Pat and Dennis Van der Meer reflect on a lifetime of tennis

By Laura Clark

Published: June 18, 2008

Every summer for more than 30 years, Dennis Van der Meer, 75, has brought his Tennis Academy to the campus of Sweet Briar College to teach all ages and skill levels. His home base is Hilton Head, South Carolina. Dennis and his wife, Pat, 58, talked with the Amherst New Era-Progress on June 16.

Q: How did you come to Sweet Briar so many years ago?
Pat: He went to open up the Boar’s Head Inn (clinics), and Harold Whiteman, the college president, came up and invited him to come down to Sweet Briar and set up camp here. We still do a clinic every year at Boar’s Head, too. That was maybe ’75, ’76.

Q: What keeps you coming back?
Dennis: It’s a nice place. I like it.
Pat: It’s a very safe environment for our kids, our campers. We’ve had a good relationship with Sweet Briar for so many years, it’s like a tradition. We have so many good relationships with kids and families in the area. This week a mother came up and said, “I was here at camp with you Dennis, 30 years ago, and now my daughter’s signed up. She’s 12.” It’s the second generation coming.

Q: Dennis, where you a professional player before becoming a coach?
Dennis: Yes, sure, for South Africa.
Pat: They didn’t have professional tennis when he was playing. They all played as amateurs until the Open era.

Q: Who was the most memorable player to coach?
Dennis: Billie Jean King. She was a world class player.
(Dennis recently wrote an endorsement for King’s new book, Pressure is a Privilege. He coached King when she won the Battle of the Sexes.)

Q: What do you love about coaching?
Dennis: Helping young people.
Pat: Yes, helping them with their lives, not just with tennis. We’ve touched a lot of kids lives, from countries like Bosnia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Africa, Dennis’ home country. Some of our kids have become world class players, who have been here at Sweet Briar training with us. Liezel Huber, who’s number one in the world in doubles, she was here at Sweet Briar training with us for many years.

Q: What is the status of tennis in America and other countries?
Dennis: It’s up and down. Some countries want to do something different, and other people want to do something else and that makes it easy for us (to come and teach). I think Americans want to play tennis.
Pat: Usually if a country gets a start, then tennis booms in that country. Like China right now. The whole Chinese Federation Cup team and Olympic team where here with us in the 1980s training. One of the Chinese girls, Li Fang, won her first national tournament.
The U.S.T.A. has made a huge effort. There’s all kinds of programs for beginning tennis and keeping interest.
There’s still things they could do better, but they’re trying really hard right now. It’s good to be supportive of all the entrepreneurs like us who are doing camps and all. I think (tennis) is definitely on an upswing.

Q: What is the best advice you can give a new player?
Dennis: Get a good coach.
Pat: Somebody who knows how to do group lessons and keep it fun and exciting, and not expensive. That’s what Dennis is famous for, starting people off teaching group lessons.
He founded the Professional Tennis Registry, it’s a teaching organization. That’s based on sound fundamentals to make teaching easier. He and Billie Jean started that long ago. They were partners in the thing called Tennis America. It was an idea they had to make tennis very accessible and affordable for lots of people, which means you have to do it in groups, because it’s much cheaper than individually.
But in order to make it easy for people to learn, (coaches) had to learn a sound fundamental method. That made it easy for people to learn very quickly, and they were able to grow from the basics.
That’s what PTR is all about. Within that there are individual lessons, while the rest of the group does drills together. It is not easy to play tennis well, but it is not hard to learn how to play tennis to a certain point.
Dennis: That is the most important thing, to make it easy for people to learn to play tennis.

Q: What do you hope children and adults take from your camps?
Dennis: (That tennis is the) sport of a lifetime.
Pat: You can play tennis until you’re 80-90 years old. That’s what we want, people enjoying it, getting good exercise for your health. It’s also a lot of fun and great for making friends.
We have friends all over the world through tennis.