Game, set, match ... and kicking up sand
Marc Altheim, the founder and commissioner of the Beach Tennis USA Tour, says its hard to give his hybrid sport a real label.
"It's a finesse sport," the 44-year-old said. "It's eloquent in its simplicity."
In November 2003, Altheim was vacationing in Aruba with his family. After a game of tennis at a local resort, he walked along the beach with his tennis racket in hand, and saw a large crowd around the beach volleyball nets. They were watching a game, but it wasn't beach volleyball; it was beach tennis.
The BTUSA, which will stage its second tournament/demonstration just south of the Santa Monica Pier today starting at 10 a.m., which we covered in today's Daily News column, is drawing thrill seekers by the minute as those rollerbladers, cyclists and skateboarders heading along the bike path stop to try to figure what's going at the beach volleyball courts just beyond the large parking lot off Barnard Way.
The hope is to have 16 men's and eight women's advanced teams ready to start play in the pro-side of the tournament, with amateurs registering up to the minute on the other side, trying to see if their skillset matches up to their idea of how tennis can be played with that pippin'-hot sand under your bare feet.
Introducing the sport to an athletic-minded Southern California crowd may seem the easy part, but the net results are mixed.
“L.A. will always have competition for your time, and the thinking of many around here is they don’t want to make a decision until tomorrow about what they’re going to do, so we try to be flexible in filling out the brackets,” said Alex Querna, the BTUSA executive director based in the organization’s offices at Raleigh Studios in Manhattan Beach. “But once they find it’s an easy learning curve, they have fun regardless of their level of ability.”
Hoping to create as much buzz as an AVP's pro beach volleyball event, the BTUSA Tour parties on through Santa Barbara and Long Beach later next month before finishing up in New York on Labor Day weekend.
For a better feel about where it's come and where it's heading, here's more of a Q-and-A with Altheim:
Q: How would characterize the way last year's introduction event in Santa Monica played out?
A: "Santa Monica was the California debut. That stretch of beach is a perfect place for traffic. Santa Monica is a quintessential beach community known throughout the world. We made a little boo-boo by having it too early in the year, in April. A lot of beach-goers aren't there that early in the year, but it ended up being a good tournament with a high level of quality players. Most of them were former college players from USC or UCLA, or current tennis pros at various facilities. That's the kind of people this tends to attract, those who may have just missed out on playing on a pro tour, but tennis is still their first love. Singin Smith (the former pro beach volleyball star) was our MC and he'd seen the sport and was hitting the ball around with everyone. He thought it was a worthy venture, and that's a good thing for a guy of his stature. Steve Bellamy, then of the Tennis Channel, also came down and saw us, which led to a deal with them."
Q: Do you have problems explaining beach tennis to those who ask, or is the name enough of a clue about what's involved?
A: "The first question I always get is: Does the ball bounce? The typical disparraging, at least in my eyes, is the comparison to badminton. Maybe at the highest level of the game, but not from an elementary school gym level. There are a lot of diving and trick shots. It's just that we have a depressurized ball. Whether you play tennis or not, if you're a pro or not, to a person I can tell you no one says, 'What the heck is this?' They just love it and ask why someone hasn't done it before?
"We've had some critics, but we've been featured in tennis magazines, so that helps with credibility. The International Tennis Federation has been watching us from afar. Unbenownest to me, a similar-type sport has been going on in Italy, Germany and pockets of Europe for 20 years, but with a paddleball. The version I found in Aruba was much different. I really think we're a different sport, a cousin of tennis in a way the ITF can get behind us."
Q: Do beach volleyball players have a tougher time making the transition than tennis players?
A: "Maybe 20 percent of those who play it are non-tennis players, more beach volleyballers or surfers. I played beach volleyball and it's a much more difficult comparison. Our main component is a racquet. It's harder to teach a 7-year-old how to play beach volleyball. Beach tennis is a simple learning curve."
Q: What's the five-, 10- and 20-year plan for this?
A: "Beach volleyball really set a trail for us, and one day I'd like to see beach tennis in some sort of Beach Olympics, with sand soccer, beach wrestling, the whole carnival atmosphere.
Q: What's your background in getting this off the ground?
A: I majored in sports representation in college but ended up building homes for a non-profit homeless group before heaidng into lawschool and developing real estate in New York. I guess deep in my soul I always was idea-orientated and creative ... and a total beach bum.
"I watched enough ESPN2 and saw a need for content on the sports landscape. If you can show ping pong from 10 to 11 p.m. on a Thursday night, why not this? I felt there was a vaccuum for more content. And with this, it's been validated.
"My goal isn't to get rich off this. It's just to bring it to the U.S. and allow people to enjoy themselves. Maybe someday a Nike or Gatorade will see it and then the sky's the limit."
For more on the tour schedule (which has stops in Santa Barbara on July 14-15 and in Long Beach on July 28-29 to complete the West Coast Series), official rules and other FAQ, check out the Beach Tennis USA official website, which includes a video highlight package of the 2006 season.
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