APTA Annual Meeting Minutes

The Minutes paid a tribute to the late Fessenden Blanchard who had died suddenly shortly after the meeting.

Two of the 1963 National Tournaments recorded the largest number of team entries in the history of the APTA – 85 teams in the Mixed Doubles and 83 teams in the National Men’s Championshps.

The Minutes reflected two important initiatives:

A National Boy’s Tournament was established:

“Over the past year, a keen interest in an APTA Boys’ Tournament was reflected by many member clubs and individuals. The APTA Executive Committee has therefore decided to create and endorse a new National Boys’ Doubles Tournament. The provisions of this tournament are as follows:

a. It is to be a pure junior tournament, not to be confused, with the USLT Junior Tournament age rulings. It is open to all boys who have not reached the age of 20 by the date of the tournament.

b. The bowl to be presented to the winners of this tournament will be known as the “Earle Gatchell Memorial Trophy.” This bowl is being donated by the APTA in memory of one of Platform Tennis’ most devoted friends.

c. The Fox Meadow Tennis Club has granted use of its courts for this tournament for the period Dec. 26-28, 1963.

d. Rawle Deland and John Ware will act as tournament co-chairmen. Entry fees will be minimum. Tournament announcements will be mailed in late November.

The success of this Tournament depends on all member clubs encouraging their boy members to participate. We count on your support!”

Seniors’ Tournament Age Change
“For the past two years your Association has attempted to sample the sentiment for a change in the age requirement for entry in the Seniors’ Tournament. Accordingly, the Executive Committee has decided to increase the age requirement from 45 to 50 years of age and over, or who become 50 on or before December 31st of the year in which the tournament is held. This change is not irrevocable. However, it is confidently hoped it will prove to be a constructive and wise one.”

Fessenden Blanchard Scrapbook (1929 – 1963)

From 1929 until his death in 1963 Blanchard had kept a detailed Scrapbook about how the game started and developed and those that made it happen. It provides a unique insight into the early years of the game.

Blanchard also had an earlier scrapbook covering 1928 – 1940. There is significant overlap between the two and the earlier one has a number of old photographs that were “borrowed” and not returned.

Walter H. Close, Jr. elected FMTC President (1963-1964)

Fox Meadow was Walter and Betty Close’s first love. All of their best friends were there and it was the nucleus of their social life. They played tennis and paddle tennis and planned, executed and attended all of the parties.

No one cared more about the grounds and the plantings than Walter. He was house and grounds chairman when it was decided that a retaining wall between the porch and the tennis courts was needed and he became the chief designer, foreman and construction worker.

Starting in 1959-60 Close and his crew of volunteers began to plant trees, dozens and dozens of them. And, when there were droughts he saved rainwater from the gutters of his home and somehow transported it to Fox Meadow to water his precious seedlings. Close claimed that over the years the Club had planted more that 256 trees to screen the paddle courts and to prevent the lights from bothering neighbors at night.

By now the grounds around the clubhouse bore little resemblance to those 40-50 years ago. The transformation was the result of the long-range plan begun in the late 1940s.

Walter Close (1914-1991) also served as APTA President from 1959-1961 and was inducted into the APTA Hall of Fame in 1967

Source: Diana Reische, Fox Meadow Tennis Club- The First Hundred Years, 1983, personal communication from his daughter Cynthia Close Larkin

Death of Fessenden S. Blanchard (1888-1963)

Blanchard, a co-founder of the game, suffered a heart attack at the Harvard-Princeton football game at Harvard stadium. A 1910 graduate of Harvard, he was a leader in textile research, a past president of the Textile Research Institute (1941-1945) and, for many years, head of his own industrial relations firm, which he founded in 1948. He served as the first President of the APTA, from 1934-1938, and was a tireless promoter of the game in the early years. He was among the first group of individuals inducted into the Platform Tennis Hall of Fame in 1965. In addition to authoring two books on the game, he also wrote widely on yachting.

One of Blanchard’s reports, prepared for the Massachusetts Development and Industrial Commission and made public in 1951 after a two-month dispute involving charges it was being suppressed, told of a “widespread belief” that the executive and legislative branches of the state government were “unjustifiably biased against manufacturers and in favor of labor but not the long-run interests of labor which are bound up with the success of Massachusetts industry.”

Source: New York Times, November 11, 1963

APTA raises Juniors’ profile – Gatchell Bowl established for National Junior Boy’s

During his tenure on the APTA Board in the early 1960s, John Ware began looking at clubs with dedicated junior programs. In an effort to learn how to encourage other clubs to strengthen their programs, he visited the Englewood Field Club in New Jersey to observe its program. Ware found it to be so impressive that he suggested the APTA sponsor a tournament for boys.

In 1963¹ Fox Meadow hosted the first National Boys’ Doubles, chaired by Rawle Deland and John Ware (both, appropriately enough, sons-in-law of the game’s founders).

The APTA named the Championship trophy for the recently deceased Hall of Fame inductee Earle Gatchell, a player who had done much to help young players.

His wife, Bertha, presented the first Gatchell Bowl to the winners who, predictably enough, came from Englewood, which had the most active junior program at the time.

Note 1: The Junior Nationals were usually in December, so this event was part of the 1964 tournament season

Paul G. Sullivan elected APTA President (1963-1965)

Sullivan was President of the APTA in 1964 and 1965, and was on the Board for many years prior to that, serving as secretary, treasurer, vice-president, and chairman of the nominating committee.

During his tenure, the association improved its communication with the membership, and set the sport on a more professional footing by demanding quality umpiring and giving APTA more control over tournament draws.

APTA changes ball color specification

In the winter of 1963, an equipment innovation pioneered at Fox Meadow brought new color to the game. Because paddle in the north is often played in snow, the traditional white ball was difficult to see.

John Ware decided that coloring the balls might solve this problem. “I got a can of fluorescent paint, orangey-red, and started spraying paddle balls. These crusty orange balls worked pretty well until they dried out and cracked, and you got paint all over your clothes. But they were the precursors of the present yellow ball.”

The APTA 1963 Annual Meeting Minutes included the following recommendation of Rules and Equipment Chairman George Harrison:

“The committee has spent the past year in an unsuccessful attempt to inveigle the ball manufacturers to produce a regulation ball spray painted with a fluorescent yellow-orange paint. . . . We suggest the member clubs purchase balls in quantity and spray-paint [balls] themselves with Krylon No. 234.”

The changes didn’t officially take place until after the APTA had studied them thoroughly and worked with manufacturers.

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

Ultimately, of course, the manufacturers came around and produced the colored balls now in common use.

National Championships

Hebard and Carver won their third straight Men’s title, and Charlotte Lee won her second Women’s title with a new partner, Buffy Briggs, and her third straight Mixed, but this time with Dick Hebard, rather than James Gordon.

Zan Carver and George Harrison won the Men’s 45+.

Source: Oliver H. Durrell The Official Guide to Platform Tennis, 1967, APTA Platform Paddle Tennis 1963-1973: Rules and Records, 1973

Sports Illustrated – It’s Wintertime, So Let’s Play Tennis

The article by Rex Lardner described the history of the game, where the game was being played, notable players and the casual sociability of the sport, including the “dress code.” The article began….

“The tennis fans of Connecticut and its neighboring states are a hardy lot—at least, a significant and growing number of them are. When winter winds begin to howl and snow blankets their courts, these intrepid racketeers neither give up their ball-banging nor take up squash; they deck themselves instead in a special kind of warm winter finery and move on to a structure of wood and wire to play a game called platform Tennis.”