Profile

Holding court

Jack Bryan, a tennis instructor at Davis Islands' Sandy Freedman Tennis Complex, has shared a court with some of the game's notableplayers.

[Times photo: Ken Helle] Local tennis pro Jack Bryan, 65, warms up with a few forehand volleys at the Sandy Freeman Tennis Complex on Davis Islands.

By MICHAEL CANNING
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 21, 2003

DAVIS ISLANDS -- Take the traits of an ideal grandfather: soft spoken, kind, encouraging, humorous. Add in the legs of a much younger athlete, with more than five decades of tennis experience.

Now you've got a grandpa who can take you apart on the tennis court. Or more likely, teach you how to do the same to someone else.

Most people don't have grandfathers like this. Luckily Jack Bryan can be booked for $30 an hour. But he might not be able to work you in until next week. He keeps busy at Davis Islands' Sandy Freedman Tennis Complex, filling every day of the week with lessons.

It's not out of necessity. He shares a West Shore Palms condo with his wife, Mary, who works for the City Attorney's Office. He drives a fast sports car.

It's not even really a job. Ask him what his favorite hobby is.

"Teaching tennis," he replies.

Any other hobbies?

"No."

In fact, only one other sport once managed to interrupt Bryan's love affair with tennis. That was jai alai.

But well before that, Bryan discovered tennis at age 16 and played on the Plant High School tennis team. From early on, the sport was all-consuming.

After graduation, he bounced around four different colleges -- Emory, University of Florida, University of Tampa and Florida Southern. He averaged a year at each, which he explains by saying, "I wasn't a smart student."

"I thought I should play tennis," he says.

And he did, competing for all four schools.

His tour of colleges was interrupted by a two-year stint in the Army. His slot on the All-Army tennis team kept him from getting sent to the Korean War.

In the mid to late 1950s, Bryan worked as manager at the old Embassy Hotel (now a University of Tampa dorm) and played lots of tennis.

His ranking hit No. 7 in the state. He was city champion "at least four times," he says. A European tour of tournaments brought him up against the world's best players and to the hallowed courts of Wimbledon.

Not long after, Bryan took to jai alai and spent the mid to late '60s playing at frontons in Tampa and around the state. He gave it up in 1970.

He returned to teaching. Throughout the '70s and '80s he held head-pro positions at Al Austin's Racquet Club, Treasure Island Tennis and Yacht Club and East Lake Woodlands.

By then, the list of notables who had shared a court with him was formidable: Sandy Freedman, Judy Alvarez (a former doubles partner), Dick Greco, Harry Lee Coe (another doubles partner), Pam Iorio ("fantastic, "a real good athlete"), Al Austin, Rudy Fernandez, Lawton Chiles, Mike Scionti, Andy Hardy and even movie star Elke Sommer.

In the late '80s, Bryan became an independent contractor with the Tampa Recreation Department, teaching at the city's new tennis complexes at Hillsborough Community College's Dale Mabry campus and Davis Islands.

Now he teaches only at Davis Islands.

Although he's a grandfather, he doesn't even consider the thought of retirement. Or even a vacation.

"I love it. It's a vacation. I would die on a tennis court with a racket in my hand. That'd be fine."

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