National tennis champions have stories to tell at Atlanta Senior Invitational

Parker has given it the best go of any men’s senior player in American history. The Santa Fe, N.M., resident has won 32 ITF World Masters titles and a record 167 USTA national titles, also called gold balls, the trophies that go with USTA championships. No one else has won more than 125 nationals.

Parker has won six senior grand slams, meaning a sweep of the indoor, hard, clay and grass singles or doubles titles in a calendar year. He’s won doubles gold balls with 25 partners, including his father, Ward; son Chris; and grandson Heys. Almost all were won since Parker turned 35.

Over the past 12 months, Parker has played in California, Florida, Virginia, Rhode Island, Illinois, Kansas and Georgia. Parker played in Turkey last year and Spain the year before in team and individual world events.

Parker defeated Fred Drilling, his doubles partner, for the 80s title at the ITF Masters World Individual Championships in the Turkish town of Manavgat in March 2024. Drilling, now living in Naples, Fla., and Parker first played against each other as 13-year-olds in 1956. They’ve now played each other in eight decades. Today, they are reigning ITF World doubles champions.

Credit: Courtesy of Jimmy Parker

Credit: Courtesy of Jimmy Parker

‘One reminiscence leads to another’

It’s these shared memories and friendships that inspire the effort and travel behind most of the 263 players here, 167 of them from out of state.

“It’s fun to hang out with your tennis-playing buddies and spin the yarns and swap lies,” Parker said. “As they say, the older we get, the better we were. There’s a tennis fraternity made up of all the guys who have shared the experience of tennis competition over the years, and we know so many people from so many places, with so many stories. One reminiscence leads to another.”

The stories are better than matches sometimes.

Drilling has a few good ones. He has played doubles with tennis legends Pancho Gonzales, Pancho Segura, Arthur Ashe, Charlie Pasarell and Bob and Mike Bryan. In the 1960s, Gonzales and Segura grabbed Drilling and another top high school player at the Los Angeles Tennis Club and bet $500 on who’d win playing doubles with them.

Decades later, working in Washington, Drilling gave regular lessons to President Bill Clinton’s secretary of the treasury, Lloyd Bentsen, on the White House court. Under the previous administration, Drilling went to Camp David with President George H. Bush. “Hit some with him,” Drilling said. “Supplied him with rackets and a present for his wife’s birthday from my tennis shop a block from the White House.”

Bob Anderman also has fascinating tales. He’s one of the eight players in this year‘s 85-and-over singles draw. Anderman grew up in Forest Hills, N.Y., and was a ball boy at the West Side Tennis Club, former home to the U.S. Open, in the 1940s. He picked up balls for Bobby Riggs and Jack Kramer and most memorably for Gonzales when Gonzales won the U.S. Championships (what’s now the U.S. Open) in 1948 and 1949.

Anderman also watched Jackie Robinson play baseball at Ebbets Field during Robinson’s 1947 rookie season. Brooklyn shortstop Pee Wee Reese gave Anderman’s father, his dentist, tickets to a memorable 1951 game at the Polo Grounds, where Anderman witnessed Bobby Thomson’s famous shot heard ‘round the world, as the Giants beat the Dodgers for the National League pennant.

Sculptures for Rafa Nadal, lessons for Tina Turner

Many ASI players are fascinating for their professions.

Brendan Murphy, who plays in the 50 division, is a sculptor and artist living in Miami, and he’s done works for Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal along with Warren Buffet and Ryan Gosling. In 2023, he unveiled a seven-foot “Vamos” sculpture at the Rafa Nadal Academy in Spain.

Atlanta’s William King, 76, couldn’t play this year, but the founding member of the Commodores, the soul band, has been a tournament regular for more than 20 years.

Many ASI players are current or former teaching pros. Fitzroy House, 66, gave private lessons to Tina Turner for a couple of years while head pro at Manhattan’s Midtown Tennis Club in the mid-1980s.

“She always sang and danced on the court, and when she was finished, she would say ‘let’s go have lunch,’ or if she was too busy, she would give me my lunch money,” House said. “She was very down to earth. Very nice lady.”

‘Atlanta has lots of great memories for me’

The ASI has attracted a few former ATP stars over the years, such as Mikael Pernfors and Roscoe Tanner, but it’s mostly players who never made it big and never tired of playing ‘‘the sport of a lifetime,” as the USTA calls it.

Aaron Krisan, an Atlanta teaching pro who grew up in Marietta, was an ordinary college player at South Alabama, but he is having a great run, ranked No. 1 in the USTA 35 division. He played in the Italia Cup, the 35-and-over equivalent of the Davis Cup, this year in Turkey.

The No. 1 seed in the 50s is Eoin Collins, a Houston banker. He represented Ireland in the 1992 Summer Olympics. He’s ranked No. 1 in the ITF World 55 rankings.

Howard Herr is the No. 1 seed in the 60 division. He’s a South African who reached the ATP Tour top 300 in the 1980s as an Atlanta resident out of Auburn. In the 1990s, he won the ASI five straight times and became a fixture in Atlanta tennis as a player and popular tennis director before returning to South Africa in 2007.

ASI tournament chairman Curt Dashiell was in Cape Town on business three years ago and looked up Herr and talked him into playing the ASI one more time. This is Herr‘s third straight year back. He is playing doubles with his South African childhood friend, Atlanta teaching pro Colin Smith. They’re also playing at the ITF World 60 Masters next week in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

“Colin and I have known one another for over 50 years,” Herr said. “He is a year older and recruited me to Auburn as he was there already and told me how great it was. We have remained friends. Atlanta has lots of great memories for me. and it’s special to get to come back and see long-time friends and play some tennis.”

The oldest Atlanta player in the singles field is Hill Griffin, a two-time former ASI singles champion, now in the 85s. He lettered at Georgia under Dan Magill in the early 1960s and never quit playing. Tournaments have taken him to more than 10 countries.

Remembrance Flags: Honoring those who have passed

Three years ago, Charlotte resident Keith Richardson introduced to the tournament what he calls Remembrance Flags. Richardson, a member of the Southern Tennis Hall of Fame, got as high as No. 74 on the ATP Tour in 1977. He plays in the 70 division now.

As senior tennis too often brings loss and mourning, Richardson’s colorful flags allow current players to honor those players and coaches who have touched their lives and passed on. The names of beloved Atlanta tennis figures Armistead Neely, John Callan, George Amaya and Joe Becknell are among those on Richardson’s flags.

“This has been amazingly embraced by the players at these events as they add names from their past and present,’’ Richardson said. “For many it has been an emotional and even spiritual experience as they see the flags flapping in the breeze.’’

Credit: Courtesy of Keith Richardson

Credit: Courtesy of Keith Richardson

Still writing their stories

For those still playing, the Remembrance Flags also inspire gratitude. Not everyone still has the health to play into his 70s and 80s. For those who can, their stories are still being written and told.

Jimmy Parker grew up in St. Louis and routinely beat Jimmy Connors in the ‘60s. when Parker was a young former college All-American and Connors merely a promising teenager. Connors’ mother and coach, Gloria, got Parker to toughen him up with practice matches. Parker admits he was wrong about Connors’ prospects. Parker wasn’t sure that the future world No. 1 was as driven as Gloria at the time.

Parker played the first match in the first U.S. Championships that was open to professionals (effectively the first U.S. Open) in 1968. Parker lost to Ken Rosewall on Center Court.

“I then went into the Air Force and flew airplanes for the next five years, and by the time I got out, tennis had taken off,” Parker said. “I decided to become a teaching professional and ended up feeling like I never really worked a day of my life. They pay me for hitting tennis balls? I loved it.”

Parker coached at Rice, his alma mater, then settled in as tennis director at the Houston Racquet Club for 30 years. He’s still working as pro emeritus at Sante Fe Tennis & Swim Club. This is the 74th straight year that Parker has played in at least one USTA tournament.

“For many of us codgers, playing competitive tennis is our lifeline to leading a healthy life and staying in contact with the friends of a lifetime,” Parker said. “There have been so many things to love about the game. The people, the travel, the thrill of competition, the health benefits, have all made playing for all these years such a gift. As I near the ninth inning of a long career, I can look back on a life totally enriched by the game of tennis.”