Why you should experience Beverly Hills Tennis Club in Los Angeles, California.
Beverly Hills Tennis Club is a storied private tennis institution where Beverly Hills' early Hollywood culture meets a club founded against exclusion, championship-level instruction and nearly a century of relationships between professional tennis and the motion-picture world.
Set along North Maple Drive near West 3rd Street and just steps from Santa Monica Boulevard, the club occupies a compact Beverly Hills parcel between the city's commercial center and the residential streets extending north toward Beverly Gardens Park. Five hard courts consume much of the half-block site, placing tennis at the physical center of a property whose restrained scale differs sharply from the sprawling country-club model. A low clubhouse borders the courts, keeping dining and social rooms close enough to the playing surfaces for matches to remain visible from much of the property. The courts support year-round instruction and member play within an unusually concentrated urban footprint, preserving the close physical relationship between players and spectators that has characterized the address for generations. The result is a Beverly Hills institution whose modest dimensions intensify the connection between competitive tennis, instruction and a social history extending deep into Hollywood's twentieth century.
What you should know about Beverly Hills Tennis Club.
Beverly Hills Tennis Club is best known for converting exclusion from Los Angeles' established private-club culture into one of the most consequential intersections between tennis and Hollywood. Fred B. Alexander, Milton Holmes and Larry Bachmann founded the club in 1929 during an era when Jewish players and people working in the film industry faced restrictions elsewhere, giving the new institution a social purpose inseparable from its sporting one. Its tennis stature rose dramatically after Wimbledon champions Fred Perry and Ellsworth Vines acquired the club, using earnings from their professional touring careers to establish themselves in Beverly Hills. Their 1937 clubhouse opening became an extraordinary collision of championship tennis and screen comedy: Perry partnered Charlie Chaplin against Vines and Groucho Marx in a heavily publicized exhibition that became part of the club's enduring lore. Perry and Vines remained business partners for two decades, and the membership expanded across film, entertainment and sport through figures including Barbara Stanwyck, Billy Wilder, Kirk Douglas, Doris Day, Johnny Carson, Walter Matthau and baseball great Hank Greenberg. Another decisive sporting chapter began in 1962 when Pancho Segura became the teaching professional, placing one of professional tennis' most accomplished tacticians at the center of the club's instructional culture. Segura worked there with Jimmy Connors during the formative period of Connors' development, and Arthur Ashe used the club as an in-town base, connecting its Hollywood membership directly with players who would reshape American tennis during the Open Era.
Anne White now carries that instructional lineage as director of tennis after a playing career that began with an undefeated All-American freshman season at USC, included a national collegiate championship and reached No. 19 in world singles and No. 9 in doubles. Pablo Arraya adds another professional route through Davis Cup and Olympic competition for Peru, an ATP peak of No. 29 and junior training under Nick Bollettieri. Eric Taino links the staff to nearby UCLA, where he captained a nationally prominent team before reaching No. 122 in professional singles and representing the Philippines internationally. Kelly Gullett contributes three All-American seasons at Pepperdine, an NCAA final and a professional doubles ranking inside the world's top 200. Clay Thompson extends the UCLA connection through 119 collegiate singles victories and a period as the No. 1-ranked NCAA singles player before entering the ATP circuit and later coaching Nicole Gibbs. Those careers give instruction unusual depth across collegiate championships, Davis Cup, Olympic competition, ATP and WTA experience, preserving the club's long-standing role as a place where accomplished professional players transfer elite competitive knowledge directly onto neighborhood courts.
How to fold Beverly Hills Tennis Club into your trip.
Beverly Hills Tennis Club works as the sporting anchor for a daytime exploration of the city's original landscape plan and the civic architecture that followed Beverly Hills' rapid transformation from speculative development into an independent municipality.
Begin at Beverly Gardens Park, whose origins reach the 1906 subdivision created for Burton E. Green's Rodeo Land and Water Company by landscape architect Wilbur D. Cook Jr., an alumnus of the Olmsted Brothers office. Cook reserved three blocks along Santa Monica Boulevard as green space within his curving street plan; Ralph D. Cornell expanded the concept during 1930-31 into a 23-block linear park incorporating promenades, specialized gardens, pergolas and fountains, carrying an early Southern California application of City Beautiful planning across nearly two miles. Continue to Beverly Hills City Hall, constructed in 1931-32 after 2,000 residents petitioned for a new civic headquarters and the city acquired former Pacific Electric property for the project. William J. Gage and Harry G. Koerner designed the towered complex in an elaborate Spanish-derived style, establishing an architectural center for a municipality whose population had expanded from 500 residents after incorporation in 1914 to more than 15,000 by the late 1920s. Conclude at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, where Ralph C. Flewelling's 1934 Italian Renaissance Revival post office gained a second institutional life after postal operations departed and Beverly Hills acquired the property in 1999. Zoltan E. Pali and SPF:architects preserved the historic building and its Charles Kassler WPA frescoes, then placed the 500-seat Bram Goldsmith Theater in a contemporary annex, with Wallis Annenberg's $25 million contribution driving the conversion toward its 2013 opening. The progression moves from Cook and Cornell's landscape structure for an emerging suburb through Gage and Koerner's architectural assertion of municipal permanence into Pali's conversion of Depression-era civic architecture for contemporary performance, tracing the physical development of Beverly Hills around the tennis club.
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