Sunbelt — The Magazine of Summer Living

Vol. XI · No. 7 The Weekend Pictorial Price 35¢

July 1974 · Special Photo Issue Printed in Palm County

Photo Essay · Americana

Long Afternoons on the Baseline

From bleached municipal courts to dusty desert main streets, a new generation is rewriting the rules of summer — one serve, one stroll, and one roll of slide film at a time.

Story by M. Callahan · Photographs by The Sunbelt Staff

There is a particular hour, somewhere past four o'clock, when the light on a tennis court stops being merely bright and becomes something closer to syrup. The chain-link fences glow. The painted lines soften. Every backhand seems to hang in the air a half-second longer than physics should allow. It is the hour photographers wait for, and the hour when the game itself seems to slow down and pose.

We spent three weeks this June chasing that hour across the Sunbelt — from the public courts of Bakersfield to a roadside lot outside Tucumcari where the parked sedans outnumber the customers two to one. What we found was not the country-club tennis of the television broadcasts. It was something looser and sunnier: pleated skirts and canvas sneakers, wooden racquets with fraying grips, and a confidence that belongs entirely to the young.

Player mid-forehand on a sunlit court — **On the court —** Mid-forehand at the municipal courts, shot from the net line at five in the afternoon. The racquet is wood, the form is self-taught, the result is unarguable.

The Municipal Game

Nobody here takes lessons. The stroke is learned from an older cousin, or copied off a magazine photograph taped inside a locker door, or simply invented on the spot out of necessity and nerve. Coaches would wince at the grips. But watch a rally go twelve shots deep on a court with weeds in the doubles alley, and you begin to suspect the coaches are missing the point.

The uniform is improvised too. Whites, yes — but sun-softened, hand-hemmed, worn with high canvas sneakers and a wristband borrowed from a brother. The effect is less Wimbledon than Saturday matinee, and it photographs like a dream.

“The light out here doesn't flatter anybody. It just tells the truth slowly.” — A staff photographer, on desert film

Approaching the net, racquet in hand — **Baseline to net —** Walking on after a long rally. The court surface, resurfaced in 1968 and never since, has faded to the exact green of an old billiard table.

Off the Court, On the Road

Follow the players home and the story widens. The road out of town runs past used-car lots and fruit stands, past awnings that have been repainted the same shade of orange every spring since Eisenhower. Here the afternoon belongs to walkers — to anyone unhurried enough to let a whole street watch them pass.

Our film stock — a slow slide emulsion pushed a half-stop — gave these street frames their honeyed cast. The lab offered to correct it. We declined. Some colors are truer wrong.

Walking down a desert main street past parked cars — **Main Street, Tucumcari —** Late June, 96 degrees. The sedans are locals; the mountains, permanent residents. Nobody is in a hurry, least of all the photographer.

The Photographer's Kit

35mm rangefinder, 50mm lens, no meter
Slow slide film, pushed half a stop
One yellow filter, mostly forgotten in a pocket
Patience, roughly two hours per frame

By seven the courts empty and the street cools and the light finally gives out, going from syrup to rosewater to nothing at all. The players walk home swinging their racquets at moths. Tomorrow the sun will do the whole performance again, whether or not anyone brings a camera.

We suggest bringing the camera.