APTA membership continues to grow

In October, 1939, five years after the organization of the APTA, President Harold D. Holmes reported a membership of 15 clubs, all of them still only in the New York suburbs.

“As paddle tennis veterans may remember, our form of the game began in Scarsdale in November, 1928. For several years its growth was slow. In the last few years the game has gone rapidly ahead with Scarsdale still leading in the number of courts (now twenty-eight), Greenwich, CT, second, and Englewood, NJ, which has come forward rapidly, third. It is impossible now for the Association to keep an account of all of the courts that go up during each year. Some of the more recent ones include platforms for Saint Mary’s School of Peekskill, the Round Hill Club of Greenwich, the Bedford Golf and Tennis Club, the Knollwood Club of White Plains, the Saddle and Cycle Club of Chicago, the Woodway Country Club of Stamford, CT., the Knickerbocker Country Club of Tenafly, NJ, the Indian Harbor Yacht Club of Greenwich, the Stamford Yacht Club, the Devon Yacht Club of East Hampton, Long Island, the Orange Lawn Tennis Club and many others. Dr. George Gallup is expected shortly to take a poll of the growth of paddle tennis sentiment, for he has recently built a platform. Arthur Murray is probably complaining about the sanding of his paddle tennis court, which ruins it for dancing purposes. Thomas W. Lamont and John M. Hancock are among other well known men who have erected courts.

Besides platforms too many to mention in the suburban area of New York City, the game has spread to such widely scattered places as Atlantic City; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Danville, Virginia; Ottawa, Illinois; Danboro, Pa; Paoli, Pa; Narragansett, Rhode Island; Martha’s Vineyard, Mass; Bennington, Vermont; South Portland, Maine; Perrysburg, Ohio; Los Angeles, Cal.; and so on. England is reported to have one or two platforms at least. Plans have even been sent to Natal, South Africa, in response to an inquiry to the Association.”

Source: Fessenden S. Blanchard, Platform Paddle Tennis, 1959