The First of Six Lessons for Lester Elder

At the Fabled DCTC

In Palm Desert, California

 by

Robert J. Ray, Senior Tennis Player

(Age 88)

To escape the slippery ice of a normal Seattle winter, Mr. and Mrs. Lester Elder rented a cute condo on Jack Kramer Lane at the Deep Canyon Tennis Club (DCTC) in Palm Desert, California.

It offers world-class relief from winter.

No ice. No snow. No fighting the sharp biting wind.

Mrs. Lester’s brother owned a home in Rancho Mirage.

Her cousin owned a home half a mile away.

In a medium-short day of driving, the Lesters could whip south to visit friends in Sedona.

They headquartered at the DCTC because Lester loved tennis.

He started playing tennis when he was sixteen. It was three years of tennis ignorance and make-do slices before he took his first real lesson—from Coach Fred Earl, who ran the tennis program at Modesto Junior College—where Lester felt lucky to fill the number 13 slot on a 12-man squad.

*****

Lester fell in love with tennis. His bad habits were ingrained. He kept taking lessons. Three decades earlier, before his knees betrayed him, Lester had the good luck to work with three top tennis coaches—Dennis Van Der Meer, Vic Braden (at the Tennis College), and Timothy Gallway, of Inner Game fame. When teaching the game Lester liked small groups, kids and old people. As Lester’s strokes got better, his knees got worse.

To orient himself to the DCTC, Lester signed up for lessons with a famous teaching pro at Deep Canyon.

*****

The DCTC sprang into being in the last decades of the 20th century. The first reigning tennis pro was Frank Feltrop, a local boy, who came back home after a career spent teaching tennis to movie stars (Rita Hayworth, Mickey Rooney, Errol Flynn, et al) at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where he arranged doubles matches for potentates like the Shah of Iran and Russia’s own Premier Molotov. When Molotov wanted to play, Feltrop said: “We had to close the courts. And 23 FBI men surrounded the place.”

*****

Feltrop comes to life in Frank Deford’s book on Bill Tilden— Big Bill Tilden: The Triumphs and the Tragedy:

“For matches, Frank Feltrop was one man who would still let him [Tilden]come by and use his courts. Tilden would drop over to the hotel out of the blue and ask Feltrop if there was anybody around….”

*****

As the first tennis pro at Deep Canyon, Feltrop taught lessons. Then he ran the place. His memorial avenue, Frank Feltrop Drive, encircles the Deep Canyon Tennis Club. The extra-wide thoroughfare is home to cars and trucks, bikers, strollers and dog-walkers.

The club itself has a lush non-desert feel, green grass and multiple swimming pools and flowering plants and big healthy trees.

The Lesters rented a condo on Jack Kramer Lane. To reach the courts, you follow the serpentine Don Larson Lane, using the swimming pools as sign-posts.

Walking along these memorial pathways (Bill Tilden Lane, Don Budge Lane, Alice Marble Lane, Arthur Ashe Lane) you feel the weight of tennis history and the timeless world records set by players who wielded racquets made of wood.

The club is tennis-commodious—a dozen tennis courts, including a sunken-view performance court with bleachers. For every two courts, there is a water fountain—fresh chilled water, which made Lester almost certain of his survival in the unaccustomed heat—which revealed an understanding of how dried out you can get when you switch from wintry indoors to playing tennis in the sunwashed desert heat.

The courts are blue with a subtle purply undertone. The ball touches down and then sits up. Walking along, you see senior players in very good shape, with deep tans that remind you to wear long sleeves and to be generous with the sun tan lotion.

The men at Deep Canyon moved faster than your average senior.

The better women players hit with more slice than topspin. (Good omen: the slice was Lester’s bread-and-butter shot.)

*****

The month is February. Snow and ice in Seattle. Sun and soft desert breezes in Palm Desert.

The walk from their Jack Kramer condo to Court 10 takes 10-12 minutes.

Lesson One

Down the narrow sidewalk from the Pro-Shop, your ancient arthritic feet clopping past courts 1-2-3-4-5-6, descending five concrete steps past the gateways for courts 7 and 8, then you bypass Court 9 and enter the hallowed arena of Court 10, the sun-scorched stage for your wintry tennis education in the desert.

And there was the coach, just finishing up with a lesson.

*****

The head coach at the club welcomes Lester with a smile and a precise fist-to-fist post-Covidesque handshake. His body is athlete solid. His eyes are sharp. The time is 9:30 on the clock, but Lester is already feeling the heat.

(When the Lesters left Seattle, the thermometer read 28—icy streets and a sharp cold wind. At 9:30, in his first desert lesson, Lester hated having to worry about feeling over-heated.)

In the pro shop Lester had signed up with the Head Pro for three lessons at one hour each. After five minutes into Lesson One—with Lester stumbling in the heat, Lester was feeling the pressure of hitting on a strange new court.

Eyes of Federer

Because of his age (88) and his arthritic knees (2), Lester has trouble tracking high balls. If he takes his eyes off the court, it’s like losing his grip on the entire universe.

On Court 10, Lester fretted about falling.

Seeking some wisdom, he asked to work on his eternal problem—nailing high balls.

But the Coach had other plans—he named that kickoff lesson “The Eyes of Roger Federer”—Federer was famous for keeping his eyes locked on the backside of the racquet strings. After the ball was long gone there’s Federer on the screen still looking at those strings.

You can verify this phenomenon on TV.

When Federer gets a close-up, the camera guys linger, shooting those billion-dollar eyes.

*****

To check Lester out, the Coach starts by tossing balls to his forehand, forcing him to move to the ball—easy stuff, but Lester stumbles twice—then the coach tosses one right at him, challenging his footwork, forcing Lester to dance sideways and backwards to get his ancient body out of the path of the ball and into a hitting posture.

The Coach is in excellent shape, with the muscular precision of the natural athlete. Early in that first lesson, the Coach exudes a solid knowledge of the game.

In his younger days, the Coach had played at the pro level—far above Lester’s clumsy club tennis. Competing against other pros gave the coach a deep understanding of the game, and of himself.

Which is why Lester was paying him—to learn those tennis secrets.

When Lester takes a lesson, he tries to follow the lesson with full attention. Tennis is more fun when you hit the ball right.

The right grip.

The right backswing.

The right contact point.

The right follow-through.

You play better when you watch the ball instead of the immediate future—where you want the ball to go.

So when possible, Lester stops looking into the future and focuses on the seams of the ball.

He stops tracking his shot as it clears the net.

He stops trying to peer into the misty tennis future—the sure sign of a clueless amateur.

And when Lester keeps his head still—and tells himself that, by some miracle, he does possess the eyes of Roger Federer—that simple idea helps him hit cleaner forehands.

*****

The courts looked blue with a slight purplish undertone.

The white lines were sharp-edged, marking the break from blue courts to green exteriors.

Stepping aside to hit an inside ball tossed by the Coach who stood across the net, Lester moved just far enough to put a reverse spin on his next shot, because he knew that the coach was checking to see if the pupil was alert to the spin.

*****

And when Lester did manage to keep his head still—pretending that he was inside the brain of Roger Federer, feeling the ghostly honor of seeing through Federer’s eyes, trying to keep his head still while taking a look through the backside of the racquet as the ball spun out of sight—there appeared a certainty that the ball had cleared the net, certain because Lester could hear the subtle sound of contact — ball kissing those  strings just right.

That’s when his heart gave a beep.

That’s when he looked up.

Because of his heart, Lester felt crazy. He felt thirsty, overheated, elated. The lesson was only half over. The hot desert sun reminded Lester where he was.

He sucked down some water. His head whirled. The savvy Coach suggested a schedule change—switching to half-hour lessons instead of an hour-long lesson that would shunt Lester toward the hospital. Smart man, the coach.

High balls next week? he says.

Absolutely, says the Coach.

*****

In the Pro Shop Lester signed up for five more lessons, 30 minutes each. And when he teamed up in Saturday’s Iron Man doubles—(World Team Tennis Scoring–first team to win 4 points gets the game) —Lester’s shots were sharper, and his eyes stayed glued to the backside of the strings.

Just like Roger Federer.

Thanks, Coach.

Read More about Lester Elder’s Quest for Ultimate Tennis in Robert Ray’s new book called

Play or Die: Senior Tennis and the Art of Spin