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
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