Before tennis became big business, and its players became some of sport’s biggest stars, Ruth Lay was helping build the game’s foundation.
Serving on multiple United States Tennis Association and regional committees, putting on tournaments, setting rules and coaching players, Lay did it all, friends and family members said.
“Ruth had her fingers in so many pies, but they all came out just perfectly,” said Julie Wrege, friend of many years, who coached tennis at Georgia Tech. “For me to have learned many of my administrative skills from (her) was really cool.”
A 1990 inductee into the Georgia Tennis Hall of Fame, Lay was recognized two decades earlier by the USTA for her impact on the game. In 1971, Lay was awarded the USTA Service Bowl, which goes to “a player who makes the most notable contribution to the sportsmanship, fellowship, and service of tennis,” according to the association’s website.
“That was very special for me,” Lay told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1990, not long after her hall of fame induction. “When I was told about it, I was a chaperone for the Southern girls at the championship tournament in Philadelphia. I was called to the phone and it was Mrs. [Hazel Hotchkiss] Wightman herself who called and said I was the first Southern woman to win the award.” Wightman, one of the great players in the history of women’s tennis, was the namesake of the Wightman Cup women’s tennis team competition between the United States and Great Britain.
In 1975 Lay, who won numerous local, state and sectional championships, suffered torn knee ligaments while playing in the finals of the Senior Invitational tournament at WCT Peachtree. She continued to play competitively until 1979, when she began coaching and working behind the scenes. In the late-‘90s she had to put down her racquet for good, but she continued to coach and mentor, said her daughter, Lewis Lay of Alpharetta.
“Unless you were around then, it is hard to understand what she did,” said Elaine Hamilton, outgoing executive director of USTA Georgia. “The tennis game has changed so much… but back then, Ruth helped guide young women through what tournaments to play, how to get wildcards, and things like that. She knew it all so well.”
Ruth Lewis Ryner Lay of Atlanta, died Sept. 7 in her sleep. She was 87.
A funeral is planned for 11 a.m. Tuesday at Roswell Funeral Home, which is also in charge of arrangements. Burial will follow in her hometown of Vienna, where there will be a graveside service at the Vienna Public Cemetery at 3 p.m.
Ruth Ryner’s mother wanted her to play the piano but she ended up on the red clay tennis courts, which were across the street from the family home, more often than she did the piano bench, her daughter said.
“My grandmother was a music teacher and elocution teacher,” Lewis Lay said. “And of course she wanted my mother to follow in her footsteps. But [my mother] had other plans, I guess.”
In high school, then-Ryner played tennis and became quite good, her daughter said. Mostly self-taught, she would go on to attend Agnes Scott College and play there too, Lay said of her mother. In 1947, the year after she graduated from college, she married Joseph E. Lay and worked as a high school teacher for a couple of years. When the couple started a family, she stopped teaching, but picked up competitive play again and began volunteering with different tennis organizations, her daughter said. Ruth and Joe Lay were marred for 60 years at the time of his death in 2007.
“He didn’t play like she did, but he was a good supporter,” Lay said of her father. “She had a dedication to the sport, a true dedication to the sport,” she said of her mother.
In addition to her daughter, Lay is survived by her brother, James B. Ryner of Augusta.
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