Facility as Claremont Honored as Newest Tennis Town
USTA SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
USTA SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
USTA Southern California continues its Tennis Town series, an initiative that shines a spotlight on thriving tennis communities across the region. These towns are dedicated to growing the sport and creating opportunities for players of all ages, backgrounds, abilities, identities, and beliefs. From private clubs and college courts to public parks, they champion grassroots, community-driven programs while fostering an inclusive and welcoming environment for everyone.
Since its launch in 2025, Tennis Towns has recognized multiple communities with rich tennis traditions and strong player engagement. Each feature includes an in-depth written profile researched by longtime Southern California tennis author and historian Steve Pratt, paired with a video spotlight showcasing the people, history, and unique character of the community.
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.
The first two Tennis Town honorees were Bakersfield (March 2025) and Ojai (May 2025), each chosen for their dedication to both preserving tennis history and promoting the game’s future. The series not only honors communities with outstanding facilities, programs, and tournaments, but also highlights the volunteers, coaches, and advocates who make tennis a vibrant part of local life.
Now, Claremont joins this distinguished list as the latest Tennis Town in Southern California—recognized for its deep tennis roots, passionate players, and the remarkable story of how its signature facility, The Claremont Club, was brought back from the brink of closure.
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A Fight to Save a Tennis Treasure
Imagine, for a moment, that all is quiet at The Claremont Club. It’s not an easy thing to do.
Standing on the grounds of the 19-acre facility, you close your eyes and visualize emptiness. There’s no activity on the 25 courts and no rhythmic thwack of the ball on the 16 pickleball courts. The Olympic-size pool deck sits still, with no young mothers chasing their children along the water’s edge. The café patio—normally alive with chatter, coffee cups clinking, and post-match banter—is silent.
Yet just five short years ago, that silence was almost permanent. The closing of The Claremont Club was a stark reality, an unthinkable possibility brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. On August 1, 2020, CEO Mike Alpert announced the facility would shut down permanently due to a steep revenue drop during the shutdown. The news left more than 3,500 memberships—over 10,000 individuals—without a home for their sport and their community.
After Alpert’s decision to close the club for good, a loud and vocal group of Claremont Club members took immediate action and set up a Facebook group vying for support and a new owner that might save the club from property-hungry investors who, according to reports, had an interest in buying the land and turning the club into condominiums.
One of those who took notice was Heidi McKay of the Carmel-based McKay Group.
“I had heard it was for sale and so I brought some of my children down to check it out,” said McKay, whose family also owns the Carmel Valley Athletic Club. “I immediately thought, ‘What a wonderful club, and all these tennis courts.’ We had experience owning other clubs and put in a bid to buy it.”
A few weeks later, McKay got the news that her group had beaten out five other bidders to become the new owners of the esteemed club. But the victory was just the beginning.
“We had no members and no employees,” McKay offered. “We had some big challenges ahead of us, but it was always a labor of love, and we’ve been able to grow and grow. One of the things I love most about this club is coming here and seeing how happy the people are. They love playing the sports we offer, particularly tennis. I love to see that.”
If you have been a tennis player, coach, parent, fan or had any other involvement in the game of tennis over the past 30 years, there’s a great chance you’ve stepped foot on these courts. For the past three years, The Claremont Club has been recognized as a USTA National Premier Facility. If you’ve been, perhaps you recognize the Stadium Court scenes of the young Williams sisters Serena and Venus playing in the King Richard movie that was partly filmed at the club.
Today, The Claremont Club stands as the heart of tennis and the epicenter for this quaint suburb of 35,000 residents, known for its bustling downtown village and college-town charm, nestled in east Los Angeles County 30 miles from downtown L.A. With tennis courts totaling nearly 40, Claremont has few rivals in the entire state in terms of number of places to play within a few square miles.
A Tennis Boom and a Burgeoning Club Debuts in Claremont
The year was 1972 and local lawyer Stanley Clark purchased 100 acres of land in north Claremont with the vision of creating a tennis facility, similar to the one he had built several years earlier, the San Marino Tennis Club.
On July 13, 1973, the Claremont Tennis Club opened its doors with two courts and the historic “StoneHouse,” originally built in 1935, sitting right in the middle of the property. The location was set in wash land at the base of the San Antonio Dam, and it was reported that Clark soon hired a crew to start removing the wash rocks, “one rock at a time.”
Longtime Claremont Club teaching pro Steve Kronseder first arrived from back east in Claremont in 1969 to play for what was then known as Claremont Men’s College. He was one of the first teaching pros at The Claremont Club.
“At the time, there were a couple of clubs, but mostly people played at public parks,” said Kronseder, who coached both the men’s and women’s teams off and on at CMS in the 1970s through the mid-1990s.
Kronseder was on hand during the opening ceremonies in 1973 when head pro Bob Sherman played in an exhibition that included Bobby Riggs, Pam Austin, and Jeff Austin and their 11-year-old sister Tracy, plus Pancho Gonzalez and his son Richard Gonzalez. Clark was a good friend of Gonzalez, who had beaten Clark in the finals of the SoCal Junior Sectionals years before.
The Claremont Club Reaches Greater Heights with Friedman at the Helm
Longtime Claremont Club Director of Tennis Barry Friedman was content running the tennis activities at the Via Verde Country Club in San Dimas when he had an informal discussion with Clark in the early 1990s about the possibility of moving to The Claremont Club, where he first played in 1980 during inter-club matches with the Valley Hunt Club in Pasadena.
The Claremont Club expanded significantly in the 1980s to include 29 tennis courts, a childcare center, racquetball courts, pools, and more, which led to the club dropping “tennis” from its name.
“Stan basically offered me a job and I said no,” Friedman recalled. “I was talking to a friend who said I’d be foolish not to go because of the potential. In talking with Stan, he wanted this to be a hub – one of the top tennis destinations in Southern California. At the time there was a lot of good tennis here, but it wasn’t recognized outside the immediate area.”
Friedman ended up being the perfect find and visionary to lead the Claremont Club, which he has done for 30-plus years, hosting Adult 35 to 80-age group tournaments, four sectional sanctioned junior events, and three national events. The USTA Level 1 Nationals Girls’ 16s and 18s Battle of the Sections recently concluded and is considered the top girls’ team event in the country. It’s an event that Team SoCal juniors have dominated winning the past four years in a row.
Team SoCal before the 2025 Battle of the Sections final against Midwest at The Claremont Club.
(Photo – Jon Mulvey/USTA SoCal)
For 24 years, the club hosted a $15,000 ITF World Tour/USTA Pro Circuit men’s event every September. Friedman said the membership backed the tournament 100 percent and it gave them a chance to watch local college and rising ATP players. Top Americans such as Taylor Fritz, Tommy Paul, Frances Tiafoe, and Reilly Opelka all made a stop through Claremont on their way up the world rankings ladder.
“We had local SoCal players like Stevie Johnson, Marcos Giron, and Brandon Holt play here, and a lot of the members were able to host the players who were on tight budgets. They’d stay in touch and several even went over to Wimbledon and the players gave them tickets to watch them there.”
The Claremont Club is the home site for Western Christian High School, Ontario Christian High, various league finals, and the CIF-Southern Section Boys’ and Girls’ Team Finals for all divisions, as well as the CIF Southern Regional Finals. That’s not to mention various college matches, Tennis on Campus, Competition Training Center clinics, Team Cup Jamborees, and various other national, regional and sectional camps that take place there.
In April, The Claremont Club and USTA Southern California hosted the National Player Development Camp where the top 24 12-and-under boys and girls in the section learned from some of the nation’s top coaches, including eight developmental coaches from USTA SoCal and led by Maureen Diaz, Women’s National Coach of Player Development at Carson.
There have been as many as 19 USTA League teams playing at one time that represent the Claremont Club throughout the year, including men’s, women’s and mixed league teams that compete in the San Gabriel and Inland Empire Leagues.
Amy Croushore is currently captaining two adult league teams and playing on two others out of the Claremont Club. “In the San Gabriel Valley, the tennis community is like a little under-world and at The Claremont Club there’s a whole group of people who are so into tennis. It’s seriously competitive and just more fun to be a part of a team. Sometimes we play five, six times a week.”
No Shortage of Tennis Courts in Claremont
What began with the Claremont Club has turned into a thriving tennis community where you can find multiple places to play tennis, including 13 courts at public parks–eight at Cahuilla Park, three at Morena Vista Park, and one each at Memorial Park and Blaisdell Park. Add to that 12 more courts at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps’ Biszantz Family Tennis Center and 14 more courts at Pomona-Pitzer College.
“I remember growing up in Ventura County and hearing about the Claremont Club and all the events they put on,” said current Pomona-Pitzer Women’s Head Coach Mike Morgan, who was raised in Camarillo playing alongside Hall of Famers Mike and Bob Bryan at their parents Wayne and Kathy Bryan’s clinics. “The community always seemed to come out and support the tournaments. We hosted players during the Futures event when I coached as CMS in the early 2000s, and I remember we had a player staying with us when the terror attacks of 9/11 occurred and the world just stopped.”
Morgan is happy to have returned back to Claremont in 2015 following 11 years building the women’s program into a dynasty playing indoor tennis at Middlebury College in Vermont. “There are just so few places I can think of that have as much to offer in terms of tennis than Claremont.”
“I think the facilities have a lot to do with it,” said CMS Head Women’s Coach Dave Schwarz of Claremont’s tennis prowess. “I go for a walk around my house near Cahuilla Park and it always seems bustling with activity and play. Everyone knows about The Claremont Club and the events they hold. It’s always busy with stuff going on. And the weather doesn’t hurt.”
Four College Teams Among the Best in the Country
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) Director of Athletics Erica Perkins Jasper first stumbled upon Claremont as a visiting college coach and immediately fell in love with the town.
“We have everything you could possibly imagine for an aspiring tennis player just getting started, all the way up to a super senior still enjoying the game after years of play,” Perkins Jasper said. “From the juniors to the amazing college programs, to Adult League tennis to the USTA Level I Family Nationals. You name it, and we have it here in Claremont.”
Just 20 miles east of Claremont, up the Interstate 10 freeway in the city of Redlands, is where a college tennis coaching legend resided for many years. From 1946 through 1984, Jim Verdieck coached the NAIA Redlands men’s tennis team to a 921-281 record. His teams captured 34 titles in only 38 years of SCIAC competition and boasted 15 national championships.
You could say that dominance laid the foundation for what was to come, as the Claremont Mudd Scripps and neighboring Pomona-Pitzer men’s and women’s programs are among the nation’s elite college tennis programs.
It doesn’t hurt to have a world-class, award-winning facility like CMS does: the Biszantz Family Tennis Center was dedicated in 2009, made possible through the generous support of Gary Biszantz.
Biszantz Family Tennis Center has played host to 2011, 2014, 2018 and 2025 NCAA Division III Men’s and Women’s Team and Individual Championships. What made this year’s championships so special is that two local Southern California players captured national singles titles on their home courts.
CMS juniors Advik Mareedu from Yorba Linda and Lindsay Eisenman from Rancho Palos Verdes both hoisted NCAA Division III singles title trophies.
Mareedu’s season is considered one of the best ever in Division III history. After winning the ITA Cup title in the fall, he went 41-1 and just lost just four sets against D-III opponents.
Eisenman was part of the CMS national team title run her freshman season playing at No. 6. After a semester studying abroad in Copenhagen, Eisenman said she struggled at the start of this season and wasn’t sure she would even make the post-season tournament.
“I played free and had no expectations,” said Eisenman, the No. 8 seed who became the second CMS women to win an NCAA singles title. “Playing at home in front of my teammates, family and friends definitely gave me an advantage.”
Schwarz said he thinks Eisenman values her team title over the individual, and she agrees with that. “Winning with your team is so special,” Eisenman said. “It’s just different. They were both amazing accomplishments.”
Eisenman said she chose CMS because of the facility, and that Schwarz trains his team like other top Division I programs. “It’s close to home and they have a high academic level. I think I ended up at the right school.”
Schwarz said it’s important to recruit from the strongest section in the country. “Getting players from SoCal is our bread and butter, but to remain at the top you have to also recruit nationally and I think both programs have been able to do that successfully,” Schwarz expressed.
This year, Pomona-Pitzer’s women’s team finished as Nationals runners-up under the guidance of Morgan. The men’s team is coached by Steve Bickham, who enters his 13th season at the helm.
“As the Director of Athletics at CMS, I might be a little biased, but I would say Claremont is one of the best college tennis towns in America,” Perkins Jasper said.
Settles Family Easy Choice For USTA SoCal Family of the Year
Meet Paul and Kathy Settles, the husband and wife team that make up the First Family of tennis in Claremont.
The Settles serve as Tournament Directors for the USTA National Family Hardcourt Championships in June and the USTA National Husband-Wife Hardcourt Championships in November at Biszantz Family Tennis Center. Kathy has won multiple USTA National Husband-Wife Gold Balls alongside Paul.
“It’s definitely a tricky dynamic to play with your spouse,” said Kathy, who recently captained the USTA 55-and-over Maureen Connolly Cup Team at the ITF World Championships in Portugal. “We have different styles on the court so that’s some of the biggest issues we’ve run into.
“We talk to others and say, ‘You should play with your wife,’ and they’re like, ‘Oh no, we can’t do it.’ I get it. It’s a different dynamic. I’m grateful that we’ve had those moments on the court. It’s not always fun, but you’re working together trying to be better, trying to be better communicators.”
Paul has won a total of 33 USTA National Gold Balls at various age-level and family events and begins his 21st season as the CMS Head Men’s Coach. “It’s not easy,” said Paul, who grew up in Glendale and played college tennis on the East Coast. “I think she would say it’s a lot more difficult playing with me than I would say it is playing with her. Our marriage and our relationship is challenged when we’re out there competing. Kathy’s a great player and fantastic partner. I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
Kathy said some of her best moments on the court have been playing with her sons Christian and Caleb. “To compete with your sons and go through the lows of the losses and then winning a match or a title, there’s nothing like it,” expressed Kathy, who has also coached the Claremont High Boys’ and Girls’ teams. “Just to be able to problem solve your way out of tough situations. Whether you win or lose, it’s a pretty cool feeling.”
Caleb, who currently plays for his father at CMS, teamed with Paul to win the 2023 National Father-Son Indoors and earlier this year won the USTA Gold Ball at the National Hardcourts with Kathy to go along with a USTA Bronze Ball they took home at the 2019 National Grasscourts. Christian, who has won seven USTA National titles with his parents, played at Trinity University graduating in four years and was a 14-time recipient of SCAC Doubles Team of the Week. He spent the 2023 season as a graduate transfer at CMS.
The Settles Family were awarded Family of the Year at the 2025 USTA Southern California Service Awards.
At the 2025 USTA Southern California Service Awards in February, the Settles were named the section’s Family of the Year, but it’s not all tennis in the family as the oldest Ryley played soccer at California Lutheran University graduating in 2018 and James ran cross country and track at Colorado College finishing in 2024.
“I think the thing we hear most often about Claremont is the number of courts we have and the welcoming and fun environment,” said Paul, who in November will captain the USTA SoCal Intersectional 55s and 60s team in Columbus, Ga. “We take hospitality and service really seriously, and we want people to keep coming back to SoCal and enjoying our events.”
In 2013, Paul and Kathy launched Tennis in Our Schools, a 501(C)3 foundation bringing tennis to each of Claremont’s seven elementary schools in the form of physical education and after-school programming. In 2018, the program expanded to the high schools and helped tennis teams in need. The Settles’ have raised over $75,000 for Tennis in Our Schools.
“It’s really just like being Santa Claus on Christmas morning,” Kathy said. “We ask the schools ‘What do you need? How can we help?’ And then we go out and purchase uniforms, racquets, balls. Whatever they need. Tennis is such a great sport and keeps you social and happy. We want to make tennis a great experience for as many people as possible.”
Community of Tennis Lovers Makes Claremont a True Tennis Town
Friedman said what makes tennis so special in Claremont is the community feel, and how everyone helps one another out.
“It could be Paul who needs something, or I could call Mike Morgan or Dave Schwarz,” Friedman said. “We have such a great working relationship. We probably host eight to 10 college matches here each year and we just really have a great working relationship.”
There’s a reason why Kronseder came, and stayed, in Claremont more than 55 years ago.
“How can you beat playing here? It’s lovely. We have the prettiest private courts in the country. It’s a wonderful place to live. It’s a college community. It’s a small little town and it’s grown up a little bit. And we have Mt. Baldy to look straight up at. What can’t you love about Claremont?”
