Long Love Affair : Harbula, 72, Remains at Top of Tennis Game on the Senior Circuit

Eleanor Harbula looked at the ceiling of her Sylmar home, one hand over her mouth, and tried to unleash the memories.

“Let’s see,” she said. “That must have been back in 1943. Or maybe it was ’44.”

Or maybe both.

In a tennis career spanning 60 years, it’s difficult for Harbula to pinpoint events of decades ago. The recent ones are something else.

Now 72, Harbula is one of the leading senior tennis players in the country. In 1991, she was ranked first by the Southern California Tennis Assn. in the women’s under-70 division and second nationally by the United States Tennis Assn. behind senior legend Dodo Cheney. (Senior players may compete in a younger age division.)

The 1992 final rankings, derived from competition during the calendar year, will not be announced until March, but Harbula undoubtedly will be near the top again. She and Cheney, who lives in Santa Monica, generally battle for those honors.

“She’s very steady and her short angles are her best shots,” Cheney said. “She covers the court very well and she’s very, very fast on the court. We’re very closely matched.”

In December, Harbula showed how close by pressing Cheney in the final of the Senior Grand Prix Masters championships at Rancho Bernardo in San Diego County before losing, 7-6, 6-7, 7-5.

“Do you know that I was winning, 5-2, in the last set and I still managed to find a way to lose?” Harbula said, laughing.

That didn’t happen often to Harbula after she started playing tennis at the height of the Great Depression.

Born in Portland, Ore., Harbula moved to Hollywood with her family when she was about 1 year old. Her parents, Stanley and Jessie Purdy, were a shoe salesman and a schoolteacher eager to find prosperity for themselves and their three children in economically booming California.

A few years later, Harbula began spending time at the Poinsettia Recreation Center in Los Angeles and became involved with tennis. Soon, she was being coached by Dick Skeen, who at one time coached tennis great Jack Kramer and several other champions.

“I started playing when I was 11,” Harbula said. “The first tournament I played in was a paddle tennis tournament and I won it. . . . It used to cost $5 a month to take the lessons and (Skeen) would give us shoes and a racket.”

Back then, $5 was a good chunk of cash for a working family. Harbula figures her parents could have used the money for more pressing things but says they never hesitated if it kept her playing tennis.

“It probably was a (financial) hardship for them, but they went along with it,” Harbula said.

They had to, if they were serious about letting Harbula stay with the sport, because there were no interscholastic high school tennis teams for girls in those days. Harbula played basketball at Fairfax High but was on her own when it came to tennis.

By the early ‘40s, Harbula had gained prominence and become one of the top U.S. women’s players. Then married to Jack Cushingham, also a talented player, she was ranked as high as 13th nationally in 1943 and played in the U.S. Open at Forest Hills that year and in 1944. Unfortunately for Harbula, she met powerful Pauline Betz of Los Angeles in the first round both times and was eliminated. Betz won the title from 1942-44 and in 1946.

Harbula, however, turned the tables on Betz in 1945 in the Pacific Southwest tournament at the Los Angeles Tennis Club with a 6-4, 6-1 victory. The playing surfaces were different--Forest Hills was grass, L.A. hardcourt--but the accomplishment had its merit.

“That was my best victory ever,” Harbula said.

During World War II, Harbula and Cushingham lived for a while at the U.S. naval base in Pensacola, Fla., where he had been stationed. Both continued to play during the war and until 1946, when they went to work at the Palm Springs Racquet Club. Cushingham was the teaching pro and Harbula a tennis hostess who entertained on the courts the many Hollywood celebrities who escaped to the desert for R&R.; The list, Harbula said, included Desi Arnaz, David Niven, Errol Flynn, Tony Martin, Rita Hayworth, Spencer Tracy, Dinah Shore, Paul Lukas and Cary Grant.

Most, Harbula said, were decent players who didn’t get too serious on the court--”I liked Spencer Tracy. He played doubles and loved to clown around and had a wonderful sense of humor.”

The pair stayed in Palm Springs for a year, then took their trade to the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. That lasted until their marriage collapsed in 1951. It was Harbula’s last major involvement in tennis for many years.

Three years later, after marrying Warren Harbula and moving to San Fernando, she turned to the business of being a wife and mother to their son, Patrick, and adopted daughter, Catherine. Harbula had little association with tennis until her husband died of cancer in 1963. Suddenly, she was forced to find work. The way to go, Harbula figured, was obvious.

“At first I said, ‘What am I going to do?’ ” she said. “Then I thought I’d just teach tennis. It worked out beautifully.”

Harbula landed a job at an L.A. City park and then coached privately after making a deal with a woman she taught there.

“She lived in Studio City and had a court in her property,” Harbula said. “She wanted me to teach her and her four boys. I ended up doing it for 13 years. I did that in exchange for teaching other people on their court.”

When the arrangement ended, Harbula taught at other private courts and returned to the Beverly Hills Tennis Club for two years before working eight years at a now-defunct Sylmar club. While working in Sylmar, friends encouraged her to join the senior tennis circuit. Initially, she had reservations.

“I said, ‘Isn’t that kind of silly, older people running around playing tennis?’ Harbula said. “I thought it was ridiculous. But, of course, once I started playing, I found out it was pretty good.”

She has been at it since.

“The tournaments are a lot of fun,” said Harbula, who, because of her ranking, receives equipment gratis from a sporting goods company. “I get to see old friends at tournaments that I’ve known for 40 years. It’s just a delight.”

Especially when you still play as well as she does.

“She’s fantastic. She always gives Dodo a tough match,” said Pat Yeomans, another leading senior player and one of those friends with whom Harbula is reunited at tournaments. “I’ve played against her many times over the years and played doubles with her. . . . In 1939 she beat me in the finals in Ojai.”

Although she enjoys the tournaments, Harbula said she has been playing in only four or five a year, mostly in California. But this year she hopes to increase the number--and her travel.

“I’m going to play more. It’ll be better for me to be tournament tough,” said Harbula, who still teaches tennis. “I’ll probably go to two or three national tournaments. There’s one in Cincinnati (indoors) and one in Baton Rouge (clay court) I’d like to play in.”

And not only possibly win but add to her collection of memories.