Paddle Tennis : Proponents of a Misunderstood Sport Battle to Improve the Game’s Wimpy Image While Trying to Find a Decent Place to Play

Jerry Newmark tells a story about a famous Hollywood producer who answered the question, Is there paddle tennis after death?

The producer’s Beverly Hills estate came equipped with a paddle-tennis court. Every week for years, he played doubles with the same bunch of guys. When he died, he made sure the game went on without him.

“In his will, he specified that we could play paddle tennis on his court as long as we wanted,” says Newmark, who lives in Tarzana.

Newmark, a 63-year-old former California doubles champion, considers himself lucky to have friends with private courts. In Los Angeles, if a player lives outside Venice, finding a convenient public paddle-tennis court is almost impossible.

Take away the 11 courts at Venice Beach and there are only a handful of public courts in the entire L.A. area, probably none in your neighborhood. In the Valley area, the only public courts in good shape are the two at the Racquet Centre in Studio City. The three courts at North Hollywood High are in disrepair and the one at Granada Hills Park doesn’t have a net. There are no courts in county parks in the Valley.

Why so few public courts in a town that produces almost all of the great paddle-tennis players in the world? That’s one of the many puzzling questions about paddle tennis, America’s most misunderstood sport. Despite being around for nearly a century, it has yet to imprint its image into the American consciousness. If anything, people are more confused than ever.

Ask around at the office and this is what you usually get:

“Paddle tennis? It’s like table tennis and paddle ball. I think in the East they call it deck tennis and play it on a wooden platform.”

“They play it in a chicken-wire cage.”

“Isn’t that the game that old, bald, infirm guys play at the beach?”

Tell them that paddle-tennis is almost exactly like tennis. The rules are about the same. But the playing surface is only 20 by 50 feet, a little more than a third the size of a tennis court; the net is only 31 inches high; there are no walls or chicken wire; hard-birch paddles weighing about 16 ounces can whack a forehand drive upwards of 90 m.p.h.; and the ball is served underhanded, almost eliminating faults.

The ball used in paddle tennis also creates a lot of confusion. It is a regular tennis ball that has been punctured by a hypodermic needle to let the pressure out (try explaining that at the office). But the deadening effect gives a player more control of the ball coming off his paddle than a tennis player has with a lively ball on a string racket. The result is a game that is easier than tennis to learn and to play well.

Unlike tennis players, paddle-tennis players like to dress down, perhaps because of the beach’s influence on the game. And the strict etiquette that is required in tennis is almost completely ignored. Sol Hauptman, who has won 14 of the last 15 national doubles titles, is renowned for screaming--at teammates --during matches. Tournaments get nasty--players have been known to purposely smash overhands at opponents’ torsoes from point-blank range.

At its highest levels, paddle tennis is played at the net, fast and furious, the players only a few feet apart, cracking volleys at one another with dizzying speed. Because of the lack of courts, doubles is the preferred game. Age has little to do with ability. Newmark, at 63, can hold his own in a friendly game with top players, and he plays regularly with a 76-year-old man.

According to the Culver City-based U. S. Paddle Tennis Assn.--the sport’s governing body--only an estimated 200,000 people in the country regularly play paddle tennis, and half live in the L. A. area. No one is quite sure whether Americans aren’t playing paddle tennis because there are no courts or there are no courts because Americans aren’t playing. But it’s evident that the image problem doesn’t help.

“People just don’t understand the sport,” says Barry Zelner, an attorney and a highly regarded open-class player.

Like Newmark’s Hollywood producer, Zelner has solved the court-shortage problem by building one in his Tarzana back yard. And like most dyed-in-the-wool players, he’s passionate, almost evangelical, about the game. “It just amazes me that more people don’t play,” he says.

A former tennis teaching pro, Zelner didn’t play paddle tennis until he entered a tournament at the Racquet Center about eight years ago. He and his partner used a pair of ancient Marcraft PT-90 paddles, circa 1950. Somehow, they came in third and “I haven’t hardly played tennis since,” says Zelner, who teamed with Newmark to win the California A-class title in 1984.

On a recent evening, a bright yellow glow spills over the palm trees in his neighborhood as Zelner bangs paddle-tennis balls on his lighted court. He is playing with Newmark, ’89 U. S. doubles runner-up Lance Tepper, and a man so far in over his head that he prefers not to be identified. The game is doubles, which Tepper considers “three times as fast as singles and more fun.”

The games on Zelner’s court get combative but never sink to the level of competitiveness found in tournaments. In the 90-minute, sweat-inducing workout, Tepper and Zelner, both of whom can launch rockets off their paddles, graciously hit balls slow enough to be returned, and Newmark doesn’t direct as many volleys at the feet of the inexperienced player as he could. Tepper lets it slip that “we were going about one-quarter speed.”

Inside Zelner’s Southwest-influenced house, they sit around talking about paddle tennis. With them are Zelner’s wife, Lori; their son, Brian, an 8-year-old who hits a mean forehand; and Shasta, a golden retriever who fetches errant shots during games.

Lori also plays paddle tennis, preferring singles. When she drives around the Valley, she says, she always notices paddle-tennis courts in back yards and one day wants to organize their owners into a Valley league. An advocate of the sport, she comes to its defense if she hears anyone disparage it.

“Barry’s uncle has a tennis court in his back yard and he’s always putting down paddle tennis, calling it ‘walking Ping-Pong,’ ” Lori says. “He thinks it’s so easy. ‘Give me a chance at you,’ I tell him. ‘You’ll find out.’ ”