ANYONE FOR TENNIS?

There aren't many all year round tennis courts in Manhattan. When flying over the city there are few if any bubbles, hiding tennis courts below their inflated status. With that in mind thousands of kids in Manhattan do indeed play tennis, even in the Winter.

Randall's island used to be home to the largest sewage plant and the craziest of Asylums in the City. It's where New york sent their crap and their insane. Both of those are still there but now these two are complimented by twenty spanking new tennis courts under three giant bubbles. It is an immense tennis center . Bus loads of kids are herded in after school and at weekends for an hour or two of tuition by tennis pros equipped with the best techniques, the snazziest of outfits and the most expensive tennis rackets.

My daughter gets picked up every Monday night at the corner of our street and gets chauffeured over the Tri -boro bridge over to Randall's island to play for two hours and work on improving her game. When she is finished the same bus offers her door to door service and she gets collected right outside our building by the doorman and escorted to the elevator.

Anyone who says that tennis isn't an elitist sport hasn't played it in or near to Manhattan. Reserving a court at 7pm on a weekday or at reasonable times at the weekend costs thousands and thousands of dollars. The cost of sending a child to play every week is so extortionate that it defies all levels of common decency. Yet we still enroll the kids and get excited by their progress. We enter our daughter into competitions and she does really well, including recently winning one of them. She is a fabulous athlete and she loves tennis both as a sport and because of its social aspect. She is soon to be eleven.

The truth of the matter is, living in Manhattan we have to pay a premium for organized professional sports. Space is a rare commodity and so because of limited supply and high demand we pay through the nose to keep our kids sporty and competitive. Manhattan does boast the lowest obesity rate in any county in New York State and its partly because we tend to walk a lot and also due to the fact that kids here are very active in organized sports. Any spare land is utilized by a baseball diamond, a basketball court, a hand ball court or a roller hockey rink. And any instruction in any of the above sports costs money.

Last month I opened up an envelope from my daughters tennis program announcing their rates for the fall 2011 season. I hurt my arm badly because when I fell of the chair, I landed all funny. When I protested to anyone who would listen it fell on deaf ears. That's what it costs if you want your daughter to be good at tennis. The aim here therefore has to be a tennis scholarship to University. Then it would be a good investment. If that doesn't work out then I would have spent a lot of money on two rackets: the one my daughter uses to hit the ball and the one operating on Randall's island that teaches her how to play.