New Tennis Courts Unveiled with Match for the Ages: Madrid vs. Vandeweghe

It wasn’t Bobby Riggs vs. Billie Jean King, but the pair playing on the remodeled tennis courts at La Mesita Park were equally contrasting.

Mayor Art Madrid had about 60 years on WTA professional Coco Vandeweghe as they batted around a ball Tuesday morning after a 20-minute ceremony heralding the reopening of the courts across from the Davis Family YMCA.

Closed for two weeks, the courts underwent a $50,000 makeover thanks to American Express (the donor), a combination of luck, hard work and attention from city staff, county tennis officials and  marketers of the Mercury Insurance Open women’s tennis tournament under way at La Costa resort.

Local tennis pro Vandeweghe—who beat a Romanian the night before in the first round—sat amid city brass and county tennis legend Ben Press on a muggy morning in the high 80s, and accepted a key to the city—a tiny key for a tiny city, Madrid said.

With 50 people watching, including dozens of kids with Fresh Courts program T-shirts, Vandeweghe, 19, noted her start in the sport at age 11, after trailing her older brother to tennis games.

“If I have an option to play on courts like this, it’s a privilege,” said Vandeweghe, who lives in Rancho Santa Fe.

Richard Zaino, president of the company that did the repairs, described how the old courts were cracked, pitted and uneven after 10-plus years of use since resurfacing. The project used an acrylic product called Pexiplave to make the courts seem brand new—the same surface used recently at UCLA, he said.

The result is three standard courts (36 feet by 78 feet) and four children’s courts of 20 feet by 36 feet. It’s perhaps the second such children’s court facility in San Diego County, after the Barnes Tennis Center in Point Loma, Zaino said.

But Barnes charges, while the courts at La Mesita Park are free to anyone, said city recreation staff.

The project came together after two years—with city recreation supervisor Michele Greenberg-McClung seeking grant money through the U.S. Tennis Association, and the local district headed by Geoff Griffin picking La Mesa as a project venue for the Fresh Courts program.

Ben Press—the local coaching legend whom Griffin called “the most important person in San Diego for tennis”—also helped make the remodel happen in La Mesa. His efforts were recognized with a Fresh Courts Community Leadership Award.

After a series of short speeches—punctuated by posters being toppled by the breeze, one almost hitting Vandeweghe—the tennis pro took to the smaller courts for some lobbing with the children.

Soon Madrid took his turn playing Vandweghe—five minutes of gentle returns from a woman who said her fastest serve is 120 mph.  Then she challenged a teenager to return her serve on an adult court.

The kid didn’t stand a chance.