Costa Mesa Tennis Center in limbo as on-site pros walk out amid financial audit by city
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The fate of the city-owned Costa Mesa Tennis Center is once more up in the air after two longtime pros who’d been serving as the de facto operators of the facility announced their departure this week.
Cameron and Carsten Ball — sons of well-respected retired Tennis Center coach Syd Ball — are no longer holding lessons at the public facility, having effectively moved to Newport Harbor High School, where they serve as coaches, according to Don Harper, a former member of the Costa Mesa City Council who’s been assisting the brothers since August.
News comes as the city conducts an audit into the center’s finances and practices, which have come into question as potential violations of its contract with Calabasas-based Top Seed Academy, the official operator of the site.
Harper said Friday the Ball brothers were left to run the site by Top Seed’s largely absent owner, Steve McAvoy, and forced to comply with an onerous contract that favored the city and prevented them from being able to successfully manage the center’s operations.
Users of the city-owned facility decry a plan by operator Top Seed Academy to steeply increase court fees and charge annual membership fees up to $1,650 — a proposal never run by the city.
The duo had been petitioning city staff to have the contract with Top Seed transferred to them and potentially renegotiated with new terms, but had gotten nowhere, according to Harper.
“They decided to leave because city staff is so difficult to work with and staff was unwilling to transfer the agreement to the Ball family, who are the ones really operating the center, and who’d been an integral part of it for 20 years,” he said.
Harper communicated the brothers’ decision in an email to the city on Wednesday and the following day, the site was temporarily closed due to rain.
Officials Thursday announced the city would temporarily resume operations of the site.
“The city is aware that the tennis center operators under the Top Seed contract have ceased operation of the Tennis Center,” spokesman Tony Dodero said in a statement Thursday. “The city has stepped forward to reopen the center and serve the public, and we will be working diligently to find a new operator.”
Top Seed, which maintains similar agreements at multiple Southern California clubs, has been running the center since April 2024, after local residents rallied at a July 2023 council meeting in support of the Ball family and other coaching staff retained by McAvoy.
The City Council eschewed a recommendation to negotiate an operator contract with Agape Tennis Academy for the Costa Mesa Tennis Center and sided with scores of players in support of current operator Top Seed Tennis Academy.
According to its seven-year contract, the operator was to pay a minimum of 10% of gross from all court-related revenue sources and Pro Shop sales per month or $5,000, whichever was greater.
Things seemed to be humming along until last August, when the Balls posted notices informing users that fees would be assessed not by court, but by hour and players would be expected to pay annual memberships, ranging from $900 for a junior player from Costa Mesa, to $1,650 for a non-resident couple.
Harper said the existing fee structure made it difficult for the Ball brothers, who’d assumed management of the center through a verbal agreement with McAvoy, to maintain daily operations, especially as McAvoy withdrew funds from the center. His absenteeism only complicated matters.
“Steve just disappeared,” Harper said Friday. “He doesn’t respond to me, he doesn’t respond to Cameron or Carsten. They were just stuck in this middle lane.”
McAvoy did not respond to phone or email messages seeking an interview or comment for this story.
When the matter was brought to the council last August, users not only complained of the Balls’ proposed fee increases, but claimed the brothers were diverting clientele to Newport Harbor High and telling them to pay in cash instead of holding lessons at the Tennis Center.
Such actions would appear to violate Top Seed’s contract with the city, which states all fees and charges, including revenue-sharing agreements with private instructors, must be approved by City Hall. It further limits cash transactions to $30, allowed only in the center’s pro shop.
However, as Harper noted Friday, the Ball brothers are not signatories to the contract with the city, just two tennis professionals free to work wherever and however they like.
“When [the city] wouldn’t let them do a fee increase and wouldn’t let them transfer the contract, and they’re not hearing anything from Steve McAvoy, they said, ‘screw it — we’re just pros ... let’s transfer our business somewhere else,’” he said.
City officials have been reviewing the center’s operations and are in the process of auditing the books, a fact Dodero confirmed Thursday but would not comment on directly.
Harper accused the city of mishandling the matter and prioritizing bureaucracy over practical outcomes, saying the Ball brothers are not the ones leaving the Tennis Center in the lurch.
“They’re professional tennis players who decided to give lessons elsewhere,” he said. “They were managing the thing for virtually nothing and now they’re gone.”
