The above picture was taken for and appeared in a local Myrtle Beach business promotional booklet. It came out weekly. The publication’s name was “Coast”. *Not sure if it was for this publication, or whether we were running ads in the local newspaper, but I recall wrestling with creating small ads for TWL. When you have limited space, every word and image counts, and that provided creative fun. How do you catch someone’s attention with the fewest items? Which words or images need to be bigger, smaller or left out completely?
I see that the above COAST Magazine from 1985 had a $2 price on it. I thought the magazine was a free publication, sent out as advertising for the various Myrtle Beach businesses.
I had graduated from UNC-Wilmington the previous year (1976) and was playing a bunch of tennis, living with my mother in Jacksonville, North Carolina. I don’t recall how I met Doug Echols, but he was the Wilmington businessman who purchased the name, “Tennis With Love” from some ladies who had a small tennis specialty shop, with that name, in Wilmington, NC. I interviewed with Doug and he selected me to be the manager of “Tennis With Love” located in the Rainbow Harbor shopping center in Myrtle Beach, SC. *I thought TWL had closed in Wilmington until I was googling this morning and found they had moved down Oleander Drive into a small house. I drove by this location just yesterday & didn’t see the sign. Might try to stop by sometime now that I know they are still active. I thought it was just a women’s tennis shop, but I see by visiting their current web site that it is not.
I often had questions as to whether Doug really wanted “Tennis With Love” to “work” or whether he was intending to use it for a tax write-off. I wish you could have seen the above picture in color. Behind the two girls in the picture, on the wall, was painted a large frog with a great big tennis ball for a stomach. *The picture of the frog had been drawn directly on the painted divider wall. And, because Tennis With Love did not last very long, when it came time to clear out, the ornate frog had to be left behind. I’m guessing that it was probably destroyed when the divider wall came down.
I say “two girls”. The girl in the white pants was a secretary for the “Rainbow Harbor” shopping center. I don’t recall her name, and the first of two Myrtle Beach “malls” hadn’t been completed yet. *I seem to recall that Doug had been negotiating with someone for a spot in the first mall in Myrtle Beach, but something had happened and I think it was “Foot Locker” got the advantage and went in the mall. Doug had to settle for second best. And that probably was the death knell for TWL. You see, the shop looked great. I was an avid tennis player (would later teach tennis to adults & youth on a “city” level), and I knew the language and game in 1977, so I was a good match for TWL.
“Death knell?” Well, the thing about being in a mall, or not, was that if it was a rainy day at the beach, what do people do? They go to the mall to eat or shop, and that provides “foot” traffic, which at Rainbow Harbor there might be several hours where no customers (or potential customers) came into the store.
The other “girl” in the white tennis dress, and I recall that even for her ultra thin frame, it was a tight fit to get into this dress (just for the picture), was Janice McDonald. I’m guessing that she was probably a Sophomore in college, and this was her summer job. A couple of years later (1979) Janice would win the Miss South Carolina USA contest, and go on to be a world traveler, and television producer (CNN), and even a writer (The Varsity).
There was a deli next door to the tennis shop and I had many good sandwiches there, including Blutwurst. I had even worked out a deal for a discount on the meals I had at this deli. *I do recall that as TWL was “folding” it came time to pay my current tab, and they didn’t give me the discount;-) Still, I think I came to love blood sausage and those other specialty meats from this time.
During my short time in Myrtle Beach, I joined the Myrtle Beach Tennis Club, and got to “call lines” for an exhibition tennis match that included Roscoe Tanner. I don’t recall who the other player was (Stan Smith?), but he was as probably well known. *My memory, not their notability. I do recall that during the exhibition match, I called a ball “out” and I think it was Stan Smith that came over, looked at the spot, and marked it by circling with the edge of his tennis racket. **Now, I might guess that I called it wrong, but he said nothing, and went ahead and finished the match, and I called it as I saw it. ***Not fun calling lines, because if you do it properly, you can’t spend time enjoying the match.
I do recall that the Inter-Coastal Waterway butted up right next to the courts, and at least once, I saw a large boat passing close by, just behind the court fencing.
I think this is the Doug Echols that was a little older than myself (b.1948), and who died in 2006.
I don’t recall what car I was driving in 1977. Could have been the 1971 Pontiac LeMans that mom had bought me for my high school Senior year present. We did have a butterscotch colored AMC Pacer around this time. I did live in Socastee in a shared mobile home.
I think I bought, at wholesale, a pair of Fila tennis shorts & a shirt. I do recall that even at wholesale prices, they were very expensive. It would be amazing to see how small the shorts were, since I have been a “fat” man most of my life, but then I was probably in my prime.
I had one of these that I called a “Red Head”. This was my favorite racket because it combined power with control. Not too long afterward, the larger headed rackets came out and made this an inferior racket because it had such a small “sweet spot”.
I loved opening a new can of tennis balls, listening to the whoosh sound as the compressed air escaped. The “fresh” smell. I preferred playing with Wilson tennis balls because they had less knap than did the Penn balls.
One time, I wore out a brand new pair of tennis shoes in one month. They weren’t poorly made, but I was playing a bunch of tennis. I might play so much tennis that when I went home to rest, my big toes would hurt, and they might still be sore the next day as I was going back out to the courts. I did use Shoe Goo to temporarily repair my worn out shoes, but found that the price of Shoe Goo and the length of wear it provided meant I could buy a new pair of shoes about as cheaply as continuing to apply the Shoe Goo.
My favorite courts were located across town at the Jacksonville High School. At some point, I began to bicycle across town to the courts, even though I had a car. Surprisingly it took only a short time to go across town. Maybe 15 minutes or less, so this was a disappointment as far as getting any real exercise.
During my tennis days, I did go to Richmond, VA (I think.) to a Tennis Vendor’s convention. I also saw Roscoe Tanner, a left-hander, and recall that although his left arm was extremely developed, his right arm looked weak, as though he had suffered some disease in it like polio.
And, I bought a professional quality tennis racquet stringer. I think it cost between $200 – $400, which was a good chunk of change, back then. This was a large, floor model. I don’t recall the name of the company that made it, but probably will. *Googled, and the company was “Wingfield”. Stringing machines are now small, table top models.
John Merritt gave me a couple of white Prince tennis racquets (for free because he felt sorry for me) and I think it was one of those I was using when I blew out the ligaments in my right knee.
*John was sort of a Neanderthal, stocky, muscular man who drove a vintage Corvette convertible. He was a few years older than me, and had “student taught” at Swansboro High School, but not taught me, and I think he was J.V. Football coach at least one year at Swansboro. But, that would have been about 1970-1, and several years later we would meet again and become tennis buddies. For a long time, when we shook hands he would squeeze my hand incredibly hard making me cringe. And finally, one day I decided that I wasn’t going to cringe. I decided that if he broke my hand, I was going to make him pay for the medical bills. When I didn’t cringe, I said something to the effect, “You break it, you pay for it,” and from that time onward he never put the mega-squeeze on my hand;-)
Of the racquets shown above, my favorite was the Red Head. The Head racquet with the brown plastic throat piece is hauntingly familiar, so I must have had one of those. I know I had a Pancho Gonzalzes signed wooden racquet, that I eventually painted solid blue. I strung it with fishing line once, and it only took one swing of the racquet for the ball to slice through the fine string. But, I also strung it properly, but unaware, I began to have incredible shoulder pain. It finally dawned on me to stop using this wood racquet because it was injuring me. I hit a few times with a T-2000 racquet, but don’t recall if I actually owned one, but remember stringing one and hated the extra effort it required on the Wingfield stringer. I hit with the green Yonex that someone else owned, but didn’t like it. I think the aluminum frame was too light and didn’t give me power on the ball.
Hauntingly now, I have an image of an oversized headed racquet that I must have owned and enjoyed using, but I can’t seem to find an image of it online, and I’m not sure who made it. Could have been a Head racquet, maybe even an early Prince, but it had a light greyish plastic throat and I “have the feeling” that I enjoyed hitting with it. May have been what I was using when John Merritt gave me the two white Prince composite racquets. It wasn’t an Arthur Ashe racquet. *I eventually gave the two Prince racquets to Jeff Mitchell.
Finally found it! It was a racquet made by PDP (Professional Design Product). I think I had the grey throated version with the orange decal in the throat. Note the similarity between the Red Head and these PDP racquets. *Yes, for me, before going to the oversized headed racquets, this PDP racquet was my favorite. I was always looking for power & control because I had small wrists and hands and had to play a lot of tennis to have enough strength.
I think I read somewhere that you had to hit 350,000 tennis balls before you could become “good”. And, between the playing, and hitting against “the wall,” I easily surpassed that 350K benchmark. I was never that good at the net, because I had small wrists and didn’t have a lot of strength to block shots at the net. I had a decent backhand and forehand, and I enjoyed putting English on my serves. I liked changing up speed and slice or top spin, on my opponents, and trying to move them around, forehand and backhand.
NOTE: I’ll mention this other, slightly tennis related, note here. My second year in college, at Chapel Hill, I had a Freshman roommate that replaced the previous roommate (who came from Liberty, North Carolina, and had a girlfriend in Sevierville, Tennessee) who dropped out of college during the school year. The replacement guy was from Raleigh and he knew how to “cuss up a storm.” In fact, he was the first person I heard that used more than one cuss word in a single sentence. Not verbatim, but he might have said something like, “You motherfxxxing asshxx cocksuxxer.” A string of profanity. Unfortunately, I thought that was something to be emulated. I don’t recall his name, but he was an experienced tennis player and had a couple of gray Arthur Ashe composite rackets. I recall picking one up from off his bed in the dorm room. I wasn’t interested at all in tennis at that time, and he could have provided me with an excellent introduction to the sport, but I never asked. It would be the next year, when I was attending Campbell College, that I would start to teach myself how to play on their tennis courts that were located behind the Campus Post Office. *That building is no longer the current Post Office, and the tennis courts are no longer located there.
Our dorm room (318?) was located in Aycock Dorm (that dorm name dropped many years later because of that Governor’s racist tendencies). Most of the year, our room window would be open because we had really good heat from the radiator, and the room would just get too hot if the window was closed, even on most cold days. Well my cussing roommate had a game he played with the people that lived across the quad in Lewis Dorm. He would go to our open window and yell out across the way (not even sure you could actually see across because of the trees), “Lewis, Lewis, Lewis…” waiting between each time he said the name “Lewis.” And finally a reply would come from someone in Lewis dorm, “What.” And he would always say, “Eat Shit!” He did that over and over again, and I don’t know why anyone in Lewis Dorm would have ever answered him after the first half dozen times. “Lewis?”
Many years after my stay in Aycock Dorm, the open area between Aycock and it’s neighboring dorm were joined adding extra internal dorm space. Where we had parked bicycles was now part of the inside of this conjoined double dorm. *I did try to visit Aycock once, and got up the stairs at the one end of the 3rd floor when the warning bell, closing the dorm to outsiders, rang. It was then that I realized that Aycock was no longer a men’s dorm, but had been changed to a woman’s dorm. I turned around quickly and headed down stairs.
I recall that one time I flew high above Aycock Dorm in a Marine helicopter. The Marines were doing a recruiting stunt at Carolina, and were offering helicopter flights to students. To my chagrin, the immediately previous flight to mine, they had flown the helicopter all the way back down to the Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) at Jacksonville, North Carolina. That would have been a really fun trip. Not sure how quickly you could have made that trip, since you might be able to go 150 miles an hour, and fly mostly in a straight line. But on our flight, we flew high above Aycock Dorm, so much so that the utility trucks, that were painted Carolina Blue, were smaller than my little finger nail. *I’m sort of surprised that I actually took that helicopter ride. Apparently, I’m not deathly afraid of flying, or I would not have taken that trip.
I recently drove down to Washington, North Carolina and between Wilson and Greenville, on Highway 264, there is a sign for the birth place of “Charles B. Aycock,” the North Carolina Governor. He was a contemporary of Governor Lindsay Russell (a distant relative of mine) who immediately preceded Aycock in the Governor’s Office. Aycock & Russell were both lawyers, but different Parties, but both respected one another. When Russell left office, he left the Governor’s Mansion well stocked with food, and in a nicer condition than his (Russell’s) predecessor had, with empty alcohol bottles strewn about the place.
NOTE: I took the AMC Pacer with me to Seminary, in Lousiville, KY in 1981 (the year after my mother’s death). The Pacer eventually had problems with it’s “rack and pinion” front steering mechanism. I think it was explained that one or more ‘teeth’ had broken off, which would mean steering the front wheels, when turning, would “skip a beat”. I think I spent $600 to get this fixed on the Pacer, and then drove it down to Georgia and gave it to my dad. Not sure when I came back to visit my dad, but by that time, the Pacer was acting as storage for some of his junk, and sitting lifelessly in his yard. *At one time, I think I counted about 14 derelict vehicles in this yard… and a partially constructed garage. Both the garage and his sprawling house were both deteriorating as my visits spanned several years.
When dad died I told Donna (my half-sister) that all I wanted was his last driver’s license. He had collected an enormous amount of “junk” throughout the years (tools, knickknacks, etc.) and all this stuff cluttered his domain. But, I also gave Donna and Sara (his last wife that he had divorced before his death, but they were still living in the same house together at the time of his death) a bit of advice, that they chose to ignore… I said, “If you arrange for someone to come in and clear off the lot, make sure that the arrangement is for them to take everything. Don’t let them ‘pick -n- choose’ over the best stuff and leave you with the junk to get rid of.” Sometime later, I think it was Donna that mentioned that ‘they’ had come in and took all the good stuff, and now she & Sara were having to pay to get the junk removed. **I tried.
Bill Gibson, II 