It’s taken a year and $352,000, but Palm Beach’s tennis program has undergone a transformation town officials have spent a year calling for.
The courts have been renovated, the booking system upgraded and a better tennis pro relationship negotiated. And more improvements are in the works, including a much anticipated pickleball facility at the town’s South End.
The changes have impressed Commissioner Millie Dayton, who lamented just a year ago that the town’s tennis program was the “ugly stepchild of the rec department,” neglected in favor of Palm Beach’s other major recreation program, the Par 3 Golf Course.
“Several of us made some legitimate comments and raised some concerns, and the town took action, which we asked for, and we really appreciate that,” Dayton said.
Recreation Department Director Mark Bresnahan told the Daily News the turnaround was years in the making, but noted a slew of crucial meetings with Rance Gaede, assistant director for the department, that had set the blueprint for the tennis division’s future.
At the top of the list, Bresnahan said, was creating a new management position for the tennis program, and hiring more pro shop staff.
During the October 2023, Commissioner Susan Watt criticized the pro shop staff’s customer service skills and tennis knowledge. “It would be nice if the staffing in the pro shop were a little bit more welcoming … and knowledgeable about who plays, what’s going on,” Watt said.
Part of the issue was that the recreation department had limited control of the program, since the town only had direct management of the part-time employees who were working in the pro shops at the Seaview and Phipps Ocean Park tennis centers.
Moreover, former town head tennis professional Dejan Minic was contracted to manage all the town’s tennis programming, as well as hiring and leading the professional tennis staff. Since the tennis professionals were contracted under Minic, they were not incentivized to report resident complaints to town officials, commissioners noted last year.
To alleviate the management issues, Bresnahan and Gaede concluded that the tennis division required a manager with direct control over all aspects of the tennis program. They tapped Dan Stover for the position, a former professional player with more than 12 years of experience as a tennis director, including for the Willoughby Golf Club in Stuart and Boca Grove in Boca Raton.
“I would say the biggest thing was just bringing that private club experience to a municipal setting, it’s something we continue to strive for,” Stover told the Daily News.
Along with hiring Stover, the tennis department also hired three full-time employees and restructured how it hires tennis pros by offering each pro a direct contract with the town.
“The biggest benefit of having them directly contracted with the town, is having a little more control over the content that we are delivering,” Gaede said. “Because people get lost in the fact that they don’t just deliver individual lessons, they also do clinics, they work with the women’s team tennis. So, we really wanted to take the lead on organizing those and contracting those pros directly helped us accomplish that.”
While the tennis program lost Minic, Gaede noted that two-thirds of the town’s original tennis pros chose to join the new system.
To further streamline the system for customers, the Recreation Department also launched the PlayByPoint tennis booking application in August. It was a major upgrade from their previous system, which required guests to call an automated voicemail from noon to 12:30 p.m., Stover said.
“Then you have to wait for a callback, hoping maybe I got the court, maybe I didn’t,” he said. “Under the new system, they know immediately they have a court.”
PlaybyPoint also allows guests to sign up to clinics or individual lessons online, with guest being able to choose the specific tennis pro for those lessons.
The tennis division’s merchandise also received an upgrade, Bresnahan said, who praised Angela Young, pro-shop assistant at the Phipps Ocean Park Tennis Center, for leading the charge. “She used to be our merchandiser at the Par 3 Golf Course, so she has a lot of experience,” he said.
If a customer isn’t interested with what’s on offer, they can ask for a custom order.
“There are teams and individuals that we’ve already done that for,” Bresnahan said.
That’s all without mentioning the renovated Seaview Tennis Center unveiled in August. Those renovations include a resurfaced courts, a new 10-foot fencing, additional benches, replaced awnings and taller fences between courts to reduce the chances of a ball bouncing onto a neighboring game.
Bresnahan said the next major step for the program will come with the start of the Preservation Foundation-led Phipps Ocean Park renovation project, during which, the town will be upgrading the park’s tennis facility, including the addition of two new pickleball courts. That project is expect to start sometime next year.
“We have so many people that have been waiting for pickleball courts for years, and you know, they’re still waiting,” Bresnahan said. “So we’re hoping that by this time next year, they’ll have that opportunity.”
Diego Diaz Lasa is a journalist at the Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at dlasa@pbdailynews.com.…Read more by Diego Diaz Lasa
