“One Hundred Years of Tennis at the Hotel del Coronado, Playground of the Stars” is at the same time a celebration of the game as it was offered at this site and an epitaph. Tennis has not been played under the spires of the iconic lodge since 2005, when the two courts that remained there were demolished in order to create a place for condominiums. The game had been part of the hotel’s program since the resort’s founding in the 1880s. But on Coronado’s shores, it seems, only the sea is eternal. According to Ben Press, hotel executives advised him that the courts occupied “some of the most valuable real estate in Southern California.” In this case, tennis came in second. Before the elimination of the last two courts once, the hotel had as many as seven Press had served for 28 years as its pro. Cleaning out his office, Press said he was struck by how much memorabilia he had collected. He would draw from it in cobbling together this book, a handsomely packaged coffee-table volume ($29.95) that details the creation of the Hotel del and its association with tennis Read the entire Union Tribune story here.
