USTA Southern California is proud to introduce Tennis Towns, a celebration of thriving tennis communities across our region. This initiative highlights local towns that have been instrumental in the growth of SoCal tennis and where tennis is more than just a sport – it’s woven into the fabric of daily life. These towns are the heart of Southern California’s great tennis legacy.

Each Tennis Town selected in the ongoing series written by longtime Southern California tennis author and historian Steve Pratt and accompanied by a video feature, embodies the passion, excitement, spirit, and impact of local tennis at its best. The Tennis Towns have been instrumental in the growth of SoCal tennis through a robust tennis scene, with active players of all ages and levels. These communities welcome all players, regardless of age, background, ability, identity, or beliefs and provide grassroots community-driven programs, including NJTL chapters, Community Tennis Associations and hosting tournaments from the 12-and-unders all the way up to many many hosting pro-level events.

Through this initiative, USTA Southern California will spotlight these communities – from the Central Coast to San Diego and the Inland Empire to the Pacific Ocean – sharing their stories, history, achievements, and contributions to the growth of tennis in a region where more than 2.5 million people played tennis in 2024. 

USTA Southern California is thrilled to recognize the City of Bakersfield as the first recipient of the Tennis Town honor.

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As the grandfather of Bakersfield tennis, Alan Hodges has seen it all during his 89 years living in the San Joaquin Valley city known for its country music scene, agriculture and rich oil fields.

But Hodges will tell you it’s the game of tennis that runs deep in the heart and soul of Bakersfield.

Looking over the 10 courts of the venerable Bakersfield Racquet Club on a recent morning, it was easy for Hodges to gaze to the west a block and a half toward US Route 99 and recall what it was like as an 8-year-old boy racing bikes on the tennis courts at Jastro Park, where today just one tennis court remains surrounded by 12 pickleball courts.

Word soon spread of the delinquent nature of Hodges’ activities using the tennis courts as a racetrack and he was confronted by Lake Lovelace, a former World War I fighter pilot who had settled in Bakersfield and became the town’s first tennis pro. He encouraged Hodges and his friends to come out and try tennis, using the courts for their intended purpose. And so Hodges did just that and a life-defining decision was made.

Shortly after, there was talk about the possibility of a new tennis club being built just around the corner on Pine Street.

“From 1944 to 1948 I heard about how the Bakersfield Racquet Club would get started,” Hodges recalled, adding a few local businessmen tennis players came up with the idea of building a member-owned and operated private tennis club selling shares of stock to raise money to build the club. “I knew about the racquet club before there was a racquet club. So, it opened in the fall of 1948, and I got a job keeping the ping pong room clean. I was also a janitor and the gardener and a lifeguard in high school.”

To understand Bakersfield’s love of tennis is to understand the players and where they have played and gathered for the past 115 years. 

The Places They Play

The sprawling Kern County city is home to the “Bakersfield Sound” and the honky-tonk music of legendary musicians such as Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. Kern County is the second most productive agricultural county in the United States, and California’s most productive oil-producing county, but the game of tennis has always been at its core and the lifeblood in this city of nearly a half a million people.

In the late 1930s “Big” Bill Tilden played an exhibition at Jastro Park. The Nov. 6, 1939, edition of the Bakersfield Californian reported, “Tennis, rapidly coming to the fore in Bakersfield to a point where it is an important cog in the sports whirl of the city, will reach up to the sports heights this week to pluck much of the glory and fanfare from old King Football.”

As one of the oldest tennis clubs in California, the Bakersfield Racquet Club for 76 years has been the hub of all things Bakersfield tennis. “When you step inside the club, it’s almost like a moment in time,” said Mark Fredriksz, who for the past 12 years has served as the director of tennis at BRC. “I compare it to Wrigley Field or Fenway Park. It’s got a mystique to it.”

Paul Yanez has been a member at BRC for 37 years. “As soon as you walk on the courts here you feel like this is a special place,” said Yanez, who played for Cal-State Bakersfield, which dropped its men’s program shortly after in 1993. “This place makes tennis in Bakersfield special. Just the people here and the support they give to tennis is amazing to see.”

The BRC’s 10 courts, of course, are not the only place in town to play. There are seven courts at the Seven Oaks Country Club, six at the Stockdale Country Club, which opened for tennis in 1972, and four at the Bakersfield Country Club. Beale Park is the oldest park in Bakersfield and the first place tennis was played opening in 1908 and still has three courts with new lights installed last year.

Bakersfield City Parks and Recreation boasts 65 parks with tennis courts at 12 of those adding up to more than 40 courts for public use, such as Silver Creek Park, Compass Park South and Centennial Park. But the pickleball pressure is immense here, like everywhere.

“The concern is that once we lose courts to pickleball, we will never get those courts back,” said Tracy Macnair Burrell, a local tennis historian with a connection to the BRC dating back more than 70 years as her parents were original members when the club opened. “This club was literally built by the members, and they called it a pipe dream. Well, 76 years later and that pipe dream is still going.”

Bakersfield Racquet Club is the hub for USTA League play with more than 60 teams a year competing. Bakersfield native Beth Kuney has been the USTA League Coordinator since 2014 and her father Mark Van Voorhis was a founding member of the Bakersfield Tennis Patrons. She served for eight years as the Kern Community Tennis Association Executive Director and last year was invited to the US Open where she was recognized at the Champion of Equality event for her decades of service to local tennis programs.

“We are creating the opportunities, we just need to have the facilities where people can play,” Kuney said. “BRC and Stockdale have been incredibly generous with their courts. We just don’t have the public courts. We maybe have one or two, but no place with more than three. We’d love to have a relationship with the high schools. At a time when we’d like to be gaining, we are losing courts.”

Macnair Burrell played No. 1 doubles for Stanford and opposed a young Chrissie Evert in doubles in the juniors. “During the tennis boom there were hundreds of us running around the club,” she said. “We’d play tennis, eat lunch and jump in the pool. Our parents would drop us off and we’d spend the entire day there.”

A young Hank Pfister was right alongside Macnair Burrell during those carefree days at the club. “BRC was a way of life for us,” he said.

Six Players From BRC Played at Wimbledon in Mid-1980s

You could call the Pfisters the first family of Bakersfield tennis. Originally from San Francisco, Pfister’s father Hank Sr. moved south before Hank was born to coach basketball and tennis at Bakersfield High. A true benefactor, the elder Hank was instrumental in founding the Bakersfield Tennis Patrons in which Hank Jr., would later help merge with the Kern Tennis Council to form what is now the thriving Kern Community Tennis Association.

Hank Jr. would go undefeated at Bakersfield College and was an All-American at San Jose State before spending 11 years on tour with a career-high ranking of No. 19, two French Open doubles titles and impressive wins over Hall of Famers like Connors, Tanner, Vilas, Ashe, Nastase and Stan Smith. 

“They called me the ‘Bakersfield Redneck’,” said Pfister, who would share carpool rides with Macnair Burrell and others to play junior tournaments in Los Angeles. “It was a great tennis life.”

Now 71, Pfister spent 28 years as the Director of Tennis at Stockdale CC and is retired from teaching but can still be found at BRC watching young juniors and assisting with the Bakersfield College team. 

Pfister is part of the 160-plus national titles that have come out of the Bakersfield Racquet Club, and there’s one year in particular when he was paired in doubles in a Wimbledon pro/senior event against Bakersfield’s greatest player ever, Dennis Ralston, that Pfister recalls fondly.

“For me growing up I heard about what he was doing and got to watch him play at the L.A. Tennis Club,” said Pfister of Ralston, whose formative tennis years were spent at Jastro Park coached by Lovelace before he went on to work with Pancho Gonzales and won four Grand Slam doubles titles. “It all came full circle that one year we played at Wimbledon. That’s pretty cool, two guys from Bakersfield playing at Wimbledon. In fact, there were six players from our club that played Wimbledon during different years in the mid-1980s.”

Besides Pfister and Ralston, Brad Rowe, Bill Maze, Marianne Werdel and Camille Benjamin all represented BRC at the All-England Club around the same time, with the latter three reaching the world top 25 during their careers. “If that happened today, you’d have people coming up to you and saying, ‘What is the Bakersfield system?’ ” Pfister said.

There were national champions way before the six played at Wimbledon, such as Jack Lynch winning the Boys’ Nationals in the 1930s. Sally Moore Huss won Wimbledon Juniors in 1958 and made the women’s singles semifinals the following year before retiring at age 21 and becoming a world-renowned artist.

“It was Dennis who put Bakersfield on the map,” said Hodges, who claims to have beaten Ralston the last time they played. “I was in high school, and he was 11 years old – and it was an upset.”

Inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987, Ralston won the Davis Cup as both a player (1963) and a captain (1972). And it was because of Ralston that a Davis Cup tie took place at the Bakersfield Racquet Club against Canada in 1965.

BRC Hosts Two Pro Circuit Events Each Year

Shortly after he arrived as the new director at BRC, Fredriksz conceived the idea to bring pro tennis to the club and in 2014 – with the help of co-tournament director Yanez, Edgar Pankey and Kyle Northway – the first Bakersfield Tennis Open took place and does so each March following the Indian Wells Masters. The ITF World Tour men’s event is part of the USTA Pro Circuit and offers $30,000 in prize money. A women’s pro event was added last October.  

The Bakersfield Tennis Open finals will take place Sunday, March 23rd. Top 20 American Frances Tiafoe and Jenson Brooksby are past winners of the BTO. Wildcard Amelia Honer from UC-Santa Barbara won the inaugural women’s event in October. There is no admission fee to watch the matches.

“We’ll get 300 to 400 people out here each night for matches,” said Jerry Matthews, the President of the KCTA Board of Directors. “The addition of the women’s pro tennis event is important because the young girls, just like the boys, can now look up to the professional players. They are watching the future stars of the game. It’s only a matter of not famous yet.”

Fredriksz said the pros are housed by BRC members and they hit with the kids and get to know the families. “The kids follow them on Instagram and some even text with them. It’s been a huge inspiration for them.”

Robert Limpias has been a member of the KCTA Board for over 20 years, serving as President for the past 10. He said there’s a simple reason the BTO has thrived and is being recognized by the USTA National staff this week for 10 years of tournaments.

“It’s the community,” said Limpias, the Director of Tennis at Stockdale CC since 2020 and a Bakersfield resident for 45 years. “It’s the involvement you have from every tennis club and every player who gets involved in the BTO. It’s incredible what this town does.”

KCTA’s Motto – “It’s All About the Kids” 

The word community comes up again from Limpias when speaking about the KCTA and the impact it has had on developing new players and giving back.

“The goal of the KCTA is to get high school kids who can’t afford tennis to be able to play,” Limpias said. “Nearly every high school in Bakersfield is sponsored by us and we give out thousands of racquets and shoes and clothing to kids.”

Before each girls’ and boys’ high school season, the KCTA hosts a drill clinic and gear giveaway where the players are outfitted for the season.

“When you try out for football, they give you a helmet and shoulder pads,” Matthews said. “But when you try out for tennis there’s nothing. Our focus is the high school level and getting new players into the game. For many of our families, the racquets and court shoes don’t fit into the family budget. We try and fill the need and provide some proper instruction so they will continue to play after high school.”

Macnair Burrell has served as a board member and executive director for the KCTA and the Sportsmanship Award is named for her. “There’s always been this volunteerism and willingness to give back with the KCTA,” she said. “The greatest days we have at the club are when the KCTA has clinics here at BRC.”

Marty Martinez knows all about the KCTA and what they have done for his program. As the East Bakersfield High School varsity girls’ tennis coach, Martinez and his team have participated in past clinics where racquets, clothing and shoes were handed out to members of his team like Gia Gutierrez and Joselin Sandoval.

“The KCTA is our biggest supporter,” said Martinez, whose team went 30-1 last season after enrolling in KCTA-sponsored lessons and finished second in the CIF-Central Valley Section. “The donations and the lessons and the equipment have meant so much for our program.”

Gutierrez and Sandoval were encouraged to try out for tennis once they entered high school. They both say tennis has taught them to be more committed, be on time and maintain healthy relationships. They both plan to continue playing at Bakersfield College.

Kuney stressed giving players like Gutierrez and Sandoval opportunities is the central mission of the KCTA. “The high school kids that we serve know that there’s this big community of adults that are cheering them on all the way through their season,” Kuney said. “Whatever their level is we’re excited to see them out there.”

It’s the people like Beth Kuney, Alan Hodges, Tracy Macnair Burrell, Jerry Matthews, Hank Pfister and others that make Bakersfield special – a true Tennis Town.

It’s people like Paul Yanez, the former college player who stayed in town and helped bring pro tennis here, and who understands the importance of giving back. “We have a passion for tennis, and we want other people to have the same passion.”