On the sandy proving grounds of Santa Monica beach, Steve Goldfield, 60, looks down the makeshift court at his opponent -- 52-year-old contractor Dan Casey. Casey hitches up his pants and plants his bare feet. Waves crash in the distance and sea gulls trace lazy arcs overhead, squawking as they go.
Goldfield steps up to a piece of volleyball tape marking the baseline and tosses a ball over his head to serve. But this is no volleyball match. Goldfield deftly swipes a racket across the ball -- a tennis ball -- sending it spinning over the net. Just before the ball hits the sand, Casey dives and just barely catches it with his racket, lobbing it high over the net. Sand flies everywhere as he scrambles to his feet. The two begin to volley, whacking the ball with conviction, but with less force than one would on a hard court -- giving it just enough love to coax it over the net.
On the nearby bike path, joggers, bicyclists and even a few Segway riders stop and stare at Goldfield, Casey and the 20 other sweaty players flailing away. Many are covered in sand, looking a little like giant breaded chicken cutlets.
"What is it?" says one pedestrian. "Beach tennis? Cool!"
In Southern California, where all new ideas are treated equally, a sport combining swimsuits and tennis might just have legs. After all, of the 24 million tennis players in the U.S., 2 million are in Southern California, says Annette Buck, of the United States Tennis Assn./Southern California Section.
Underscoring Southern California's love affair with tennis, Cardio Tennis -- a workout combining tennis and high-intensity drills -- hit the ground running after its official launch at the U.S. Open last summer. By September it was already being offered at 70 facilities, and today that number has risen to about 80.
Mike May, a spokesman for the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Assn., says playing tennis on a sandy court isn't as wacky as it might seem.
"Tennis is traditionally played on a number of different surfaces: grass, clay, wood," May said. "It's very flexible as a sport, so it's not surprising that there would be a new form of tennis rising."
By all accounts, beach tennis provides an excellent workout for the glutes, quads and hamstrings and, to a lesser extent, the arms. The sand not only forces the muscles to work harder, it slows the game considerably, making it adaptable for seniors and kids -- if not the ambitious couch potato.
