SARASOTA ― It was a drop shot on which Joe Miller, running to the net for a return, dropped. Ventricular fibrillation. Miller’s heart had missed a beat.
Fortunately for the 71-year-old, Carly Nicholas was around to make sure he didn’t miss them permanently. The manager of the Payne Park Tennis Center, seeing Miller collapse on one of the facility’s clay courts, rushed out with an automated external defibrillator.
“I rolled over and was gone,” said the now 76-year-old Miller. “The key is to be able to have the presence of mind to open that box and put those paddles on just where they need to go. She just knew.”
A conscious Miller was brought to Sarasota Memorial Hospital, where doctors implanted a defibrillator.
“The next morning,” he said, “I could have played tennis.”
And, without a doubt, Miller’s playing buddies in the Suncoast Tennis League would have busted his chops for missing the shot.
It hasn’t always been called the Suncoast Tennis League. Back in 1980, when a group of tennis players in the Sarasota/Venice/Bradenton area had an idea for a weekly tennis competition among senior players from various clubs, they named it the Sarasota County Senior Men’s Tennis League. Think of the old World TeamTennis format, without the mixed genders and venues around the country.
First-year featured 16 teams from 10 clubs
That first year, the men’s over 60 league featured 16 teams from 10 area clubs, with each team having between six and 20 players on its roster. The Sarasota Bath & Racquet Club, Longboat Key Club, Sarasota City (now Payne Park), and Country Club of Sarasota (now the Sarasota Sports Club) each had two teams. The Meadows Country Club, Palm Aire Country Club, and the former YMCA located on Bahia Vista each had one team. Bradenton’s El Conquistador Country Club entered two teams, as did the Courtside Tennis Club, and one team represented Venice, which didn’t have clay courts, resulting in zero home matches.
It’s a stipulation that applies today, even as the Suncoast Tennis League has expanded to 160 teams with more than 1,800 players from 35 clubs/communities. That original over-60 designation has been expanded to include age divisions in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 75s, and 80s.
At those ages, knees, legs, hips, and backs demand a clay surface. “Easier on the joints,” said Fred Budde, president of the League.
Like many of the members, Budde, a chemical engineer who took up tennis after college, arrived in Sarasota in 1988 and integrated himself into the tennis community.
He volunteered to help at the league, and soon enough, was named vice president. Becoming president in 2022, Budde proudly states that the Suncoast Tennis League, which operates from Nov. 1 to the end of March, is the country’s largest per-capita independent tennis league.
“People come to Sarasota from all over for a variety of reasons,” Budde said. “But I’ve had people tell me, ‘The reason I come to Sarasota is to play in the Suncoast Tennis League.’ You’ve got folks who have played here a long time. I think one of the biggest things about it that makes it work is that it’s club against club.”
Payne Park has an advantage
Some clubs, such as Payne Park, have the advantage of a much wider talent pool from which to draw. The Venice Golf and Country Club, however, attracts more golfers than tennis players.
“We only have six players,” said 84-year-old Tony Testa, a team captain. “We have the same six guys. But we won in the 60s and 70s, and we move up every year. We can compete with (the bigger clubs).”
Competition takes a back seat to camaraderie and exercise, but no matter the age division, players want to win. On the Suncoast website, which contains information to rival many professional sports sites, members and team records are meticulously maintained. But with players, some without keen vision, forced to make the line calls, arguments are bound to happen.
“We have a rule: it’s your call,” Testa said. Because matches are played on clay, ball marks are visible. “Most of the players are honest.”
And any player who lets his mouth do the talking more than his racket, will find himself without a court, friends, or game. “The people who are not fun to be around,” Budde said, “tend to find themselves not playing.”
“The seniors,” said 77-year-old Tommy George, a native of Worcester, Mass., who plays on the Payne Park 75-over Level 1 (there are three levels of play) team, “are pretty damned good about not getting into arguments.”
While the seniors play during the week, players in the 45-over division, many of whom still work, play on Saturdays.
Winning team gets banner, caps
Players have their own reasons for playing, but one isn’t the prizes for winning an age division. A winning team receives a banner inscribed with team name and names of each player, which is hung inside Payne Park. Each winning player also receives a cap.
“I got several,” George said. “They are not the best-looking caps in the world.”
Tom Murphy, 74, remembers one match in which his team was getting outclassed. But a player on the eventual winning team went ballistic each time he missed a shot. Finally, his exasperated partner turned to him, saying that even if we make every shot, “all we win is this (bleeping) hat.”
Said Murphy, “It was the best line in competition I’ve ever heard. Everybody is out here to basically have a good time. You want to win, absolutely, but if I don’t, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”
On this particular windy Thursday afternoon, a team of 75-above players from Payne Park is taking on a similar squad from The Venice Golf and Country Club. The level of tennis is good, with several rallies, featuring backhands and forehands, lasting multiple ball strikes over the net.
Catching a breather, the team of Jack Ambrose and Byron Smith spoke of their tennis history. The 74-year-old Ambrose, a basketball player from Buffalo, took up tennis after high school. He moved to Sarasota in the mid-1990s, and has played on four different Suncoast age group teams.
As for the 77-year-old Smith, he played ping-pong as a boy in Walla Walla, Washington, “and I learned how to spin a ball and brought it here. There are so many good players in this league. My biggest regret is that I didn’t come earlier.”
Joe Miller’s biggest thanks is that Carly Nicholas didn’t come later.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: The Suncoast Tennis League features area tennis clubs and its members ages 45 and over
