75 Years On, The National Public Parks Secret Is Still Safe.

The National Public Park Tennis Championships is perhaps the nation's best kept tennis secret. And, lest anyone get the wrong idea, that's not a bad thing. Even for a tournament that has been around for 75 years.

"That is a strength; it shows you the passion that people have for it," says Jodie Adams, the Springfield (Mo.) Park Board recreation supervisor who has been a 20-year advocate of the tournament as a player, organizer and now member of the National Public Parks Tennis Association board. "Now it's time to celebrate it."

For this the 75th edition of the National Public Parks Tennis Championships, to be played July 30 through August 5 in St. Louis Park, Minn., there will be much celebration. The National Public Parks Tennis Association (NPPTA) has worked for months to track down the event's scores of past champions, planning a recognition ceremony slightly reminiscent of the champions parades Wimbledon and the US Open have had in recent years.

This is a particularly special occasion, to be sure. But the National Public Parks Championships is generally always a celebration, not at all the usual tournament in which a player checks in 15 minutes before his scheduled match time, plays his match and goes home after a reasonable rest period. The National Public Parks are a bit comparable to being a week-long getaway with tennis as the daily social activity.

"There's an easy camaraderie that goes on there that I have particularly enjoyed," says NPPTA board member Alan Schwartz, who is also first vice president of the United States Tennis Association, but, more importantly, an eight-time National Public Parks champion. "Every walk of life is represented, from the street car conductor to heads of corporations."

It is best, perhaps, to think of the National Public Park Tennis Championships as a peoples tournament. That is, after all, what Dwight Davis intended it to be when he founded the event in 1923, exactly 23 years after establishing the premier annual international team competition in sports, which we now call Davis Cup. His hope was to develop more grassroots tennis players and supporters of the game.

This idea of Davis's was effective then and the National Public Parks remain a viable means of encouraging grassroots tennis today.

The United States Tennis Association, recognizing the value of the National Public Parks Tennis Championships, now supports the tournament under its USA Tennis umbrella. USA Tennis pathway programs, of course, have generated more than 800,000 tennis players at the grassroots level during the past four years. Many believe more can be done to promote grassroots tennis in public parks through improved synergy among the USTA, the NRPA and the NPPTA. "The three organizations ought to be talking more," Schwartz says.

The National Public Parks Championships used to be important to cities nationwide as a means of improving their facilities and promoting their grassroots players. "If we needed to have courts resurfaced, we held the National Public Parks," says former NPPTA executive director Hollis Smith, adding that the Los Angeles parks system used to go as far as giving its players airfare and spending money to go to the tournament. "The next year, St. Louis might need their courts resurfaced. So you would have the National Public Parks there."

As things are now, however, the National Public Parks Championships is still a huge event. It has almost 40 events for men and women, including wheelchair events. Most spectacularly for wheelchair competition, the tournament also has a stand-up/sit down division, in which players in a wheelchair partner with able-bodied players.

"My staff is worried about all the events," says NPPTA President Marcia Bach, who is also executive director of the USTA Northern Section, which is holding the tournament. "But that's what makes it fun."

Andre Christopher is senior writer for the United States Tennis Association.