Tennis Club Nets Praise

I recently returned to Massachusetts for my 15-year Amherst College reunion -- stick with me here, please -- which in essence marked a decade and a half since I last played tennis or squash competitively.

Jerome, my old varsity teammate in both sports, introduced me to his latest girlfriend by announcing, "This dude used to be a seriously killer tennis player." (Yes, he still talks like that and, yes, I was at the time playing beer pong, just for old times' sake.)

Puffed up by this description and with Springsteen's "Glory Days" blasting on my inner stereo, we decided to hit the court the next day along with another two-sport racketman, Ted the Butcher.

Long story short: It did not go well. Within the hour, we were all flat on our backs, gassed and peeved, muttering about the endless errors we'd committed and that, no, really, we'd once been good. Needless to say, our significant others were unimpressed by the display on or off the court.

In the years since our departure, Amherst has added spectacular indoor tennis, squash and fitness facilities, fueling my sense that I'd been born too early.

And the pending arrival of the CityView Racquet Club in Long Island City, N.Y., only underscores my sense that I have impeccably bad timing: I leave New York City for the country only to just miss the opening of a centrally located, luxurious-but-affordable private tennis, squash, fitness and spa facility where I could have recaptured my form. (No, really, I'd once been good.)

It's safe to say most tennis fans were hoping that come U.S. Open time, the incomparable athlete and sportsman Roger Federer would be gunning for a calendar Grand Slam.

After losing a listless French Open final to his arch-nemesis, the brutish, indefatigable Rafael Nadal, now we'll have to content ourselves with CityView's debut, scheduled for just prior to the event. Join up and you'll have a bit less scratch for the $8 hot dogs at the National Tennis Center, but that's not a bad thing.

The $10 million club will take up 80,000 square feet on the rooftop of the old Swingline Stapler building, just over the Manhattan border in Queens, and as such, its lounge and juice bar will no doubt have, as the name suggests, great city views.

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