One thing nearly all former presidents have in common is a love of sports. For Donald Trump, the game was golf. For Barack Obama, the sport was basketball. President George W. Bush owned Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers.
For Jimmy Carter, the sport was tennis.
At the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park is a clay tennis court. The tennis court was installed during Carter’s childhood on the family farm.
The farm and his childhood home later became the location for the park in Plains, Georgia.
In his 1975 book “Why Not the Best?” Carter described how he would play against his father as a teenager.
“My father … was an excellent tennis player,” Carter wrote. “I could never beat my father. He had a wicked sliced ball which barely bounded at all on the relatively soft dirt court.”
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Carter was able to upgrade his court when he entered the White House in 1977. The complex had a court installed during President Theodore Roosevelt’s tenure.
But during his time in the White House, the use of the tennis courts became political fodder.
Staffer James Fallows wrote in The Atlantic that Carter would personally sign off on when the White House tennis court could be used, and by which staffers.
“The in-house tennis enthusiasts, of whom I was perhaps the most shameless, dispatched brief notes through his secretary asking to use the court on Tuesday afternoons while he was at a congressional briefing, or a Saturday morning, while he was away,” Fallows wrote. “I always provided spaces where he could check Yes or No; Carter would make his decision and send the note back, initialed J.”
Carter was asked by Bill Moyers about whether he personally signed off on the tennis court’s use. Carter told Moyers he delegated the task to a secretary.
Carter’s love of tennis came home to Plains in 1977 during his first year in the White House. World Team Tennis staged a match in the small Georgia town, which was attended by Carter’s mother Lillian. The competition was between a team of Soviet Union stars against top Americans playing on the Phoenix Racquets.
