Grand Slam dreams at The Tennis Club

It is early Thursday afternoon, and it is crowded inside the Ojuko juice bar at The Tennis Club at Newport Beach Country Club.

Members of The Tennis Club’s Grand Slam High Performance program talk and order juice drinks and smoothies. Many of the orders are handled by Ojuko owner Blake Emery.

The Tennis Club owner Sean Abdali, who is also the Grand Slam program director, sits at a table near the middle of the room. He looks at the promising young tennis players around him, counting players from cities such as Oceanside, Anaheim, Laguna Hills, Los Angeles and Pasadena, as well as players from Spain and China.

There is an energy in the room, as music plays outside. To get back to the front of the club, one has to walk by a DJ booth.

It becomes clear that this isn’t your grandfather’s The Tennis Club, or even your father’s. But Abdali remembers years back when he was training at Nick Bollettieri’s famous tennis academy in Florida, and how music often was playing.

“A lot of our adult members aren’t big fans of that, so we don’t play the music in the mornings when they’re playing,” Abdali says. “But our kids really love it and our pros really love it. We really treat our junior members equal [to] our adult members.”

Later, Abdali says he wants to thank many of the older members at the club for their patience.

“I am so thankful for them not only welcoming these kids, but also supporting them by coming and watching their matches, or applauding for them,” he says. “They are really supporting the next generation.”

Things have been going well for The Tennis Club in recent months. The junior program at the club started in January, and the High Performance program two months ago.

He has almost 120 high performance players in his Grand Slam program, ranging from three stars on the website Tennisrecruiting.net to “blue chip” prospects. And there are 17 different coaches from 12 different countries.

Bollettieri, who remains friends with Abdali, visits the club every so often for support. He’s scheduled to come again on Aug. 15-16. Bollettieri’s son Jimmy has been in town this week and has run some adult clinics. Both father and son were at The Tennis Club last month as well, for a mini-camp.

“The whole place was packed,” Jimmy Bollettieri says. “It’s not easy to get my dad somewhere, he’s always got somebody coming after him for something. But again, I think that relationship that Sean has shown, I think he’s taken what he learned at the academy and he wants to do the same thing at another place.

“My dad, once he sees that, he’ll come out and help you out. That’s how it works. I think there’s that personal attention, whether it’s with my dad or the pros here. They’re getting it.”

Jimmy, who coaches in Miami, says he likes what he sees at The Tennis Club’s program.

“You have so many juniors playing in California, but with that many, I don’t think there’s enough breaking through to go to the top,” he says.

“That’s what I feel. I’ve been to a lot of tennis facilities out here [in California], but this is the first one that feels more like the [Bollettieri] academy is. It’s very open and very friendly, and it can only grow that way hopefully.”

Abdali, a 40-year-old North Tustin resident, wants to dispel rumors that the courts at the club will be whittled down to seven, from the current 24 courts. This was something he himself said last October, when the club held a ceremony to celebrate numerous renovations.

“We don’t believe that we’re going to be losing our courts any time soon, so for that reason we are now strongly considering putting in a few clay courts at our club, that may go in as early as October or November,” Abdali now says.

“Yes, we are going to go down to less courts, but that plan has been delayed. We have been speaking with the land owner [Robert O Hill] and the golf realty, and we have an agreement to push that down for at least a couple of years, although we think it will be much longer than that.”

Of course, a high performance program is nothing without high performance players. Abdali certainly believes that he has those currently at the club, including the Branstine sisters, Cassidy, Constance and Carson, who live in Orange.

Cassidy plays tennis at UC Irvine, while Constance is an incoming senior at Villa Park High being recruited by programs such as Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, Georgia Tech, Missouri, William and Mary and Northwestern.

Carson, the youngest sister who is 14, is a very highly regarded junior player who played at the USTA National Clay Court Championships this past week in Memphis. She advanced to the round of 32 in the girls’ 18s.

Constance was excited when she heard a program would be starting up in Newport Beach.

“I was really excited because I knew this facility and I had played tournaments here in the past,” Constance says. “There’s so many courts, and he has a great faculty of coaches here. Everyone treats you really well, and there’s a lot of individual attention here.

“I think that’s what separates this from a lot of other places. This is a specific training facility. Being in Southern California or just Orange County, you have a lot of court situations. Other places I’ve gone to, members are the priority, but here the players are a priority, which I think is awesome.”

Abdali knows there are other options for top players to go, like Advantage Tennis Academy in Irvine and Dent Tennis Academy, which started at The Tennis Club and now resides at Los Caballeros in Fountain Valley. But he also believes that having dedicated court space is a big plus.

Other top players currently training in the program include the McCray sisters, Morgan and Megan, who played at Oklahoma State before leaving college last year to pursue their pro career. Maxi Duncan, a promising 13-year-old, moved to Costa Mesa a few months ago to train in the Grand Slam program as well.

There is also more local talent, like Newport Coast resident Max Pham and Emin Torlic, who will be a freshman at Sage Hill School.

“Here we have the luxury of having a lot of courts, and controlling the courts ourselves,” Abdali says. “The kids don’t really have to fight with the club for when they’re going to be training. The biggest benefit that we have, besides the coaches and having legends like Nick Bollettieri here helping us, is that we have the courts for matches. We’re the only facility, only academy that can offer 20, 30, 40, 50 matches on a daily basis, because we have 24 courts. That really makes it really special.”

And despite all of the talent from around Southern California, Abdali says he really wants to reach out to local players as well.

“Right now my No. 1 goal is to reach out to our community here in Newport,” he says.

That includes not only the youngsters, but some people a little bit higher on the totem pole as well. Newport Beach residents Coco Vandeweghe and Madison Keys both advanced to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon.

“I know that Nick was going to be reaching out to Lindsay [Davenport, the former world No. 1 who coaches Keys] to let her know what we have going on here, to make sure that they know that the facility is open to use,” Abdali says. “We definitely will have the best pros from around the world coming out here to use our facilities, and hopefully motivating our other kids.”