History
Fessenden S. Blanchard and James K. Cogswell Jr. were neighbors in Scarsdale, New York. Both avid tennis players, they found themselves bored by the lack of activity during the winter months. During the winter of 1928-29, they built a wooden platform in Cogswell's backyard. It was about the size of a badminton court, and their initial idea was that snow could easily be shoveled off the elevated platform to clear a playing surface for badminton or volleyball.
However, the area proved too windy for badminton and they couldn't find enough hardy neighbors to get a good game of volleyball going on winter days. So they tried paddle tennis. The court was about the right size, but it was no fun chasing the ball into the snow when it left the platform, which happened pretty often.
The next step was to surround the platform with an 8-foot-high cage of chicken wire. Since that interfered with the backswing when a player was near the court boundary, Blanchard and Cogswell decided it should be legal to play the ball off the wire. They also built a new, larger, and sturdier platform, 31 by 60 feet, with screens 12 feet high. Soon, quite a few neighbors were enjoying the new sport, and some of them built their own courts.
In 1931, a court was installed at the nearby Fox Meadow Tennis Club. The club had been losing members and revenue because of the Great Depression. Platform tennis proved so popular that another court was added in 1934. Meanwhile, Blanchard and Cogswell began selling plans to other clubs that were interested in the new sport.
The American Paddle Tennis Association (APTA) was founded in November of 1934, with Blanchard as president, and it held its first national championship tournament in 1935, with competition in men's singles, men's and women's doubles, and mixed doubles.
The name created some confusion, since there was already a sport called paddle tennis. In 1950, the APTA became the American Platform Tennis Association, but the sport is still commonly called, simply, "paddle." The number of clubs in the APTA grew from 15 in 1938 to more than 60 in the early 1960s. Most courts were built at private clubs or homes until the 1970s, when platform tennis was introduced at a variety of public locations, including municipal parks, colleges, hotels, and resorts.
The sport is particularly popular in the East, as shown by the APTA's organization into regions. Four of the six regions encompass the area from Ontario to the Mid Atlantic and west through Ohio. Region V is the Midwest and Region VI includes the West and the Far West.
The men's singles event was dropped from the national championship tournament in 1938 because most players felt singles was simply too fast. It was restored in 1980 but dropped again after 1999. The three doubles championships are still contested annually.
