Tennis, Everyone?

Tennis, anyone? The now famous drawing-room comedy line was delivered back in the '20s by a young actor named Humphrey Bogart. He projected an image of white-flanneled, upper-crust tennis player that lingers to this day. Yet in the last few years millions of Americans of every age, class and color have taken up the game. The number of outdoor courts is increasing at the rate of 4,600 a year, and indoor facilities have doubled since 1969 to more than 500. By all accounts, tennis is the fastest growing participant sport of the 1970s.

There are two major reasons for the phenomenal spurt of growth. One is the new glamour of big-time tournament tennis, which is partly the result of an infusion of big money into the pro circuits and vastly increased television exposure. Equally important is the enduring national concern for physical fitness and the fact that tennis gets you there faster. Or so its devotees claim, even though orthopedists are doing a big business these days treating tennis elbows, ankles, knees and backs.

On Rooftops. Despite such problems, tennis buffs are spending $267 million a year on paraphernalia ranging from $25 tennis shoes to $385 tennis cannons that fire practice balls. In big cities and affluent suburbs reserved playing space is also costly. The newly organized Love 40 Club, built atop a midtown Manhattan skyscraper and covered during the winter with a bubble, will charge 200 to 300 tennis addicts an average of $1,500 a year for a weekly hour on one of the club's courts. Love 40 is open from 7 a.m. to midnight.

Not surprisingly, tennis has become a popular lure in new housing developments. "For every potential customer who talked about golf we found three who wanted to talk tennis," said Jack Gaines, developer of a 9,000-unit condominium subdivision called Inverrary on the outskirts of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He put in 20 courts. There will be 48 outdoor and two indoor courts and 106 plush town houses at Lakeway World of Tennis, now abuilding near Austin, Texas. When not actually playing, Lakeway residents can watch closed-circuit television broadcasts of instructional films and professional matches. Or swim in a huge pool shaped like a tennis racket with strings painted across the bottom and a handle painted on the concrete deck.

Although most clubs and public parks have pros, the new players often seek more intensive training. In 1969, when All American Sports Inc. opened its first three-week tennis camp in Beaver Dam, Wis., 20 children attended. This summer there are four All American camps with 670 children and 626 adults learning the game. Above Manhattan's Grand Central Station, Tennis Pro Clark Graebner has set up a clinic which last year attracted 5,000 students to its 24-hr.-day, seven-day-week sessions. For $50, tennis buffs get eight hours of concentrated practice with a ball machine and videotape recordings to see what went wrong. There are also more lavish teaching setups like John Gardiner's Tennis Ranch in Carmel Valley, Calif. There, 20 students at a time spend $450 for a grueling five-day immersion in fundamentals and tactics. Gardiner's exhausting program is embellished by rubdowns from a masseur who used to work for the Gabor sisters and lessons in "yoga-tennis"--a scheme that is supposed to teach tennis tabbies to psych themselves into becoming tigers. Although most of Gardiner's clients are middleaged, he also conducts three-week summer clinics for adolescent racketeers.

On the Streets. This summer there will also be matches in the ghettos --courtesy of two soft-drink companies. Pepsi-Cola's program will use mobile units, which upon reaching a site in low-income sections of New York, Boston and Philadelphia will stop, mark out a playing area on the street, pop up nets and backdrops, and hold court. The National Junior Tennis League, partly funded by Coca-Cola, is even more ambitious. After a slow start three years ago, it will operate this summer in more than 20 cities, reaching 30,000 youngsters. The idea, says the league's director Ray Benton, is to imitate the spirit of pickup basketball games. "We grab the kids off the street and put them on the court right away, hitting the ball," he says. "We just give them bright-colored shirts, encourage them to yell for each other, and let them go." These programs, says Black Tennis Champion Arthur Ashe, "are tapping a new reservoir of talent and drive. You will find more athletic, agile, stronger kids playing the game in the future."

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