. Their house absorbs most of the sound that’s produced anytime someone plays pickleball on the club’s outdoor courts. Neighbors on the other side of the Scotts deal with only half as much sound. Beyond them, the harsh ping of the plastic ball becomes hard to detect at all.

All this was unacceptable to the Scotts, who had slowly lost trust in the Noise Review Board. They were incredulous that the City was allowing all-day, every-day pickleball games played by recreation-seeking adults under the same exemption used by events such as high school baseball games and the Portland Marathon. They saw this as a clear bad faith interpretation of city code, which is supposed to protect everyone equally, regardless of how powerful they are.

IV. Pickleball Mindset

Under the sheltered, lighted basketball court at Irving Park in NE Portland, a pickleball club group shuttles in temporary nets and chalks lines directly onto the basketball court’s surface, immediately adjacent to the uncovered basketball courts that are still the epicenter of the city’s outdoor pickup basketball scene. Slowly but steadily, the pickleball players—generally white, bearing upper-middle class markers such as flat-brim, five-panel hats—are claiming the covered court for themselves. After the sun sets, young basketball players shoot hoops in near darkness on the uncovered courts while adult pickleball players occupy the well-lit “vacant” court right next to them.

On public tennis and basketball courts throughout Portland, pickleball players reinforce social hierarchies. They might think or tell themselves that they are using unused space. But in reality, they often claim space that was designed, vetted and earmarked for existing sports communities. What enables this? Pickleball’s warm cultural reception goes hand in hand with its appeal to a demographic that holds significant cultural, economic and political capital. Tennis may have a reputation as “snooty,” but the realities of both park tennis in Portland and pro tennis on the world stage show how dated that stereotype is, and how much the sport is diversifying, changing for the better. Meanwhile, pickleball’s mindset remains stubbornly entitled: it’s always ‘Why can’t I play here?’ instead of, ‘Why did I assume I could play anywhere I wanted in the first place?’

* * *

After years of disagreement, and threats of a lawsuit, tensions between the Scotts and the Irvington Club finally came to a head in late March 2024. A club member forwarded a reporter at Willamette Week a letter that was sent out by club management to its members. In the letter, the club announced they were temporarily suspending outdoor pickleball after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Lisa Scott’s attorney, Leta Gorman, who demanded that the club stop all outdoor pickleball play until a noise mitigation plan was agreed upon. And if they refused? Then the Scotts would “request punitive damages.”

Three months after Willamette Week ran their resulting story (“Irvington Club Pauses Pickleball After Receiving Cease-And-Desist Letter From Neighbor”), Irvington Club Board President Jonathan Steinhoff still held out hope that outdoor pickleball would return to the surface next to the Scotts’ home. “We remain unable to open the courts back up for outdoor pickleball,” he wrote to members. “This does not mean that pickleball reservations are necessarily off the table for the entire outdoor season. It does mean that no one can say right now when or if that might happen.”

Many members have voiced their displeasure in their club’s acquiescence to the Scotts. Jamie Fenner and Janet Walker circulated a petition that they delivered to the club’s board, hoping it would help persuade the club to restart outdoor pickleball courts—nevermind that the courts are fifteen feet, at most, from the Scotts’ house.

* * *

On March 13, 2025, six years after the Irvington Club first introduced outdoor pickleball—and nearly a full year after suspending outdoor play—Irvington Club Board President Chris Kayser announced to members in a letter that the dispute between the club and its neighbors, the Scotts, had been settled. The agreement, arrived at via mediation, establishes new guidelines for outdoor pickleball play while addressing concerns about noise and disruption. Under the settlement, play will be permitted five days a week, not seven, with restrictions on equipment—including a requirement to use special quiet paddles and quiet balls between 2:30 and 5 p.m.—and limits on the number of players during certain hours. The club will also implement penalties for exceeding reserved court time. In exchange, the Scotts have agreed to drop their legal claims, with the Irvington Club covering the costs of their legal fees, including mediation ruling out any punitive damages.

While no resolution is without compromise, the agreement provides a structured path forward for both pickleball and pickleball’s innocent standers-by, while sparing both the Scotts and the Irvington Club the fiscal and emotional tolls of litigation. Lisa Scott shared that, while the noise had once been a near-constant but still unpredictable disruption, she now at least has a way to plan around it. “Before, I never knew how to adjust my life around the noise,” she reflected. “At least now I know how I can structure my day.”

She also acknowledged the difficult choices involved in the dispute. “If I didn't want to compromise, if I wanted just absolutely no pickleball play,” she said, “then I would’ve had to go to court. And then that would’ve been a completely different type of situation. That would have damaged me financially and also damaged, I believe, my health.”

As for the protest banner she once hung from her balcony? She still has it, tucked away in storage. She admitted that hanging the banner wasn’t something she ever thought she would have to do when the conflict began. With a satisfied smile, she added, “I’ve never done anything like that before.”

","2025-05-15T18:13:03Z",[471],{"_106":132,"_108":259,"_109":110},{"_23":473,"_137":-5,"_138":474,"_140":475},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/IMG_3010_1.jpg?v=1747346932",2762,2744,{"_97":477},{"_15":478,"_100":479,"_38":480,"_124":481,"_126":482,"_128":483,"_103":484,"_134":487},"gid://shopify/Article/560470556747","beyond-pickleball","Beyond Pickleball","My wife and I started playing tennis during the pandemic, while living in San Marcos, Texas. For my birthday, she purchased off of Amazon a “tennis starter kit,” which included two generic 110 square-inch racquets, a racquet bag, and two cans of balls, all for twenty-five bucks.","

My wife and I started playing tennis during the pandemic, while living in San Marcos, Texas. For my birthday, she purchased off of Amazon a “tennis starter kit,” which included two generic 110 square-inch racquets, a racquet bag, and two cans of balls, all for twenty-five bucks. After the first hour of hitting, I was hooked. Being a gearhead, I immediately wanted to go all in on proper tennis shoes, hats, shorts, that headband that Fed wore, and of course a player’s racquet. But my wife, knowing that I have a tendency to get ahead of myself—I’d already devoted hundreds of dollars to camping equipment, first edition books, cookware, surfing gear—suggested that I stick with tennis for a year before shelling out dough for the nice stuff. I agreed, and for one year we played with those cheap racquets. We also played with those same six balls all year, so inexperienced that we didn’t know what “dead balls” meant or how good it feels to play with fresh ones.

We could have invested in pickleball equipment. Not necessarily in addition to tennis equipment, but instead of it. I was in grad school at the time and could only afford one new sport venture. With its gentle learning curve and easy-to-access community, pickleball seemed in some ways like a viable option. But that’s before considering all this:

At San Marcos’s Rio Vista Park, there are six Laurelhurst-quality tennis courts—but there are also fewer than six, because the city has painted permanent lines for pickleball courts onto two of them: eight pickleball courts in total, with two on each side of each of the two tennis courts. Picklers bring their own portable nets, which are two inches lower than tennis nets at the center point, to fully convert the tennis court to pickleball. The hybrid courts are courts of last resort for San Marcos’s tennis players: the markings delineating tennis’s no man’s land overlap with pickleball’s kitchen, causing quite a bit of visual confusion. And unlike Tennis City, USA, with its plethora of park courts, the courts at Rio Vista are the only public tennis courts in all of San Marcos. Every weekend, the hybrid courts are consistently occupied by no fewer than thirty-two pickleball players. If picklers don’t have a net or the pickle courts are in use, they spill over onto the tennis-only courts and play a modified version of their game with a too-high net. All weekend long, from sunrise to when the lights shut off at midnight, the park is filled with picklers. Those without anyone to play with often take up yet another court, with a backstop, to practice “dinking,” a very unpleasant sound and also sight, given how close they stand to the wall. I know this sounds like a rant, but it was annoying to me as a new tennis player. Between this and the fact that we’d have to buy a hundred dollar net to properly play the game, the decision to play tennis over pickleball was an easy one.

Still, even if it was a pragmatic decision at first, something about pickleball gave us pause from the get-go. Even then, it felt like the tailgating variety of court sports. It lacks elegance. In the end, I think we choose and continue to choose tennis for a deeper reason. Tennis players have a way (or have the capacity, I should say) of moving beautifully.

Three years before I ever touched a racquet, I became infatuated with tennis while observing an amateur player at the Ossington Park courts in Toronto, Canada. I watched him warm up, going half speed, half power. The guy was wearing jeans, running shoes, and a cotton T-shirt, and it was spring, the same kind of spring that hits Portland with tastes of sunshine, cool breezes in the trees, couples holding hands in the park. The player looked weightless on his feet as he grazed the ball with a gentle brush up, scooping his backhand from low to high and then over his shoulder. His volleys, which required him to move his feet and separate his arms for balance, resembled dance. I was enchanted.

To be good at tennis is to be beautiful. To be good at pickleball is to be good at pickleball. Unlike pickleball, it takes years to become a good and beautiful tennis player: thousands of hours on the court, playing people both below and above your level. It requires drills and practice. It takes time and concentration to learn footwork, the fundamentals of the kinetic chain, and how to strike the ball in front of your body. I have now spent countless days on the court, practicing my serve by myself. I’ve devoted dozens of hours to watching YouTube videos on forehands, overheads, two-handed backhands, volleys, half-volleys, split-stepping and strategy. I’m engaged in the learning process because I know that the better I get, the more beautiful I become on the court.

When I play tennis, I get to perform. I move my feet to position my body, use my legs to generate power up through the ball. But also, equally important, I get to see my opponent respond to my actions. I get to witness their beauty while they witness mine. I also get to witness their shortcomings: the moon balls, frame shots, and hits into the net, as they in turn bear witness to my many mishaps. This interactivity and relationality affords my hitting partner and me intimacy and connection. The only experience that comes close to resembling playing tennis, or I should say having a good day playing tennis, is having a deep conversation with someone. The feeling of being truly seen and accepted, while truly seeing and accepting another.

In tennis practice, hitting with our friends, we say sorry when we hit a ball into the net or out beyond the baseline. We say sorry because the unforced error has stopped this connection. But sometimes the connection keeps going despite the error: someone might lob a long ball back, or return a shot after it’s bounced twice to keep the rally going. All of us are after the same thing: beautiful, dynamic rallies. It’s the core reason we’re all playing. In my limited experience, this has never happened in pickleball because rallying in pickleball is kind of boring.

The evolution of tennis, over hundreds of years, has brought into perfect balance performance and communication, which is a very good recipe for beauty. The size and geometry of the court allow just enough time to witness your opponent perform the gorgeous motion of striking a tennis ball; to respond precisely to their play is to carefully listen.

I haven’t felt this when I’ve played pickleball. The dimensions of the game—the shrunken size of the court, the size of the paddle relative to the size of the ball—mask flaws, which makes it easy to confuse pickleball ability with athleticism and grace. There isn’t enough room on a pickleball court for a body to move beautifully. The paddle is too short to accentuate the arm and wrist. Everything feels rushed and cartoonish. If tennis is a conversation, then pickleball is maybe like bickering?

Tennis, even at the amateur level, offers a deeper level of engagement, a more diverse array of possible movements, and more opportunities for true greatness. The early days of tennis with my wife, launching balls three courts down, saying sorry, laughing, cursing each other’s good shots, and then rapidly progressing together as players, are some of my favorite tennis memories. It’s a wonderful place to be: improving, refining, learning from one another. I love seeing a newcomer to tennis hit a beautiful shot, like a cross-court groundstroke that lands just inside the corner, or a well-executed backhand volley. I know quite personally that a beautiful groundstroke or volley doesn’t come easily; it can only be achieved through repetition, performance and hard-earned experience. I could watch it over and over again.

","2025-05-15T18:11:25Z",[485],{"_106":132,"_108":486,"_109":110},"Adam McDonald",{"_23":488,"_137":-5,"_138":417,"_140":416},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/76611297595__843CF2D1-FA81-494B-B313-FA9D2217CEEC.jpg?v=1747342962",{"_97":490},{"_15":491,"_100":492,"_38":493,"_124":494,"_126":495,"_128":496,"_103":497,"_134":500},"gid://shopify/Article/560470523979","do-that-shit-somewhere-else-by-alex-haigh","Do That Shit Somewhere Else","You might think this is the wrong place to bring this up—I say, you gotta fish where the fish are. I bring my indictment of pickleball, a bastardized version of a real sport, to the people (fish?) who love it most, not to spark controversy, but to ask a favor: please do it somewhere else.","

You might think this is the wrong place to bring this up—I say, you gotta fish where the fish are. I bring my indictment of pickleball, a bastardized version of a real sport, to the people (fish?) who love it most, not to spark controversy, but to ask a favor: please do it somewhere else.

Anywhere else.

I know that this sounds like another old head complaining about the world changing to adapt to society’s needs, but please be assured that mommies and daddies were playing some version of pickleball long before today. It’s only more recently that the pastime has interfered with tennis players’ lives in such a way that it inspires them to speak out about it. Many before me have written impassioned letters about various injustices, and this is no different, really.

Let’s look at the facts: according to Portland Parks & Rec, there are 92 “Tennis Only” outdoor public tennis courts in the city of Portland, plus a dozen or so publicly accessible indoor courts (which cost $14/hr and up), and private racquet clubs whose monthly fees are upwards of $200. Anyone who has tried to book an indoor court at Portland Tennis Center knows that it can sometimes feel like you’re trying to score front-row tickets to Taylor Swift (for your daughter, of course…). Never mind trying to get private lessons with David R., he’s booked the fuck out. You want to join the Monday night 3.0-3.5 singles mixer? Good luck, chump. The weather, the lack of indoor courts, and the prohibitive price of private clubs makes tennis an already tough sport to play, no matter how badly you may want to. So on a dry spring day in Portland, you’ll find just about all the public outdoor courts full of tennis players. And rightfully so; they wait patiently through six or so months of rain to break out their racquets, hit the courts, and burn off all of that pent-up energy from winter.

You, my imagined interlocutor: Ok, but that’s how pickleball players feel, too. They can’t play in the rain, either.

Me: Who cares?

Pickleball skyrocketed in popularity starting during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Major League Pickleball showing up in Texas in 2021. You might call pickleball a symptom of long COVID. Even Andre Agassi, with his rat tail between his legs, has forsaken the great game that made him who he is (or, arguably, the game that he made into what it is) and crossed the metaphorical net to increase his net worth. Agassi became the inaugural chair of Life Time’s newly formed Pickleball and Tennis Board in February 2024. This is largely where my hatred for pickleball started … when Andre told Boardroom (Kevin Durant’s sports, media and entertainment brand) how much he loved the sport.

Here’s what he said: “[Pickleball] is a sport that, from a participation standpoint, I believe dramatically in the growth of the marketplace. There’s a low point of entry from a skill perspective, and there’s a quick and constant level of improvement. And then, there’s an equitable management of skill levels that can actually be enjoyed as a community. And people put their phones away for two hours. So I’m fully bought into the growth of the sport from a participation standpoint.”

What happened to tennis being a lifetime sport, not a Life Time sport, Andre?

Maybe the hate got worse when I saw a trailer for the Netflix movie The Electric State that depicted Agassi in an alternate universe showing highlights from his illustrious pickleball career. Am I overreacting?

Even though pickleball was invented in 1965, I’d never seen anyone play it outside of a gym class until a few years ago. Tennis, on the other hand, has been popular among amateurs for hundreds of years. Just in the blip of my own personal existence, I’ve been playing and watching tennis for over a quarter century.

Pickleball hasn’t yet paid its dues, either in time or cultural contribution. Even though, yes, it’s been growing at a rate of 311% over the past three years, it doesn’t have the actual numbers to carry out an occupation. It lacks the community of established fans and players needed to justify sharing the already highly coveted outdoor tennis courts. No one is rushing home from work to tune into a pickleball match on Flivee or Bloopl or whatever streaming service it’s broadcasted on. This is to say, it has no hoes.

If it did have hoes, then someone would build dedicated pickleball courts for those people to play on … right? I’m sure in time, if this growth continues, pickleball will have its own Wimbledon (I would call it Dinkledon, or the Jar Open) and legendary players, matches, and all of that good stuff that contributes to a sporting tradition rich in history and lore. But right now? Y’all need to do that shit somewhere else.

","2025-05-15T18:07:53Z",[498],{"_106":132,"_108":499,"_109":110},"Alex Haigh",{"_23":501,"_137":-5,"_138":502,"_140":503},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/Ants_with_ball_og.png?v=1747343067",2510,2039,{"_97":505},{"_15":506,"_100":507,"_38":508,"_124":509,"_126":510,"_128":511,"_103":512,"_134":515},"gid://shopify/Article/560470491211","dink-in-the-clink","Dink in the Clink","It’s a mid-summer day when Ed Osterman steps into Oregon State Correctional Institution (OSCI). He puts his gear through a metal detector—pickleball paddles and balls included—and signs a waiver that says, essentially, “if you get held hostage, we won’t come in and get you.”","

It’s a mid-summer day when Ed Osterman steps into Oregon State Correctional Institution (OSCI). He puts his gear through a metal detector—pickleball paddles and balls included—and signs a waiver that says, essentially, “if you get held hostage, we won’t come in and get you.”

Osterman is greeted by a crowd that seems to personify the inclusive spirit of pickleball—old and young, lean and broad, long-haired and bald. The scene could be any local pickleball court but here it plays out in a dated gym where every player wears the same uniform. As a volunteer with the Pickleball for Incarcerated Communities League (PICL), Osterman is at OSCI to run a round robin clinic for ten inmates who’ve earned the privilege to participate.

The sport, often associated with suburban neighborhoods and retirees, has found an unlikely home behind bars.

Pickleball’s rise in prisons mirrors its national boom. Though it’s been played in a handful of correctional facilities for years, including Portland’s Columbia River Correctional Institution (CRCI) and Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, the sport has recently exploded in popularity thanks to grassroots efforts like PICL. What began as a novelty has become structured and widespread, now existing in over 40 facilities across a dozen states, including our very own Tennis City, Portland, Oregon.

“These guys, most of them are going to get out someday and they’re going to be your neighbor,” explained Osterman. “They’re going to have a better chance of integrating into society again if they have something social they can do and an outlet—that’s pickleball.”

One inmate shared with Osterman that he purposely avoided participating in most sports in prison, especially those like basketball, where direct contact could lead to conflicts and flare-ups of anger. “Pickleball is a little different,” said Osterman. “You’re not coming into physical contact with anyone. It’s a competitive and sometimes aggressive game, but you’re not banging up against someone like you would in basketball.”

Roger BelAir, co-founder of PICL, recalled a conversation with the warden at San Quentin, the oldest prison in California. The warden had shared with him that one of the top five highlights of his career was the day BelAir introduced pickleball to the prison.

“Basketball is dominated by the young, the tall, the athletic, and everyone else is left on the sidelines,” BelAir said. “The warden told me, he says, ‘I predict the number one sport to be played on the inside of prisons is going to be pickleball.’”

CRCI in Portland has offered pickleball for years—long before its recent rise in popularity. “I've been working here for almost 26 years, and it's always been here,” said James Hanley, CRCI’s Correctional Rehabilitation Coordinator.

“I remember the first time I saw pickleball was so long ago, and now it’s super popular,” added Hanley. “And I'm like, yeah, that came from prisons, I think.”

At CRCI, pickleball is a popular activity that provides opportunity for adults in custody to engage in healthy recreation. “If we have yard right now,” predicted Hanely, “I can guarantee you that there’s a pickleball game going on.”

In the eyes of many, pickleball and prison are a natural pair. The sport doesn’t take up much room. It’s simple to learn. It’s not at all violent. It’s fun. It’s all about community.

But for some, the incarcerated pickleball experience leaves much to be desired. An anonymous source who served a year at CRCI about a decade ago described the setup as “pretty crowded,” with only an hour of yard time per day and just one pickleball court available.

“Winner stays on” was the only format that was used, which means that stronger players dominated court time while others watched from the sidelines. Though he had a background in tennis and turned out to be one of the better pickleball players, he admitted he didn’t enjoy the activity much. The wind made the game frustrating, often carrying the ball off course, and he preferred the facility’s other racquet sport offering, ping pong. Since his release, he hasn’t touched a paddle—and doesn’t plan to.

Joint pain is also a consideration. Osterman recalled talking to an inmate about pickleball and ailments. “A lot of people have knee and hip problems from playing,” he said. But such problems, like everything else, are quite relative. One inmate joked to Offerman that he had problems with his knees, sure, but he’d also been shot at and stabbed. That made Osterman realize “where I was and who I was dealing with. These guys have had much different lives than I’ve had,” he said.

While some might imagine that a tennis court would be a welcome addition to a prison yard, others are quick to point out potential challenges.

Pickleball’s simplicity makes it accessible, and with room on one tennis court for four pickleball courts, it’s much more space efficient.

“Pickleball is pretty easy to set up, and it’s a low cost sport, and it’s easy to learn,” Osterman said. “So when you compare pickleball to tennis, it’s much more adaptable to a prison setting. I’d be surprised if there are any prisons that have tennis courts.” (As of right now, no Portland prisons have tennis courts.)

However, Osterman believes the skills from tennis can translate to pickleball. He recalls one inmate who had played a lot of tennis prior to becoming incarcerated. “That skill set carries over, and I could see it in his game too,” Osterman recalled. He said to the inmate, “I can see your tennis and how you’re playing, but maybe you want to do this for pickleball. It’s a little different than tennis.”

If nothing else, pickleball offers one indisputable benefit—the pleasure of a racquet sport. Most facilities don’t have a lot of options beyond weightlifting, jogging and basketball.

According to BelAir, the co-founder of the pickleball in prisons initiative, not all sports require the same level of concentration that racquet sports do. “When you’re playing tennis, you don't think about anything else other than just hitting the ball over the net,” he said. “So it’s an incredible mental release for the guys on the inside.”

That sense of mental relief is part of what continues to motivate Osterman. Later this summer, he plans to reach out to OSCI again about hosting another pickleball clinic for the inmates. “But I'd also like to try again at Coffee Creek,” he added, highlighting ongoing efforts to expand pickleball’s reach.

When asked if there were any tournaments or competitions between different prisons, such as between Coffee Creek and CRCI, CRCI’s rehab coordinator, Hanley, responded, “No, and I would love to see something like that happen.”

So there’s no inter-prison competition—yet. But perhaps it’s only a matter of time. Pickleball’s reach knows no bounds: not space, not time, not the many Portland tennis courts that are being taken over, not even the walls of a prison.

While pickleball offers a recreational outlet behind prison walls, the sport has also landed at least one individual behind bars.

Josuha Wallace, co-founder of Oregon Pickleball Club (OPC), is heading to prison after embezzling tens of thousands of dollars meant for the club. Wallace raised $50,000 from investors to launch OPC but then went on to use the funds for personal expenses, including gambling and credit card bills. Despite existing for just a year, OPC racked up over $120,000 in unpaid debts before dissolving in 2023. Wallace will serve 26 months at FCI Sheridan, a medium-security federal prison on the way to Lincoln City (which features pickleball courts). His lawyer declined to comment, stating, “We’re not interested in doing any media requests.”

","2025-05-15T18:05:48Z",[513],{"_106":132,"_108":514,"_109":110},"Mariah Botkin",{"_23":516,"_137":-5,"_138":517,"_140":517},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0574/3751/9947/articles/lauren_day_pickleball_illo_23ae9864-6e5c-4226-bcea-0cafc79697f5.jpg?v=1747342948",1143,{"_97":519},{"_15":520,"_100":521,"_38":522,"_124":254,"_126":523,"_128":524,"_103":525,"_134":528},"gid://shopify/Article/560464789579","au-revoir-clement","Au Revoir, Clément","

I started playing tennis again a couple of summers ago, after a twenty-year hiatus. I found myself right back where I was before, absolutely loving every second of it: the strategy, the effort, and the people, too.

As I started to connect to tennis communities based out of Portland’s parks, my friend Harrison said I should play with this French guy named Clément. I kept asking for his contact information, but Harrison kept not sharing it. We are both busy and easily distracted people.

As my forehand and footwork progressed from mediocre to passable, I stumbled upon an issue of Portland Tennis Courterly in one of those plastic distribution boxes outside a public tennis court. I read every word, and there he was: Clément Daube had written a short essay about Roland Garros and how he fell back in love with competitive tennis via park tennis in Portland. Not only did I deeply relate, but now I could finally track this dude down! That’s exactly what I did, because that’s how obsessed I am with finding fun people to play tennis with, bonus points if you are French, and there is nothing creepy about that. I too am French, and after over a decade in the States, I’m seeking my people. I never have to explain myself to them; it’s nice.

Anyone who’s played with Clément can’t help but love him. He will do that: play, have a good time, and bring the fun kind of drama. You can’t blame him; is tennis even tennis without the drama? There will be French swearing, unsolicited but helpful technical advice, a lot of trash-talking about Americans, French people, BBQs that starts at 3 p.m., the price of cheese, pickleball, and everything in between, including ourselves, laughing out loud about the holes in our tennis shoes because we are cheap French people raised on Decathlon sneakers who fake-throw our racquets whenever we miss a shot. Entertaining and funny kind of drama.

Clément has an undeniable passion for tennis and life; it’s hard not to be drawn into his world. He is also very enthusiastic about being a Parisian. That’s how he introduced himself the first time we met. I quickly volleyed back that it wasn’t something to be proud of. He laughed, and I knew we’d become good friends. According to anyone who is not from Paris, Parisians are losers. Conversely, anyone who is Parisian—which means being born intra muros (in one of the districts within the city limits), and preferably having roots that extend back multiple generations—believes Parisians do it best. The “it” they supposedly do better means absolutely nothing. It’s a national debate, especially in sports.

* * *

One unexpectedly magical spring day, Clément and I met up to rally at a park in NE. I was trying to take it easy following an injury, which is really hard to do with Clément, even though he always goes easy on me so I can improve my game. We kept taking lengthy water breaks, chatting and enjoying the sun. Eventually, I decided to be wise and throw in the towel for the day.

As we packed up, he pulled out a film camera from his bag. He looked somber as he took photos of people playing in the heat of the afternoon. I realized it was his last time playing as a Portlander. He was moving back to Paris with his family in a few days. During the flourishing of our friendship, Clément had become a father, and his wife’s work visa was about to expire. Life stuff; it was time to throw in the towel on the American Dream, with no hard feelings. It all made sense: if you are going to have a family, play tennis, and be a scientist, all at once, you’re probably better off doing it in France. Yet, I’m writing these words to make clear that the Portland Tennis Courterly community reserves the right to be irrationally devastated by his departure.

Next time you are in Paris, remember to reach out to Clément, if you can find him. Tell him you are from Portland and go play tennis with him. You might be one of those lucky individuals who will have a once-in-a-lifetime experience hitting with a real Parisian tennis player who knows how to put a smile on people’s faces—which is not very Parisian of him at all!

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In Memory of Marion Blackburn: this Juneteenth, Portland Tennis Courterly looks back on the life and legacy of Portland tennis pioneer Marion Blackburn, who passed away in April. Through his entrepreneurship, his teaching, and his character, Blackburn touched the lives of countless Portlanders. He’ll be remembered fondly and missed dearly.

Marion Ossie Blackburn was born July 31, 1939, in Huntsville, Alabama. The eldest son of Rev. Robert Lewis Blackburn and Eddie Rose Blackburn (née Davis), he attended Huntsville’s William Hooper Councill High School, where he played Varsity baseball, basketball, and football, and was also a member of the French Society and Commercial Club. Blackburn went on to attend Alabama A&M College, an HBCU in Huntsville. As a college student, Blackburn played on an upstart tennis team, and he also started a semi-professional basketball team, The Swishers.

After college, Blackburn lived in New Jersey for a period and worked for the National Biscuit Company. In the early 1960s, he moved to Portland. Following his service with the U.S. Army, Blackburn returned to Portland and resided here for the rest of his life. Although he had some exposure to tennis as a child and college student, it was in the army that Blackburn learned to play tennis at a high level. Back in Portland, Blackburn played regularly at Irving Park, where he was known to sweep off the courts with tree branches. Despite having become a formidable player who lived nearby, he was initially denied membership to the Irvington Club. But following the protests of Jack Neer, who was a pro at Irvington at the time, Blackburn and his family were admitted to the club. They were the Irvington Club’s first Black members.

Blackburn’s first act of entrepreneurship in Portland was to open a wood manufacturing business called Wood Arts. He also started another semi-professional basketball team by the same name. The team competed in both a semi-pro league in Portland and scrimmaged against college JV teams.

Blackburn’s first tennis business was in a small warehouse near John’s Landing. Under the name “Tennis Lessons Inc,” which Blackburn was to use as the parent company for all of his subsequent tennis ventures, he began offering lessons on two narrow courts. In order to retain clients and to continue being in business for himself, Blackburn soon started a full-fledged tennis club. He built the six-court facility—located at 5803 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway and initially called Tennis Town—from scratch. It opened in 1977. Before long, he purchased an adjacent lot and began adding amenities. He converted one of the indoor tennis courts to four racquetball courts, which later became a full-length basketball court. He also built state-of-the-art locker rooms, an outdoor pool that was covered in the winter, as well as outdoor courts on a synthetic, grass-like surface called Omni. Blackburn renamed his business Raleigh Hills Racquet and Health Club, later shortened it to Raleigh Hills Racquet Club, and finally changed it to Portland Athletic Club (PAC). According to Blackburn, he was the only single-person owner-operator of a Black-owned tennis club in the United States who also owned the land beneath the business.

At his club, Blackburn kept the emphasis on teaching. For years, he ran a popular Sunday morning clinic with the help of his dear friend and fellow teaching pro Jack Neer, who had moved on from Irvington and come to teach at PAC. Blackburn went on teaching until just before his retirement, but he also passed the torch. Midway through his teaching career, he appointed his son, Anthony Blackburn, as PAC’s head pro. Other pros who taught at PAC include Jim Martin, Mike Nelson, Juan Padilla and Wayne Pierre.

In 1988, Blackburn self-published The Best Tennis Lesson You Ever Had, which is dedicated to his mother. Along with a stroke-by-stroke breakdown of the game, Blackburn offers a number of thoughts on his teaching philosophy, including: “error-free play is rare,” “a good player can play well against different types of players, under many conditions,” and, “group learning reinforces the instructions because students can help each other recognize mistakes, and realize the improvements.”

From 1961 to 1977, Blackburn was married to Kay Francis Kellam. They had three children together: Anthony Wayne Blackburn, Nikki Renae Blackburn-Orr and Ramon Blackburn. All three learned to play tennis at a high level.

Anthony Blackburn played for the University of Oregon Ducks Men’s Tennis team. Following in his father’s footsteps, he went on to become a teaching pro. In total, Anthony Blackburn worked at PAC for 35 years. He began as an employee of the club, then worked out of the club as a teaching pro with his own business, called Blackburn Tennis Productions. He eventually became both the head teaching pro at PAC and the club’s Tennis Director. Anthony Blackburn also created the Nike Tennis Lesson Program at Nike World Headquarters, using the courts at the Bo Jackson Fitness Center for instruction.

Nikki Blackburn-Orr is an entrepreneur and competitive USTA player in the Pacific Northwest section, with a ranking of 4.0.

Ramon Blackburn played tennis at Grant High School, then went on to become a fashion designer and entrepreneur. He is the owner-operator of Hush, a lifestyle boutique clothing store with locations in Englewood, New Jersey, and West New York, New Jersey.

Several of Marion Blackburn’s close family friends were also staff members at PAC. They include Dorothy Miller, who was first a client, and then went on to work as the club’s Office Manager; and also Thomas Davis, who worked at the club in a variety of capacities and also assisted Blackburn at home in his later years.

Blackburn’s friends who he played tennis with, often on Court 5 at PAC, were important parts of his life and community as well. They include Henry Bryant, Eric Cooley, Maureen Doherty, Bill Frantz, Mike Kohlhoff, Patricia McKinnon, Susie Moran, Mike Turner, Ruth Turner and Lenny Wofford. Blackburn was a competitive tournament player for many years and holds multiple titles in the men’s 35+ category. For the most part, he played right-handed. Following an injury, Blackburn taught himself to play left-handed, and went on to place competitively in several tournaments playing left handed at the 3.0 level.

In 2022, Blackburn was diagnosed with dementia and Parkinson’s disease. For the next three years, he received in-home care from family friend and caregiver Brenda Davis. He passed away at home on April 4th, 2025, surrounded by family members.

Blackburn is remembered for forging his own path in life and in business, for creating opportunities for his family and friends, and for helping thousands of Portlanders become better tennis players. In his own way, he redefined what it meant to be a Black teaching pro and Black entrepreneur. He inspired others to embrace his passion and love for tennis without race being the primary focus, and he used his near-constant presence at his workplace to advocate for the dignity of people of all backgrounds. According to his sister, Glenda Blackburn-Hall, Blackburn “had a quiet demeanor at times and never sought attention or publicity. This was his ‘no, no.’ Center stage was not his admiration.”

On the tennis court, whether he was teaching or playing, Blackburn’s character, sportsmanship, graciousness and respect for others were always on full display. Those who knew Blackburn well witnessed how his work ethic positively impacted his children and their family members and friends. Thanks to his expert instruction, tennis players throughout Portland improved their skills and technique, gained confidence, developed discipline, and experienced a genuine sense of community. Blackburn shaped many of his students in ways that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives—he encouraged them to keep learning and trying, and he made sure that his club was a place where all members, guests, students and staff felt welcome and supported. When not on his teaching court, Blackburn often sat in the lobby, where he enjoyed shooting the breeze and learning more about his students. He was endlessly curious, and quick with a smile and a joke. He taught tennis with love, kindness, and dedication, and he was fascinated by the back-and-forth of teaching and learning. Tennis and business were his primary but not his only vessels for example-setting and education. Blackburn had a love for multiple sports, as was apparent in both his life story and the eclectic atmosphere of his athletic club.

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Irvington Club vs. Lisa and Kevin Scott\n

\nI. If a tree falls in the forest and only two people hear it, does it really make a sound?\n

II. Pickleball's ascension

III. The local and national precedents

IV. Pickleball Mindset

Irvington Club vs. Lisa and Kevin Scott
\n

Story Archive

The Wet Issue (Fall 2025)