Swing and a Miss: Tennis in New Orleans

I moved here from a town of tennis aplenty.  Free, public, city ran courts were everywhere, and lessons and community outreach programs dotted every other court.  That was North Carolina, and as we planned our move to New Orleans it never even dawned on me to check on that state of tennis in this city.

After two years of searching I'm not much further on my quest.  First, I found free courts in Jefferson Parish (4 courts at a school, at least half an hour drive), Atkinson-Stern in Uptown is nice, it is at least a little cheaper for paid spots at $7 an hour, with seven clay courts, although they can be a little dry and don't expect them to be swept.  I have occasionally seen children's lessons here and they have Mixed Doubles on Tuesdays, woo.

Audobon has seven clay courts that cost $11 an hour.  They offer group lessons and clinics, are ran by four tennis professionals, and have absolutely no information about any other programs they run for juniors or adults on their website.

Now, we move onto the big tennis balls on campus-City Park Pepsi Tennis Center.  I have to say, the facilities are on the whole quite excellent.  There are 26 courts, 16 hard, 10 clay, and they are $12 an hour to play on hard, $15 for clay (also, do not expect these to be swept, but do expect to see remnants of group lessons to be left all over the courts, such as ball tubes, balls, trash, etc.).  They run a Friday night doubles the first and third Friday of the month-laughable.  That is all the information they have on their website for programs available for the public to participate in.

By this point we are already at a piss poor standing as far as programs, availability, accessibility, and outreach, but my friends, I have saved the best for last. We live in the St. Claude area and after searching Google maps for at least an hour looking for public courts I stumbled across the Oliver Bush Playground in the Lower 9th Ward.  The park features four free hard-courts that were just recently resurfaced and reopened in September of 2012 after seven years of dormancy from Katrina.  I visited these courts last week, about 14 months after the park was completely re-done, and they are the worst tennis courts I have ever been forced to play on.  I say forced, because usually if I ever have run into courts this bad, there were always other options, I don't really feel like paying $12 for just an hour at City Park, so we really had no other choice.  There are NO courts nearby.

It began with us canvassing the courts to find the one with the least amount of glass shards, which proved a difficult task.  A Miller Lite forty was smashed between two courts, a Bud Lite box in the corner, lighters, female deodorant, and fast food trash littered each court.  We kicked away the trash and glass, and cleared up a court enough to play.  Within thirty minutes we had five kids sitting on the bleachers asking if we had extra balls and racquets. After an hour and a half we had nine kids show interest in playing, they cheered us on, asked the rules, and all asked if they could play.

It is bad enough that there is such a complete lack of free public courts in a city of this size, but to allow what little we have to go into such disrepair is despicable.  It would take one hour, ten racquets, and a basket of balls to bring a little something special to these courts.  It would take the city not just using the reopening of a park in the Lower 9th as a publicity stunt, but to actually service what they have built to assist the community.  You never know who the next Williams sisters or Roddick will be, and you never will the way things are going in New Orleans.