Equality on a Platform

At Maryland's Chevy Chase Club last week, groundkeepers with shovels and brooms were clearing off a 6-in. snowfall from the club's seven raised-platform courts in time for the annual mixed-doubles "scramble." At Darien, Conn.'s Wee Burn Country Club, 3 1/2 in. of drifting snow was being pushed off the courts in preparation for the national championships. And at Brookline, Mass., The Country Club was rushing to completion the first two platform-tennis courts in the club's long history. All this activity must be over and done with before winter ends. For platform tennis, more commonly called paddle tennis, is not only the newest addition to the family of tennis-type court games: it is unique in that it is played primarily in winter and always outdoors.

Scored like tennis, the game takes place on a wooden platform 60 ft. long and 30 ft. wide surrounded by chicken-wire walls, off which the ball can be played, as in squash. Players wield short-handled wooden paddles, get only one serve for each point. The heavy sponge-rubber ball, colored orange so that it shows up against snowy backgrounds, is extremely lively, with the result that sharply angled shots become as important as sheer power. Favorite ploys include the deep lob that forces the opponent away from the net and a low, sinking squash shot that slides off the wires at an oblique angle.

Easy Charm. The game was invented in the 1920s by Frank Beal, then secretary of the Community Council of New York, as a tennis substitute for the city's playgrounds. It never caught on in the city, but since 1928, when the first paddle-tennis court was built in Scarsdale, N.Y., the game has been spreading in upper-class suburbs, is now played as far south as Washington and as far west as Minneapolis.

The New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area remains the center of paddle-tennis activity. Such country clubs as Greenwich's Stanwich, Rye's Manursing Island and New Canaan's Country Club like paddle tennis because, though the courts cost $5,000 apiece, they are cheap to maintain and keep the club open year-round. Individuals build courts too: Philip Morris President Joseph Cullman III, for example, has two courts on his Briarcliff Manor estate, normally entertains a dozen paddle-playing guests each weekend throughout the winter. All told, the American Platform Tennis Association estimates, there are some 500 courts in the U.S., and enthusiasts will go to great lengths to get to one. Last year Caroline Nelson, current A.P.T.A. women's-doubles champion, moved from Scarsdale, where she played regularly at the Fox Meadow Tennis Club, to Bryn Mawr, Pa., where there is a dearth of courts and top-ranked players; nothing daunted, she now drives back to Scarsdale, a six-hour trip, once a week.

Part of the charm of the game, which is almost always played as doubles, is that it is easy to learn. The difference in hitting power between men and women, which so often ruins a mixed-doubles match in tennis, counts for less because the ball can still be played off the wire walls. Says A.P.T.A. Secretary-Treasurer Edmund Swanberg: "It's a great equalizer."

Kiss at the Net. The game is also delightfully informal. There is no prescribed mode of dress except for sneakers--to grip the platform, which has sand sprinkled on the green-painted surface for traction. Players arrive bundled up ("The colder it is, the better we like it," says Caroline Nelson) in everything from svelte strech pants to old corduroys, Norwegian ski sweaters to ancient raccoon coats, derby hats to baseball caps. "The rule," says Nancy Hardenbergh of Wayzata, Minn., "is that you put on as much as you can move around in." But only to start with: after taking the court, paddle-tennis players commence a ritual strip, until they are down to a T shirt. Which is only fitting for a game of mixed doubles that traditionally ends not with a handshake but with a kiss at the net.

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