Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Spring 2013 - (Page 74)

SERVE’S UP Clockwise from top left: Cliff Drysdale at his eponymous tennis center; a view from the Club Lounge, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean; Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park’s famed lighthouse. GAME CHANGER Se e k ing a te nni S t une u p, Jay J e nni ngS he a d S to th e cou rtS o f k e y B iScay ne 74 w w w. r i t z c a r lt o n . c o m M My tennis game was missing: No, it hadn’t gone completely AWOL, but it was like an engine with a misfiring cylinder. Three solid forehands would be followed by one that landed 6 feet beyond the baseline. An ace on a first serve would alternate with ones buried in the net. My footwork, never a strong point, left me either waving at balls too far away or fending off the ones that were too close. I needed a tuneup. So I set out for the renowned Cliff Drysdale Tennis Center at The Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne, Miami in southern Florida, where the pock-pock sound of tennis balls is as steady — and as constant — as the surf. After an on-court career in which he won 35 Davis Cup matches for South Africa and a U.S. Open doubles championship, and helped form the Association of Tennis Professionals, Drysdale gained even greater fame as a television commentator while building a tennis management company that now spans the world. Key Biscayne, however, is where he makes his home when he’s not working tournaments, and The Ritz-Carlton center, his first, with 10 green clay hydrocourts and one hard court, serves as a kind of head office, albeit one suffused with his relaxed persona and welcoming philosophy. Square stucco pillars, plentiful plantings, and loose netting behind the backstops rather than chain-link fences and taut windscreens make one think the site was constructed by meticulous, tennis-crazed European villagers. Here, Drysdale often adopts the role of benevolent squire surveying the clinics in progress, as he does when he speaks with me on my first day. He tells me that he dislikes the word “clinic,” because he wants to convey that the experience should be fun — “fun” being his first pillar of instruction. That doesn’t mean it’s CloCkwise from top left: Courtesy of the ritz-Carlton, key BisCayne; kikor photography; pBnJ produCtions/Blend images/CorBis SportS http://WWW.RITZCARLTON.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Spring 2013

Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Spring 2013
Contents
Contributors
Editor’s Letter
President’s Letter
Falling in Love With ... Los Angeles
Design
Technology
On the Boulevards
Shopping
Jewelry
Watches
Family
Local Knowledge
Sports
Abu Dhabi
Seoul
Fashion
Culinary
Let Us Stay With You
Heritage

Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Spring 2013