Sun Valley, ID has a court

Life magazine edition of March 8, 1937, publish an article on Sun Valley, ID which had been founded by W. Averell Harriman and had just opened. The pictures included one of a platform tennis court.

Ever the promoter, Blanchard wrote to Harriman to inquire about the state of the game at the resort.

Aerial view of FMTC in 1937. At the left stands the windmill in Crane Meadow, just below Church Lane. The first paddle court can be seen at the curve of the driveway.

Effort to gain control over the Tennis Realty Corporation

Before Fox Meadow could make any substantial changes—buy or sell property, expand the clubhouse—it first had to gain operating control of the old Tennis Realty Corporation, which owned the Club’s grounds and facilities. This wearisome task took more than a decade.

By the early 1930s, so many former members (and therefore stockholders) had resigned, moved, or died that Club members owned a shrinking percentage of the Realty Corporation’s stock. It had become impossible to assemble a quorum for the annual meeting of the Realty Corporation, a situation that left its directors in a legally untenable situation.

In 1937, during John Van Norden’s presidency, the Club board began an all-out effort to collect enough stock through donation, purchase, or affidavits stating that the shares were lost, to gain control of the Realty Corporation and then liquidate it. After years of persistent effort, the Realty Corporation was dissolved in 1941. Fox Meadow Tennis Club assumed its property and its mortgages. Since then the management of the Club has rested solely with the Board of Governors.

Source: Diana Reische, Fox Meadow Tennis Club – The First Hundred Years, 1983

National Championships

1937

Fox Meadow Tennis Club teams dominated the Nationals, winning all five events and Charley O’Hearn completed a hat-trick in the Mixed (with Kitty Fuller in 1935 and then with his wife, Virginia, in 1936 and 1937). This was the last year the singles was played until Men’s singles was reintroduced in 1980.

Media interest in the game grows

Newsweek featured platform tennis in a March 21, 1937 article and on March 23, 1937, J.P. Allen proclaimed in the New York Sun:

Davis Cup Panacea Offered.

Blanchard Proposes Paddle Tennis to Balance California Supremacy in East