Back to TopThe orange ball was pioneered by John P. Ware using spray-on paint
In the winter of 1963, an equipment innovation pioneered at Fox Meadow brought new color to the game. Because paddle in the north is often played in snow, the traditional white ball was difficult to see.
John Ware decided that coloring the balls might solve this problem. "I got a can of fluorescent paint, orangey-red, and started spraying paddle balls. These crusty orange balls worked pretty well until they dried out and cracked, and you got paint all over your clothes. But they were the precursors of the present yellow ball."
The APTA 1963 Annual Meeting Minutes included the following recommendation of Rules and Equipment Chairman George Harrison:
"The committee has spent the past year in an unsuccessful attempt to inveigle the ball manufacturers to produce a regulation ball spray painted with a fluorescent yellow-orange paint. . . . We suggest the member clubs purchase balls [...]
Sullivan was President of the APTA in 1964 and 1965, and was on the Board for many years prior to that, serving as secretary, treasurer, vice-president, and chairman of the nominating committee.
During his tenure, the association improved its communication with the membership, and set the sport on a more professional footing by demanding quality umpiring and giving APTA more control over tournament draws.
Walter H. Close, Jr. elected FMTC President (1963-1964)
Back to TopWalter Close (1916-1991) was know as a "doer" at the APTA as well as at Fox Meadow. The retaining wall he built between the club porch and the tennis courts still stands.
Fox Meadow was Walter and Betty Close's first love. All of their best friends were there and it was the nucleus of their social life. They played tennis and paddle tennis and planned, executed and attended all of the parties.
No one cared more about the grounds and the plantings than Walter. He was house and grounds chairman when it was decided that a retaining wall between the porch and the tennis courts was needed and he became the chief designer, foreman and construction worker.
Starting in 1959-60 Close and his crew of volunteers began to plant trees, dozens and dozens of them. And, when there were droughts he saved rainwater from the gutters of his home and somehow transported it to Fox Meadow to water his precious seedlings. Close claimed that over the years the Club had planted more that 256 trees to screen the paddle courts and to prevent the lights from bothering neighbo[...]
The Minutes paid a tribute to the late Fessenden Blanchard who had died suddenly shortly after the meeting.
Two of the 1963 National Tournaments recorded the largest number of team entries in the history of the APTA - 85 teams in the Mixed Doubles and 83 teams in the National Men's Championshps.
The Minutes reflected two important initiatives:
A National Boy's Tournament was established:
"Over the past year, a keen interest in an APTA Boys' Tournament was reflected by many member clubs and individuals. The APTA Executive Committee has therefore decided to create and endorse a new National Boys' Doubles Tournament. The provisions of this tournament are as follows:
a. It is to be a pure junior tournament, not to be confused, with the USLT Junior Tournament age rulings. It is open to all boys who have not reached the age of 20 by the date of the tournament.
b. The bowl to [...]
Blanchard, a co-founder of the game, suffered a heart attack at the Harvard-Princeton football game at Harvard stadium. A 1910 graduate of Harvard, he was a leader in textile research, a past president of the Textile Research Institute (1941-1945) and, for many years, head of his own industrial relations firm, which he founded in 1948. He served as the first President of the APTA, from 1934-1938, and was a tireless promoter of the game in the early years. He was among the first group of individuals inducted into the Platform Tennis Hall of Fame in 1965. In addition to authoring two books on the game, he also wrote widely on yachting.
One of Blanchard’s reports, prepared for the Massachusetts Development and Industrial Commission and made public in 1951 after a two-month dispute involving charges it was being suppressed, told of a “widespread belief” that the executive and legi[...]
From 1929 until his death in 1963 Blanchard had kept a detailed Scrapbook about how the game started and developed and those that made it happen. It provides a unique insight into the early years of the game.
Blanchard also had an earlier scrapbook covering 1928 - 1940. There is significant overlap between the two and the earlier one has a number of old photographs that were "borrowed" and not returned.
During his tenure on the APTA Board in the early 1960s, John Ware began looking at clubs with dedicated junior programs. In an effort to learn how to encourage other clubs to strengthen their programs, he visited the Englewood Field Club in New Jersey to observe its program. Ware found it to be so impressive that he suggested the APTA sponsor a tournament for boys.
In 19631 Fox Meadow hosted the first National Boys' Doubles, chaired by Rawle Deland and John Ware (both, appropriately enough, sons-in-law of the game's founders).
The APTA named the Championship trophy for the recently deceased Hall of Fame inductee Earle Gatchell
Hall of Fame inductee Earle Gatchell was one of the leading pioneers and proponents of the game.
Gatchell was a great supporter of junior players and the trophy for the Boys Junior Championships which started in 1964 was named after him. [Also see APTA 1963 Annual Meeting Minutes]
The Men’s 45+ was discontinued and was later reinstated in 19721.
A Men’s Senior 50+ event was added as the new Senior Men's event.
In the Men’s, David Jennings and Oliver Kimberly, the previous year’s finalists, emerged as the winners over Thomas Holmes and Michael O’Hearn.
Charlotte Lee and Buffy Briggs won their second straight Women’s.
The Fox Meadow pair of Zan Carver and Barbara Koegel won the Mixed (Zan had wanted to take a cigarette break after they had split two long sets, as was his way, but Bobbie would not let him, as was her way!).
Germain Glidden and William Park won the inaugural 50+.
William deSaussure IV and Geoffrey Nixon won the inaugural Boy's Junior event [Also see APTA 1963 Annual Meeting Minutes], the first of three straight titles for the team.
Note 1: The reason for this was that the APTA concluded that their initial d[...]
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