Tucked away in a corner of Forest Park in Springfield, Massachusetts, there are eight red clay tennis courts. The group that oversees and maintains these historic public courts is kicking off a renovation effort with a fundraiser on Sunday.
The group has enlisted the help of one of the biggest sports stars to come from the city, retired world-class tennis player Tim Mayotte.
Last week, on a quiet late summer morning, Mayotte was back in Springfield, hitting the ball around for a few minutes with an old friend.
His career was a remarkable one. From the early 1980s through the early ‘90s he earned 12 singles titles, made the semifinals at Wimbledon and the Australian Open and won a silver medal in the 1988 Olympics. Before all of that, Mayotte also was a national collegiate champion while playing at Stanford.
But it all started on the red clay courts of Forest Park, just down the street from where he grew up.
“And so, there was a huge tennis community here, I think pretty much led by my family,” Mayotte said. “And we would come over and then from here, we — a couple of us — launched off into the pro tour. But you say the word home. I mean, this really is home for us.”
Clay courts are not common in New England, especially red ones. Mayotte said they provide some benefits for players, and a different challenge than a hard court.
“The big thing is that for older people, [clay] really is by far the most comfortable surface,” he started. “And then, in a tennis perspective, it's much more challenging because the footing is more slippery. Folks need to know that red clay courts in the United States…are really, really rare."
Especially public red clay courts, he said.
“And that's one of the reasons we're really committed to bringing them back here," Mayotte said.
The Springfield Tennis Club maintains the courts. But it is not cheap to do so, and work needs to be done to keep them up and running. Among the improvements club officials say they need to make is a new irrigation system to keep the dust down. Work to the drainage system is also necessary — with all the sediment from the clay running into the pipes and clogging things up.
And Mayotte is front and center as the fundraising campaign begins.
Sitting in a gazebo overlooking the courts that bear his name, Mayotte paused for a moment to reflect on his rise to the heights of professional tennis.
“You go from just playing for yourself, and then all of a sudden there's this whole world,” he said. “But, of course, that's the excitement too. But the pressure also is enormous, and the higher you get, I was top-ten in the world, and as you get further up...the pressure really starts to build because then you start dealing with the egos of the other, you know, great players in the world.”
“Back then, it was John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg and all these guys who were notoriously nasty," he said, "And that made it much more challenging.”
When Mayotte was active as a pro, his exploits on the court were regular features of the evening TV newscasts in western Mass. and across the local papers. He said that support buoyed him while he was competing.
"I remember getting a hundred, 200 telegrams at Wimbledon for each round," Mayotte said. "They'd have a box in the Wimbledon locker room, and I would just have a stack. You know, 'Go, Tim, 'Keep going' — from the mayor or friends."
Mayotte said he has never forgotten about that support. And that's part of the reason why he's back in Springfield to try and help restore the courts where he — and generations of tennis players dating back to the 1920s — learned and played the game.
