Fox Meadow Tennis Club celebrates 80 years of its association with the game

In April of 2011, the Fox Meadow Tennis Club celebrated it’s 80th anniversary as the first platform tennis club. The history of the club, located in Scarsdale, New York, has been well documented over the years.

Platform Tennis Magazine reviewed the history of the sport and provided insight into how the game saved Fox Meadow from possible bankruptcy during difficult financial times.

Origination of “Paddle Tennis”
Platform Tennis, or Paddle Tennis as it was originally named, was started in 1898, in Albion, Michigan. At nearby Albion College, a young boy, younger brother to a student, had been enviously watching the on-going tennis matches. The 14-year-old boy’s own backyard was too small for a tennis court and, besides, tennis courts were expensive to put up and to keep up. But the concept of playing a ball back-and-forth across a net would not be refused. If the court were not more than one quarter of the size of a tennis court, it would just fit. Persuading the tennis court maintenance staff to let him have some of their discarded tape and a few old tennis balls, he went to work mapping out a court in his own backyard. Old chicken wire served as his net and out of a one inch maple plank came his first “paddle.” The name of this boy was Frank Beal, the founder of Paddle Tennis.

Later in life, as associate minister in Washington Square, New York (1921), Reverend Frank Beal was faced with a recreational problem for the boys of the neighborhood. Remembering his childhood invention, he laid out similar courts on the floor of the church gymnasium. Reverend Beal soon became Chairman of the Community Councils of New York, and his game was played on the streets and playgrounds, providing children with a sport that taught them the rudiments of tennis in a small area and at a minimum expense. The game flourished and the United States Paddle Tennis Association was founded in 1923. Court measurements, paddles, balls, and net heights were soon after standardized.

Platform Paddle Tennis
Platform Tennis, as it is played today, was born in October 1928. Scarsdale, New York neighbors James Cogswell and Fessenden Blanchard began a quest for an outdoor winter sport close to home. “For weekend walks to enjoy the beauties of nature didn’t thrill us. Neither enjoyed walking for exercise. It wasn’t competitive enough,” stated Blanchard. Out of the discussions came the idea to build a wooden platform on the Cogswell place on Old Army Road. With a solid wooden platform under their feet, they figured they could play deck tennis almost all of the time, badminton on calm days, and once in a while round up the neighbors for a game of volleyball.

Blanchard was quoted to say, “We soon found that it was so seldom that we played badminton, in our relatively unsheltered location, that we confined ourselves largely at the start to deck tennis.” He added, “One day, Jimmy Cogswell turned up with some rectangular-shaped paddles and balls, which he discovered in a sporting goods store, and thought we might try out on our platform.” Cogswell and Blanchard had never heard of Beal’s paddle tennis that was now seven years old. That first day, a mixed doubles game was drummed up and the rest is history.

The first key change from playground paddle tennis came very early on. Because a hard service in lawn tennis gives a tremendous advantage to more powerful players, Cogswell and Blanchard allowed just one serve in their new game.

Keeping the balls in the court posed another problem, so around the platform went chicken wire of two inch mesh stapled to two-by-four uprights eight feet high. Blanchard and Cogswell also decided that the 44’ x 20’ badminton measurements were better for adult platform play than the 39’ x 18’ measurements used in the original form of paddle tennis. However, the shortness of the platform provided only a scant two feet between the back line and back wire. It was because of this lack of room to swing their paddles that came the incident which, in the opinion of all present-day players has “made the game.” During an early match, one of Blanchard’s opponents hit a ball that landed in the court, then flew up and stuck inthe back wire. “It’s still in play!” announced Blanchard, who apparently had the privilege to alter rules in the middle of match play. He then proceeded to run around the fence and give the ball a good smack, sending it back into play and forcing the opponents to continue the point. After appropriate arguments, a new rule was agreed on allowing a ball to be played off the screens, given it has bounced first within the regulation court. The rule made strategy and finesse equally important for winning play. Ironically, if it had been topographically easier to have lengthened the court, Cogswell and Blanchard would have and platform tennis would simply be tennis played on wooden boards.

Note: This is a oft repeated legend and is incorrect. In fact playing the ball off the wires was part of the game form the start and was called the “ground rule”. The incident that became the basis for the legend comes for Blanchard’s book Platform Paddle Tennis published in 1959 and was just some “color commentary” by Blanchard]

By 1932, other innovations had been accepted. Cogswell rebuilt his platform within an enlarged 60’ x 30’ area, using concrete blocks to support the deck. Boards of Douglas fir were installed and spaced slightly apart to permit drainage of rain and snow. The net was lowered to 2’ 10” at the center strap, with the back and side wires raised to their present 12-foot height.

The Old Army Athletes
The paddle tennis court on Old Army Road became the weekend and holiday hangout of a group of enthusiastic suburbanites who named themselves the “Old Army Athletes.” Sub-zero temperatures and snow to be shoveled off the platform only fed their hunger for their favorite weekend activity. It was the members of this group of 25 to 30 families who were the ones responsible for putting Platform Paddle Tennis on the map in ever widening communities. Some of them erected platforms at their own homes or summer places. Visitors from other towns came and saw the new sport and were then addicted as well.

By the end of 1932 there were seven platforms in Scarsdale alone, and the first open tournament took place. Earle Gatchell and Fessenden Blanchard beat out the other 41 teams on the newly enlarged court of the Cogswells, to capture the first platform paddle tennis trophy.

For the next several years platform paddle grew.This occurred in spite of the fact that the game was plagued with irregular bounces off the loosely strung screens. The founders knew that platform tennis could never become a game of pure skill as long as the luck of the bounce prevailed. Donald Evans assured the future of platform tennis in 1934 when he created a design making it possible to stretch the one inch wire mesh from the top to the bottom well inside of the uprights. Adjustable tension bars helped to provide a uniform bounce for balls bouncing off any one of the court’s four screens.

Another step forward was the non-skid surface developed by Richard Grant and others at the Tremont Place Paddle Tennis Club in Orange, New Jersey. The secret to obtaining the surface was to sprinkle fine beach sand in the paint as it was put on the platform. The result was a rough sandpaper-like surface which, if properly prepared, prevented players from slipping.

Paddle’s First Club – Fox Meadow
The Fox Meadow Tennis Club was founded in 1883 in Scarsdale, an upscale suburb outside of New York City. The Club flourished into the years marked by the beginning of the Great Depression.

In 1928, of the 25 or more families comprising the Old Army Athletes, five belonged to Fox Meadow. They and other Fox Meadow members urged the Club directors to install a platform court to experiment with this growing sport. They pointed out that as a tennis facility, Fox Meadow shut down for half the year, whereas this new game could transform the club into a year-round sports haven.

Conservative tennis players were not easily sold on risking club funds on this new, untried sport, especially in the midst of the Great Depression. To counter, The Old Army Athletes proposed a paddle court with a boarded up end that could co-function as a practice court. This pleased the ardent tennis members enough to approve the proposal.

On April 15, 1931, Fox Meadow became the first club to install a platform tennis court. The first court was so heavily used that a second court had to be added by 1934. With the second court in place, the membership at Fox Meadow grew, a waiting list developed, and platform tennis became an integral part of the club.

Today, in addition to six Har-Tru tennis courts, the Fox Meadow Tennis Club boasts nine platform tennis courts and is host to many of the major Senior and Open Championships.

The American Platform Tennis Association
Thanks to the leadership of the late John C. Ten Eyck, Jr. of the Manursing Island Club in Rye, New York, the American Paddle Tennis Association was formed in November 1934. The charter members were the Field Club of Greenwich, Fox Meadow, and Manursing. The original purpose of the Association was to standardize rules and equipment, to promote the popularity of the game, and to sponsor tournaments.

By 1950, the American Paddle Tennis Association changed to the current name, the American Platform Tennis Association(APTA), to better reflect the nature of this new sport.

Today, there are an estimated 4,000 courts and 100,000 platform tennis players, 30,000 of whom are avid league players. Currently, the APTA holds hundreds of sanctioned tournaments per season, up from only 48 in the 1970s.

Source: Platform Tennis Magazine, Vol. 13, Issue 1, October, 2011