An article on Contessa by Vicky Cosstick appeared in in Paddle World, Vol. 1 No. 5, Fall 1976

In the article John Ware, Blanchard’s son-in-law, referred to him as the ‘missing link” between paddle tennis and platform tennis as Contessa who developed, manufactured and promoted the paddle tennis racket, net and balls which Blanchard and Cogswell bought in a New York store.

Through his church activities, Contessa met the Rev Frank Beal whose boys were playing street paddle with crude saw-cut bats, and in 1922 Contessa left his Wall Street career to form with Beal, the American Paddle Tennis Assoc. with the aim of marketing the game and equipment specifically for under-privileged youth.

Contessa began with the financial backing of Wall Street colleagues, and space donated by his brother Joseph in the basement of a yarn warehouse at 131 Spring St. (in what is now called SoHo, Manhattan). The first equipment consisted of a carrying case, nets, stanchions, paddles and balls for two or four players: ” A Complete Outfit at the Cost of One Standard Tennis Racquet: $10.00 “. A later version included tape and staples to mark out the court. In designing the equipment,

Contessa gave primary consideration to cost, portability, and flexibility. The stanchions for net-posts were made especially to be collapsible and the ” airball” (sponge rubber) was designed to bounce on an irregular surface, large enough so that a child would see it coming over the net easily. The paddles were made of plywood.

Over the period between 1922 and 1926, Contessa set about marketing the game in a systematic fashion. ” I thought it would take two years,” he says, ” but it took four.”

In 1926, the G. Lynn Sumner Co. , a Madison Avenue advertising company, offered to buy the Paddle Tennis Co., and the directors, including Doc Beal, agreed. Frank Contessa was outvoted. His concern was that the new owners would up the price of the equipment and redirect it to the more wealthy set.

He left the world of paddle tennis and went onto other ventures. But his predictions were correct. Not only did the equipment become more and more costly, but the game was taken up by two Scarsdale players named Blanchard and Cogswell,who, not satisfied with playing the game just anywhere, and with the resources to develop a more sophisticated game, built a platform and had the idea of playing the ball off the wires.

The dimensions from Cogswell’s original court, including service and single court measurements, have stood the test of time.

There have been a number of experiments at changing them, including an APTA sponsored experiment at Fox Meadow Tennis Club in 1956 where the court length was extended 2 feet on either end to 48 feet.

The platform size was increased to the present day dimensions of 60 x 30 feet in 1932 when Cogswell built a second court with a larger platform. This made the playing area one quarter the size prescribed for a tennis court.

Source: Adapted from Fessenden S. Blanchard, Platform Paddle Tennis, 1944.

The net height was lowered and court dimensions altered from the original Paddle Tennis standards. These changes and the adoption of the one serve rule allowed for a nice balance of advantage between server and receiver.

The one serve rule was adopted at the beginning and has never been seriously challenged

While deck tennis rings and badminton birds were easy to keep in bounds, paddle tennis balls were a challenge. To keep the balls from running down the surrounding landscape, the court needed back and side wiring. Before long two-inch mesh chicken wires were stapled to eight feet high upright two by fours that surrounded the court. Gradually the court was completely surrounded by wires. The screens rose to 12 feet by 1932 as play evolved.

Source: Adapted from Fessenden S. Blanchard, Paddle Tennis, 1944, and Platform Paddle Tennis, 1959

Blanchard and Cogswell soon decided that the badminton 44′ x 20′ measurements were much better than the 39′ x 18′ measurements used in the original form of paddle tennis. By using the outer lines of badminton doubles, only two feet separated each back line and the chicken wire. This didn’t give them enough room to swing their paddles.

This led to the decision, which in the opinion of all present-day players, has “made the game.” They decided to allow players to take the ball off the back or side wiring: that is, as it bounced off the wire after having first hit inside the proper court, and before it had hit the platform a second time.

They called this a “ground rule” after the ground rules in baseball that are special rules particular to each baseball park^1&2

If the landscape had allowed the court to be lengthened, it would never have been discovered how much this new rule added to the fun of the game. The rule prolonged rallies and took the advantage away from the net players. Irregular bounces and balls sticking in the mesh plagued the early days. Reducing the mesh size to one-inch solved the ball sticking problem but eliminating irregular bounces had to wait until the development of the Evans backstop in 1934-35.

Source: Adapted from Fessenden S. Blanchard Paddle Tennis, 1944

Note 1: Some secondary sources cite the following incident recounted in Blanchard’s book Platform Paddle Tennis as the beginnings of what was called the “ground rule”. “And sometimes the balls stuck in the two-inch mesh, which we used at first. I remember once when that happened on our side of the net I ran around behind the back net and gave the ball a hefty swat. To everyone’s surprise it went over the net into the other court. My partner kept the ball in play until I got back and we finally won the point.”. This is incorrect as both Blanchard books explicitly state that the “ground rule” was adopted at the very beginning. He called this Lucky Incident Number 2. Lucky Incident Number 1 was the decision on the court sized based on the geographical constraints.

Note 2: At a presentation to Fox Meadow members in March of 1997, Molly Ware, Blanchard’s daughter, confirmed the apocryphal nature of the story. “As has often been reported, it is not true that my father dashed around the back and whacked a bail that was stuck in the screen across the net, shouting, ‘it’s in play.’ A terrific story, but sheer fiction.” She explained that the insufficient area from the baseline to the screen did not allow for a full back swing and created a condition where play off the screens became a necessity.

One day, Cogswell turned up with some short rectangular-shaped paddles and spongy balls, which he discovered in a sporting goods store.

The equipment was used for paddle tennis, a game invented several years earlier by Reverend Frank Beal for cramped urban playgrounds. Beal and Frank Contessa had established the American Paddle Tennis association in 1922 to promote the game and market equipment – see Frank B. Contessa