Tennis Hall of Fame
Day 3 of our road trip took us to the real impetus for the trip - the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island. I’ve wanted to visit here for years.
I’ll give you a little history so you understand the place. As many of you may know, Newport became the place many wealthy families spent their summers during the Gilded Age (late 19th and early 20th century). That’s why there are so many huge mansions in Newport. Of course, wealthy people had the time and money to engage in lots of activities, so there were a bunch social clubs. One of those was the Newport Casino, which had lots of activities including lawn tennis. Since all the rich folks were there in the summer, this became the site of the first United States Lawn Tennis Association championships. This tournament grew, eventually moved to New York, and then later became what is now the US Open.
The place fell into disrepair, but was eventually restored. Today, it has a museum as well as a fully functioning tennis club with outdoor grass courts as well as indoor courts. Every year it hosts a professional tournament and inducts new legends into the Hall of Fame.
I really wanted to play on the grass courts. I’d never played on grass before, so I booked a court for Leah and me a few weeks in advance. It was expensive ($120 for an hour), but totally worth it. Because we were playing, we were allowed to park in the private club parking lot for free (all the parking around there is paid). We stopped by the club house to get a discount coupon for the museum (another perk of playing), then headed to the museum. They had a green screen photo booth, which we had fun with while waiting for our tour to start.
Here are some more videos and pictures from the photo booth, if you’re interested.
We then took a very interesting guided tour of the museum. We learned about many of the Hall of Fame inductees and the history of tennis. One of my favorite parts was about early racquet sports as well as Court Tennis. Court Tennis, also called Real Tennis or Royal Tennis, is an old more complicated version of the game. More on that later.
One of the fun features of the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum is this broadcasting booth. It lets you record yourself doing commentary on a famous tennis match, then plays it back for you.
We ate lunch across the street from the Hall of Fame at the Newport Creamery. Leah was excited they had a Waffled Grilled Cheese, and both girls were excited to try an Awful Awful.
After lunch, it was finally time to play tennis on the grass courts. We of course had to wear our tennis whites to be allowed to play.
Leah and I did some serving practice side by side. If you’re wondering why she’s inside the line, it’s because she currently plays orange ball tennis, which has a shorter court.
Not sure what’s going on with Leah’s serve technique here, but it cracked Jen up for hours.
This summer, Leah’s school is doing a thing where they encourage kids to take pictures of themselves reading with the Wildcat in interesting locations. After we finished playing, Leah read a bit and got a picture.
There are lots more pictures of our grass court tennis on Flickr, if you’re looking for even more. Playing on grass is very different from hard or clay courts. The ball bounces so low, and there are so many odd bounces. It’s very challenging.
After playing, we explored the grounds a bit more. Not only did we learn about Court Tennis in the museum, they even had a fully functioning court that people still play on. This sport is largely unchanged from the days of King Henry VIII (who apparently played all the time). Sadly, no one was playing while we were there.
We bought some souvenirs, then finally left the Hall of Fame. But our day in Newport was only half over. I’ll tell you about the rest of our day in the next post.
