La Cienega Park Tennis Center in Beverly Hills

Ever since arriving in Los Angeles a year and half ago, I have been playing most of my tennis at the La Cienega Park Tennis Center, which is on La Cienega just north of Olympic, on the edge of Beverly Hills. After New York, where with the exception of Central Park and Riverside Park and a few indoor clubs—and of course Forest Hills and the National Tennis Center in Queens—the public and daily-fee courts are increasingly ragged, it's nice to be at an older facility that still manages to draw a crowd.

It's never fun, for me anyhow, to play at courts where there's not at least a whiff of serious tennis in the air. Now, it's not as if you're surrounded by rising juniors and challenger pros getting in their hits. But you do hear the distant—or not-so-distant, depending on where you are in the complex—thwack of well-struck optical felt. With tennis losing out in popularity to golf and...I don't know, jetskiing or whatever in America, and especially in one-time bastion locales like southern California, it's pleasant to have found a place where the sport is, if not going strong, at least not collapsing on itself. Mind you, La Cienega is pretty typical for complexes and clubs that enjoyed their heyday several decades ago: the pro shop is tatty, the locker rooms are rudimetary, the whole thing sits on top of a parking garage. But there's charm in that. And the courts are kept in relatively good shape. From what I can tell, there seems to be a roster of at least a dozen pros on call for lessons, etc.

Something...funny has definitely happened to tennis in America and in the big cities to make the game into something that has become unappealing as an "elite" distraction. Maybe the pro game so thoroughly fails to resemble the average club match that formerly passionate practitioners have developed a disconnect. Dunno. Maybe it's just become impossible to find three other people who want to play doubles on a regular basis. Who can say?

Regardless, it's a decent place in Los Angeles to play on hard courts. What more do you need?