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The Alwiyah Club founded by Gertrude Bell in Central Baghdad,
The Arlington Players Club, 30 minutes outside of New York in New Jersey.
The Germantown Cricket Club, just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The former Midtown Tennis Courts roof courts in New York City.
The West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens, just outside of New York City.
Located in the heart of Kreuzberg, Berlin’s equivalent to Brooklyn, the walls of the Tennisclub, or T.C., Frederichshain, take a cue from the nearby East Gallery — remains of the Berlin Wall. T.C. Frederichshain showcases several prominent graffiti painters from the neighborhood.
Even New York, which has the storied New York Athletic Club and West Side Club (otherwise known as Forest Hills), where Billie Jean and Johnny Mac — and all those others famous-nicknamed players flattened balls — can’t compare.
While Berlin itself hasn’t produced a champion, the likes of Boris Becker or Steffi Graf in nearly twenty-five years, the city does know how to court the fifteen percent of Berliners who play the local circuit. The legacies will tell you that TC 1899 e.V. Blau-Weiß (the Blue-White Club) or the Lawn Turnier Tennis Club Rot-Weiß Berlin (Red-White Club) have the best clubhouses (and biergartens), coaches and clay in Germany. But the transplants who live in or frequent the former communist side of the city — neighbourhoods such as Kreuzberg and Schöneberg, past Checkpoint Charlie and the East Side Gallery (aka the remains of the Berlin Wall) — prefer the no-fuss, hole-in-the-alley neighbourhood joints with backyard clay courts, semi-private changing rooms and graffiti murals. There, middle-class players often turn up riding their Donkey Republic app bikes, toting a one-racquet Adidas backpack and wearing their favourite football jersey to play a pick-up set or two. Membership dues often include a grounds-keeping assignment.
Since the Wall went down, Berlin has become the second largest city in the European Union, expected to hit four million people by 2025 — 54 percent of them under 45 years of age. Developers have swooped in on any available space, including clay courts, to build more apartment buildings and townhouses for the burgeoning bourgeoisie. One such club, the TC Berlin Mitte Albert Gutzmann e.V., has been fighting for its life since a local school laid claim to its valuable real estate. To survive, the storied TC Berlin Mitte will have to pull a serious break-point: relocate its three outdoor tennis courts ninety degrees to the East. “Mitte is the district with the largest sports area deficit,” says board member Fred Bruss, adding that the association has 190 members from 27 nations, as well as students from Humboldt University, playing on its courts. “Already in 2016, the club collected thousands of signatures against being forced to close.”
The Tennisclub Berlin Mitte Albert Gutzmann, e.V., known to regulars as the “Mitte”, came into existence in the middle of the fall of the Berlin Wall and is now fighting the occupying forces of gentrification. The Mitte must turn its three outdoor courts 90 degrees or otherwise figure out how to make room for another school in growing East Germany.
During the Open Era, the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) had one star player, Thomas Emmrich, who, according to Martina Navratilova in a 1989 article for the New York Times, “beat all the junior players in Czechoslovakia. He beat people who beat Bjorn Borg at that age. But he never had a chance to play on the outside. They were not allowed, period.” Emmrich took his case to play abroad straight to the Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi and was, unsurprisingly, denied. He said once that he thought about defecting, but worried about reprisals against his parents, who were party members. Emmrich, therefore, bided his time for the Seoul Olympics by racking up national championships at clubs such as Tennis Association SV Berliner Brauereien, currently located next door to a temporary refugee camp in Prenzlauer Berg, as well as Berlin’s only grass courts at the SG Am Hain in Volkspark Friedrichshain. The intrepid tennis pro also smuggled in racquets, tennis shoes and other Western goods from Davis Cup events to pay for his career.
Navratilova predicted a “wave of East German players” when the wall turned to a pile of rubble, and her then-boyfriend, Emmrich did eventually gain a ranking of 482 — the only DDR ranking on record — but that East German surge never undulated through the tennis world. After German reunification, Emmrich’s daughter, Manuela, and son, Martin, took up the torch, as Manuela lead the Armstrong Atlantic State college team to the 2005 U.S. Division II National Championship and Martin achieved a top thirty-five doubles ranking, respectively.
In the mid-1980s, in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), however, a seven-year old teen standout named Boris Becker began training at the TC 1899 Blau-Weiß. Fourteen years Emmrich’s junior, Becker turned pro in 1984 and in 1989, became the face of reunification. Well, he and Steffi Graf. But Graf had a better time cheering on would-be Wall smashers at LTTC Rot-Weiß, just down the street. “I would love to have done it, just to be a part of the moment,” Graf told the New York Times in 1989. On the other hand, Becker took the responsibility as heavily as the big chunks of souvenir Wall. “When you are thrown onto the stage at 17 in such an enormous way, it becomes living on the edge because every step you take, every word you speak, every action you do becomes headline news. And it became, for me, life or death,” Becker said the same year.
Pointedly, Becker didn’t become as monumental to the anti-communist movement as he possibly thought. However, his trophies still stand in the foyer of TC 1899 Blau-Weiß. Graf, on the other hand, has the “Steffi-Graf Stadion” to visit whenever she leaves Las Vegas for home.
To mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the following is a selection of portraits from the city’s oldest — and most delineative, emblematic — clubs from around the barrier that no longer stands.
Another photo of T.C. Fredrichshain. The six clay courts and small changing rooms require less upkeep than the courts outside of main Berlin, but Fredrichshain takes care of the maintenance by requiring every member over age 16 to work five hours each season.
When the “Mitte” opened its doors in 1989, it commissioned several of the neighborhood street artists to paint its wind tents on the inside and outside of the courts, accommodating the tastes of 200 members from 23 different nations who “have peacefully found each other in tennis, an ideal pastime. We are the club that lies in the melting pot of cultures…”
Although one of the oldest tennis clubs in Berlin on the Prenzlauer Berg, the Tennis Club SV Berliner Brauereien e.V. has a new neighbor: a sub-division of refugee tenements housing migrants from Syria and North Africa that arrived during the 2015 surge.
Detail from the graffiti wall outside the Tennis Club SV Berliner Brauereien e.V. The club runs 24/7 in the park and is a favorite for jet-lagged visitors who pay a nominal fee to play — until a member comes along and kicks them off.
The rules posted on the courts of Tennisclub Berlin Mitte Albert Gutzmann, e.V. The city alleges that the club has been breaking ordinances of its own. For years, Berlin administrators say, the “Mitte” has been using four tennis courts on land owned by a school next door.
Built in 1996, the 7,000-seat Steffi Graf Stadion (Stadium) was added to the LTTC (Lawn Tennis Tournament Club) Rot-Weiß in Berlin’s Grunewald District to provide a larger venue for tournaments, such as the WTA’s German Open. Steffi Graf has been a member of the club since 1984.
A proprietor looks out on the bier garten of the Tennis Club SV Berliner Brauereien e.V. It’s a grand tradition across the city, from the exclusive clubs in Grunewald to those of the former DDR, that competitive play earns a Schöfferhofer cool down. Whether the patio furniture is plastic or wrought iron usually depends on the class of the members.
The LTTC Rot-Weiß, named for the red and white ribbons members once wore in their straw hats, sits amid Grunewald’s green leafy oasis, where the 16 immaculate outdoor and two indoor clay courts rub fences with the consulates and homes of many diplomats sent to Germany. Rot-Weiß was founded in 1897 and is just down the street from TC 1899 eV Blau-Weiß, its strictest competitor.
In 1923, French Davis Cup player Rene Lacoste was admiring a crocodile leather suitcase when his coach, Allan Muhr, told him that if he won his next match, he would buy Lacoste the case. Lacoste lost, but the nickname “crocodile” stuck. Lacoste asked his friend, Robert George, to create a crocodile patch so he could sew them onto the white jackets Lacoste wore on various courts around the world. Soon, Lacoste affixed an alligator to a smaller, lose-fitting cotton shirt and voila, tennis changed the fashion world.
Since that time, however, many a designer (and tennis player) has endeavoured to make their mark on the clothing industry, if not in the annals of tennis history. Ted Tinling, a lapsed player who designed dresses for almost all of the great female players throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, is probably at the top of the list, but you can’t count out Tory Burch, who played as a kid, or Venus Williams’ EleVen brand. Even Ralph Lauren and Hugo Boss have stepped into the tennis trade.
Custom tennis wear for men, including Rene Lacoste’s blazer at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum.
2021 was the year of the vintage reboot (Fila, Sergio Tacchini, Ellesse and Diadora) while 2022 saw a number of fashion start-ups (Jelena Ostapenko in Latvian brand DK One and Camila Giorgi in GioMila), but 2023 so far has been a mix of shifting loyalties, running-shoe-turned-tennis brands and the designer-player pairings (think Virgil Abloh for Nike).
IGA dons On Running:
In probably the biggest switch since Federer left Nike, Iga Świątek traded one running company for another — Japanese-based ASICS for Swiss-and-Roger-Federer-backed On Running —announcing in mid-March that she would become the On Running girl. Not only the clothes, but also the shoes. Although the current WTA No. 1, will keep the Asics firmly on her feet until the On shoes are finalised. But where does On come from, exactly? Founded in the late 2010s in Zurich, On Running has made it their mission “to make high-performance products with the lowest possible footprint.” It’s other claim to fame: innovative CloudTec design that promises athletes the feeling of “running on clouds.” Created by a three-time world duathlon champion who built his first shoe with hose pipe under another shoe’s sole for propulsion, On Running has also promised Iga quick-drying polyester and “recycled polyamide” based shorts and shirts, as well as “supplier transparent” performance shirts and warm-up suits. What does she have to say about her new kit? Well, mostly that the ultimate tennis fashionista convinced her. “I think also (Roger) influenced a lot on their side, so that’s why they want to go further and they want to sign players… I feel like we share the same values,” Iga said in a press conference around the Miami Open. “I feel like they’re treating me first like a person and not mainly as a machine to win.” And it seems the company is willing to share logo space with Iga’s other sponsor, Poland’s biggest insurance company, PZU.
Sofia Kenin sports FreePeople:
In maybe one of the stranger pairings of late, Sofia Kennin, who came and went in seemingly a blink, announced a two-year sponsorship deal to bring FP Movement — Free People’s activewear line — into the tennis world. For those unfamiliar with Free People, it’s possibly a brand more associated with Bohemian types than sports people. But Sofia wants to build a bridge. “I love that new and innovative brands like FP Movement are entering our sport and feel honored that they have selected me to represent their brand,” she said. So far, the Kenin line includes flowing, feminine tennis dresses, jackets with sleeves adorned with the word “Movement” and midrift freeing crop tops and skirts. And if the tennis career doesn’t work out, Kenin claims: “I’d love to do something in fashion — not a fashion designer because I can’t really draw — but maybe a stylist…” Right now, that career seems closer, with Kenin absent from the top-100 for two years now.
DKOne for Jelena Ostapenko:
In 2022, Jelena Ostapenko ditched plain ol’ Adidas for frills and colourful patterns in a throwback that some may call more disco than dynamic. Prior to the pandemic and thinking about her future post-tennis, Ostapenko partnered with Daniela K., another Latvian tennis player, and came up with DKOne, the embodiment of “comfort, originality and quality.” However, she quickly found out that there was no such thing as fast fashion: “It all looks very easy, but when you start going through all the steps — Oh, my God!” Ostapenko told the WTA news site. “First you have to do the patterns and the shapes. Then there is the fabric. Then you can do the design. The colours come last.” The Latvian known for her expressive faces and her cut-to-the-chase demeanour appeared at the 2022 Australian Open donning a baby blue top and fluorescent yellow shorts. And don’t expect any tonal colours in the future, either. “Bright colours are my favourite,” Ostapenko said. “The neon pink, the neon yellow, the neon green. The blue, too.”
Lululemon Signs Leylah Fernandez:
Ubiquitous in yoga studios all over New York for years now — by men and women, alike — Lululemon has made its way onto tennis courts by those who don’t want to be seen as “hardcore tennis players.” But now the brand has firmly embraced their presence on the big stages through Canadian Leylah Fernandez. “I have always wanted to be original, different from the tennis players and be my own unique person,” Fernandez has said. “When I heard Lululemon wanted to get on the big stage in tennis, I thought it was a great opportunity for me.” Lululemon put Fernandez in the brand’s core products for the season’s debut, but under Fernandez, its first global tennis ambassador, Lululemon will launch its first tennis-specific capsule collection for both women and men any day now. Like Kenin, Fernandez too wants to have more of her “outgoing personality” in her clothing designs. “”I want to have everything perfect so when I am on the court, I don’t think about anything,” Fernandez says. “I am always wearing stuff I am comfortable with that makes me feel invincible, so when I’m playing tennis, I just need to focus on tennis.” And although still in Asics footwear, she too, will put on the company’s exclusive shoe line come summer. “I know for a fact I will continue wearing Lululemon 24-7, which is what I am doing right now,” she says.
Giomila by Camilia Giorgi’s mother:
The top female player in Italy and a consistent presence in the women’s Top 30s, Camilia Giorgi might be described as a bit of a wallflower if not for her often unique, frequently revealing, tennis outfits designed by her mother, Claudia. Known to be one of the hardest hitters on tour, lately, neither Giorgi nor her dresses can catch a break. At the French Open, an official debated with her over the size of the DeLonghi logo on her dress, while others at the U.S. Open and other majors have complained about her plunging necklines and high hemlines. Giorgi dismissed her critics. “When I’m in the court, in the tournament, (I’m) very focused. I do my physical, everything. When I go home, there is other things in life, too,” Giorgi explained. In her spare time, Giorgi models lingerie.
Castore x Andy Murray:
Before Andy Murray retired, lost Under Armour as his sponsor, and gained a metal hip, very few Brits — or anyone else — had ever heard of J.Carter Sporting Club Limited (aka Castore) a Manchester-based sports performance clothing company. Within two years of Murray’s investment in the company and the launch of the AMC line, those double wings are everywhere — from the walls of the LTA’s South London headquarters to the football uniforms of the Wolverhampton Wanderers, Aston Villa and McLaren Racing. Billed as “Better Never Stops” (the same could be said of Murray), Castore’s founders Thomas and Philip Beahon worked as financial analysts in London while they sought investors for their brand, initially aimed for golfers and cricketers. And although he is no longer British No. 1, Sir Andy’s endorsement seems to have carried the brand to 50 countries and 12 sports, including the Team Bahrain Victorious cycling squad. Up next: pushing out Ralph Lauren as the official sponsor of Wimbledon.
Four of the Original 9 goofing around with player-turned-fashion-designer Ted Tingling. Tingling, who gained recognition for designing King’s dresses would offer his services designing clothes for the tour.
At first glance, they seemed like an unlikely pair: a working-class Californian girl next door still in her tennis prime, and the more analytical, more intellectual New York Jewish Stanford grad. But both Billie Jean King and Gladys Heldman, publisher of World Tennis magazine, agreed on one thing: in the sport’s Open era — launched just two years prior — men and women needed to earn equal money. And both had a common frenemy: Jack Kramer, first director of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and outspoken believer that men deserved more.
Six of The Original 9 show off their International Tennis Hall of Fame rings during a ceremony at the 2022 US Open. From left to right, Julie Heldman, Peaches Bartkowicz, Rosie Casals, Kerry Melville Reid, Valerie Ziegenfuss and Billie Jean King.
Kramer fired the first shot. In August 1970, the pro-turned-promoter announced that the Los Angeles-based tournament he ran, the Pacific Southwest Open, would pay men eight times more than women. Heldman counter-punched by convincing King and her eight cohorts — the Original 9 — to boycott Pacific Southwest for a tournament in her new hometown of Houston, Texas, sponsored by Virginia Slims, a “women’s” cigarette brand launched by Philip Morris in 1968.
A Virginia Slims ad from the mid-1980s. The WTA eventually dropped their original sponsor after smoking created health concerns.
King not only agreed, but convinced eight of her top comrades — Rosie Casals, Nancy Richey, Kristy Pigeon, Valerie Ziegenfuss, Peaches Bartkowicz, Julie Heldman (Gladys’s daughter), as well as Australians Kerry Melville Reid and Judy Tegart Dalton — to defect. At a press conference, the “Original 9” formally signed a pro contract with Heldman’s nascent tour for $1, holding it up for the world to see.
“You’ve heard of women’s lib. This is women’s lob,” a pithy Heldman told the New York Times on the day of the signing. “I hope you will agree that the women are not fighting the USLTA.,” said Mrs. Heldman. “They are just protecting themselves.”
Rosie Casals playing in a San Francisco tournament during the first year of the Virginia Slims tour. Casals, who won the first women’s tournament in Houston said of the cigarette company: ““I think we were happy that at least someone payed attention to us and believed in us. If it wasn’t for Virginia Slims, women’s tennis wouldn’t be where it is now.”
Fifty-one years later, six of the Original 9 received a long-overdue thank you during women’s semi-final night at the 2022 US Open. During a special ceremony on Arthur Ashe Stadium Court, they were presented with official International Tennis Hall of Fame (ITHF) rings and sincere praise from former ITHF CEOs Stan Smith — a co-founder of the ATP — and Todd Martin. The Original 9 then hung around to receive praise from Leylah Fernandez as she left the court after her semi-final victory, as well as Emma Raducanu and Maria Sakkari, before their match. Currently, an exhibit, Transcending Tennis: 50 Years of the WTA, is on display at the ITHF and partially online.
In hindsight, King didn’t have to start a fuss. After all, when the Open Era began in 1968 — thus eliminating the distinction between amateur and professional matches on tour— she had signed a $40,000 contract to play in the National Tennis League — the first iteration of the ATP/WTA. The other women, however, received $20-25,000 per year, compared to the men’s share of $70,000. It seemed as if the years-long fight to earn prize money had finally ended, but a new battle would pit women players against men in the numbers. For years, Kramer had argued that men’s tennis not only required more stamina — best of five sets compared to best of three — it drew more fans, therefore necessitating a bigger purse for the men.
“I have been tagged an ogre by the girls,” Kramer complained in his 1979 book, The Game: My 40 Years in Tennis. “I’m not a crusader against women’s tennis. I’m just a businessman.
“The only prejudice practised in tennis against women players is by the fans, who have shown repeatedly that they are prejudiced against having to watch women play tennis when they might be able to watch men play.”
Gladys Heldman reading a copy of the magazine she founded, World Tennis. Heldman, a player, was also a mother to pro player, Julie Heldman, a beneficiary of the efforts of the Original 9.
And like a player struggling to stay in a match, Kramer did not give way. He endorsed the USLTA’s (now USTA) threat to suspend the players if they participated in the Heldman-backed professional tournament. He then made it clear that if they played in his, he would remit an under-the-table $7,500 appearance fee. The women did not budge.
“We’re not telling the USLTA to get lost…” King told the Times. “When the USLTA refused to sanction prize money for the Houston tournament and insisted that we play in Los Angeles, where the prize‐money ratio between men and women was 12 to 1, or not play at all, the women stuck together and signed contracts.”
The dust-up played perfectly into the hands of Philip Morris CEO Joe Cullman, who ultimately gave the nascent women’s tour $250,000, along with use of the Virginia Slims name and its slogan “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby.” By the end of 1970, the Virginia Slims Circuit had boosted its numbers from nine to 40 members. “It is really mind-boggling,” King told the WTA newsletter in 2021.
Credited with starting the movement for a women’s tour, Billie Jean King wears an appropriate crown in the early 1970s.
“We had no infrastructure, and yet we got all sorts of people — promoters, venues — to take a risk. The reason is because of the title sponsor, because there was some money up there, and that was down to Gladys and her contacts.” In 1973, as King consolidated the all the various tours into the WTA and absorbed the ITF’s Women’s Grand Prix, then took it to 19 US cities — from Las Vegas to Chattanooga, Tennessee — Ban deodorant stepped in to rectify the situation that King once said “stinks” by donating $55,000 in prize money to make the women’s purse at the 1973 US Open equal to the men’s. Virginia Slims, Avon, Colgate, and Toyota then took turns sponsoring WTA tour series from 1971 to 1988.
Now 50 years later, the impact of the Original 9’s revolt in 1970 has impacted women’s sports across the board. Women’s tennis players are some of the highest-paid and most renowned athletes in the world. Following their lead, the U.S. Women’s National Hockey Team threatened to boycott the 2017 International Ice Hockey Federation World Championships, until USA Hockey granted them equal rights. The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) has cited the Original 9’s premise in court during its dispute with the United States Soccer Federation over gender-bias and pay equality. More and more women are coaches on the sidelines of men’s sports — including 11 female assistant coaches in the NBA — and more women holding executive positions in sports franchises.
The Original 9 sign their contracts with the Virginia Slims Tour in 1970 for $1. Top row, left to right: Valerie Ziegenfuss, Billie Jean King, Nancy Richey, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon. Bottom row, left to right: Kerry Melville, Judy Dalton, Rosie Casals, and Gladys Heldman.
What would Gladys Heldman say about all this? Before she died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound because of health difficulties, she told the New York Times that “The reason it worked was because the women gave so much of themselves,” said Heldman, who played daily on her own indoor court through her 70s. “They knew they were the game and they inspired others. Billie Jean was incredible, always available for a clinic, a pro-am, an interview. She had the most to give, and she gave it. But everyone gave. The women who lost in early rounds would fly to the next city to beat the publicity drums for the upcoming tournament.”
Alisha Ndukwu (left) pictured with her doubles partner Julia in a Notting Hill Park.
Standing in the shadow of the Grenfell Tower flats during a cool, yet sunny day on the turf of Notting Hill’s Avondale Park, William Ndukwu, clad today in a bright red Adidas football top, champion shorts, white cap and matching trainers, rallies with two, tall, skinny, 13-year-old girls with bright eyes and clean strokes. He is sweating, while they are barely breaking one. It’s nearly two o’clock, time for the day’s business to arrive: about 20 Year One and Year Two students from a neighbouring school ready for their tennis lesson.
William Ndukwu teaches most days at Avondale Park in Notting Hill — in the shadow at Greenfell Towers. Photo: Adrian Brune
Ndukwu gives his daughter, Alisha, and her doubles partner, Julia, some money for lunch, while he gathers up the balls, passes out the racquets and dictates the day’s formation to his friends and co-coaches as they begin drills. “Ready position,” he says as they all line up and grasp their racquets by both hands. “Today we are working on taking the ball on the rise!
“I want you all to step in and instead of moving back, lean forward with your racquet back and strike the ball just as it peaks.” A light Nigerian accent from his days growing up in Lagos punctuates the air, granting the command an exotic flourish.
For more than 12 years now, this is the way Ndukwu has been teaching his protegees across England — in Manchester, Milton Keynes, where he lives with his family, and in Notting Hill — with some students going on to various high-profile academies and others joining college teams in the States. But so far, his pride and joy and greatest success has been Alisha, who in early May, travelled to Ghana for her first ITF tournament, the TFG Open Accra ITF J30 and came away with the title in both singles and doubles, a feat that is rare for most teenagers, let alone a first-timer on the international circuit. This week, she is in Abuja, Nigeria, playing the ITF J30 Abuja at the National Tennis Centre.
Ndukwu, who grew up poor in Nigeria, managed to play on the Futures circuit before moving to England more than 15 years ago. Photo: Adrian Brune
“Ghana was my first tournament out of the country, aside from a few in Europe, and it went better than I ever expected,” Alisha says. “ The courts were certainly faster than what I am used to here and I played two very good Ghanaians — the types that just get everything back.
“But I took my game to the net and ended the points aggressively. That game plan saw me through.”
It’s an opportunity the elder Ndukwu was not afforded growing up in Lagos. The son of a steward and a trader with five brothers and sisters, Ndukwu started his tennis career like many other youngsters in Nigeria: he was a ball boy — sometimes called a “ball picker” — at his local tennis club. “We started after school and collected the balls for the paying members until they left for the day and then we could have a hit,” Ndukwu says. “Nigeria is not like it is here. There is no middle class, no diversity, no mixed housing — nothing like having council flats in Notting Hill near parks or tennis clubs.
“The rich people live in one area of the city and have the memberships. And on tour, they can play without worrying about winning. If you’re someone like me — having to win for money to pay the rent or take care of your parents, you get nervous, you get tight and next thing you know, you lose.”
Nonetheless, Ndukwu managed to play some junior tournaments and even worked his way into the ITF Futures events around Africa after gaining a sponsor from Singapore. But eventually, the tour results didn’t come and the funding ran out. Many African tennis federations, including Nigeria’s, struggle to raise money, solicit and receive equipment from overseas, properly instruct coaches and effectively support rising youth and professional players. While the International Tennis Federation (ITF) has run two ITF/CAT advanced training centres for exceptional youth in Casablanca, Morocco and Nairobi, Kenya — most recently consolidating the programmes with a new campus in Tunis, Tunisia — they did not exist in Ndukwu’s youth. He eventually settled in Manchester, and started giving lessons.
While his daughter plays the Africa circuit, William Ndukwu teaches back in England. Photo: Adrian Brune
And since Alisha took a shine to a tennis racquet, Ndukwu has traded his dad hat for his coaching cap to help her fulfil her dream of turning pro. Two days per week, he devotes entirely to his daughter, and three days per week — with Alisha in tow and doing school online — he commutes from Milton-Keynes, where he and his family live, to teach on West London courts.
“At first it was a bit difficult because I am her dad, but then I realised that she wouldn’t get anywhere if I wasn’t her coach. So I started treating her just like any other student — she gets no breaks from me,” Ndukwu says. “After we’re done for the day, she is my daughter again.”
Alisha Ndukwu also admits the transition took a few weeks, but she adjusted and now prefers her father’s method. “If he was easy on me — if he was my dad all the time — I wouldn’t be winning,” she says. “I used to have a love/hate relationship with having my dad as my coach. “I don’t hit with him all the time, however, now I don’t think I could have anyone else there for me like he is.”
It’s a set of circumstances — despite the sometimes long days and sacrifices — that Ndukwu realises he might not be able to provide for his daughter in Nigeria. Although he usually remains in England when Alisha and her mother travel for tournaments, Ndukwu has returned to Nigeria several times to give coaching seminars and bring balls, shoes and racquets to kids in need. “I’ll always go on eBay before we leave to pick up some gear for the students,” he says.
“I can’t do much — I don’t make that much money. But kids will show up on court in bare feet. They’ll do anything to play down there.”
An infiltrating Pickleball player photographed near a sign-up sheet at Cpl. John A. Seravalli Playground. Photo: Gothamist.
A new turf war has broken out in New York City and other major metropolitan locales around the country, and it has nothing to do with bloods, crypts, guns, knives or drugs — and everything to do with Padel and a “dill ball.”
Yes. While tennis courts are still nearly impossible to come by, Pickleball, a cross between tennis, whiffle ball and badminton, has swept across the blacktops of Manhattan’s spare lots, taking over the spots where children used to jump rope and merrily play kickball. Now, on any given square inch concrete from Harlem to the Battery and even the Wollman Ice Rink in Central Park, horrified, bemused or curious onlookers will find adults in athleisure chalking out their ground, hanging waist-high nets and charging at each other to whack a small, plastic orb for points.
Pickleball, once relegated to tennis clubs looking to bring back members, has become the fastest-growing American sport. It’s also become one of the most treacherous pastimes, filling local newspapers across the country with news of fights, arrests, vandalism and other skullduggery. In Manhattan, Ground Zero for the Pickleball wars is Cpl. John A. Seravalli Playground, an acre stretch of open asphalt — long popular with local children — where park officials no sooner erase makeshift courts before regulars draw them again. Outraged residents have called several City Council meetings to control the outbreak, to no avail. “The magic of pickleball is it can be played anywhere, on any asphalt,” said Samir Lavingia, a Pickleball enthusiast who urged the New York City Council to close roads for court space as a solution.
Impromptu Pickleball players at Central Park’s 97th Street North Meadow handball courts. Tennis players formerly used the walls to practice.
But what is Pickleball, exactly? And does the fun of it deserve this disarray? How does it compare to tennis or that other racquet sport taking Europe middle-Agee by middle-ager: Padel ball?
In form and function, Pickleball might be the truest to the origins of Lawn Tennis, the sport invented in 1874 by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield. Wingfield, of course, took the game with which Harry Gem and Augurio Perera were experimenting in Birmingham, boxed it up and started selling sets that included wooden racquets, rubber balls, a net, poles, an instruction manual, and… court markers.” The carefree Victorian masses could pick up a kit at the local PoundSaver — or it’s 19th-century equivalent — stake out the ground on a lawn and start playing within minutes.
An advertisement for one of the first lawn tennis kits made by Major Wingfield.
Much like its cousin — as anecdotes suggest — Pickleball is the product of the whimsical 1960s and bored, spoiled children, as well as their three Republican Baby-Boomer dads: Joel Pritchard, a Republican state representative and later a U.S. congressman; Bill Bell, a businessman; and Barney McCallum, a printing-company owner. All were vacationers on Bainbridge Island, Washington; all had kids with “nothing to do on Bainbridge,” said Frank Pritchard, Joel’s son. “(My dad) said that when they were kids, they’d make games up.” The elder Pritchard promptly took down the backyard badminton court, went to the back shed and grabbed a plastic perforated ball from whiffleball set, and added table tennis paddles to the mix. Joan Pritchard — wife of Joel, mother of Frank — came up with the name “Pickleball” as a reference to the game’s thrown-together, leftover nature. Later in the sport’s history, an interested neighbour crafted squarer paddles.
An early Pickleball match on Bainbridge Island, Washington.
In terms of rules and scoring, Pickleball is nothing like tennis, however, and more like squash. Games are played to 11 (or 15 and 21 during a tournament) and won by two points. After an underhanded serve, which supposedly makes the game more equitable, there is a two-bounce rule — receiving side and serving side — before each team tries to make the other one “fault” or fail to return the ball, hit the ball out of bounds or smack the ball into the net. The server continues to serve, alternating service courts, until the serving side faults and allows the opposition the ability to serve and thereby, score. A few more rules apply — and they get even more complicated than tennis.
Padel players at El Teu Clud de Tenis y Padel in the heart of Barcelona, Spain.
In Europe, the new Pickleball, however, is actually called Padel — short for Padel tennis, and unlike the random, laissez-faire nature of its American tennis knockoff, Padel actually has courts, leagues, decorum and the general feel of the original racquet sport.
The problem that Padel solved for would-be tennis players was, of course, space. In 1969 in Acapulco, Mexico, Enrique Corcuera, a wealthy professional,didn't have enough space to put in a tennis court. Instead, he lengthened his squash court, stuck a net in the middle and put glass walls around it to play what he christened "Paddle Corcuera". Corcuera gave his Padel essentially the same rules and scoring as tennis, with the exception of the ability to hit the tennis ball off the wall and a mandatory underhand serve (new sport, Nick Kyrgios?). Padel racquets are half-tennis racket, half-table-tennis paddle, meaning they are shorter and solid in the middle.
An early Padel match played in Spain during the 1970s. Padel and platform tennis and lawn tennis have similar rules. The only difference is surface — and racquet.
Of course, Corcuera couldn’t keep the game to himself. Anyone who stayed with him in Mexico played Padel, including aristocrats from Spain and entrepreneurs from Argentina. Enrique's Spanish friend Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, the “playboy who who made Marbella into a glamorous resort,” returned from Mexico to Spain a changed man after trying Padel. He created the first two Padel courts at a tennis club there in 1974. Not long after, Julio Mendieguy, an Argentine millionaire and frequent guest of Marbella, brought the sport to his home country.
Today, over two million Argentinians play Padel on more than 10,000 courts across the country. By 2005, Padel had taken over 1,000 clubs in Spain and the various Padel Associations banded together to form the Padel Pro Tour (PPT), followed by today’s governing body, the World Padel Tour (WPT). In England, a group of expats living in Spain formed the British Padel Association (now known as LTA Padel) and by 2011, David Lloyd Leisure — Europe's largest health and fitness club chain — installed the country’s first Padel courts. England now has more than 165 public courts, including at Hyde and Regents Parks, the LTA headquarters in Roehampton and various individual clubs, such as the prestigious Surbiton Racquet Club, which ceded precious tennis courts used for its Wimbledon challenger for its new Padel center.
Dan Dios, the father of modern Padel seen hawking his new Padel racquet. “Within two years, we’re going to see a huge explosion,” said the former captain of the Swedish national team and a Padel business developer. “All eyes in the European Padel brands right now are on the UK market, waiting for that explosion to happen.”
Could this be the point at which a tennis-like sport actually splits the U.S. and Europe?
Since 2020, a burgeoning Pickleball pro scene has also been accelerated by two tours in the U.S., the A.P.P. (Association of Pickleball Professionals) and the P.P.A. (Professional Pickleball Association), which run more than fifty tournaments a year. The prize money isn’t great, but sponsorships attract hundreds of players to the circuit. Ben Johns, the sport’s biggest star, estimates that he earned $250,000 in 2021, and as entrepreneurs latch on to the game, more money is coming.
Generally, people play because they like the games democratic ethos — that is the reason mostly given. And it’s easier to learn and play than tennis. “You sign your name up on the board, and you have a blast,” said Sherry Scheer, a former tennis coach and a pickleball senior pro, told the New Yorker in July. “Pickleball doubles partners tap paddles between every point, win or lose, and skilled players have tended to be generous about playing with less skilled players,” the article goes on to state.
But tennis players do much of the same. As do Padel. It all begs the question of whether Pickleball survive the snappier shots, the frenetic, close-range volleys (known as “hand battles”) and the ambitions of the celebrities and entrepreneurs. Or will tennis history just repeat?
It’s a close line call in Manhattan. A petition to stop pick-up Pickleball has garnered nearly 3,000 signatures. Its backers include the influential Greenwich Village Little League, and at least four other downtown sports leagues. “The park used to be teeming with kids playing basketball and football and tag and chase. Now they’ve stopped going. It’s all adults playing pickleball,” a local parent Allan Trub, told Gothamist. “It’s not a coexistence, it’s a complete and utter takeover.”
Ben Johns, the United States’ most famous Pickleballer, started out playing tennis.
