Since my husband and I met eight years ago, we have researched travel vacations with tennis opportunities. From the start, William embraced my love for tennis and travel. As our relationship developed, so did our quest for finding new and exciting places to travel to and play tennis. Our desire to experience many places, meant many long weekends instead of one or two vacations each year. Our goal was to make the most of our time, playing tennis while still attaining the refreshing feeling of decompressing on vacation. In 2017, we traveled to many new places, made new tennis friends, and developed our tennis games. The five worthy tennis destinations were picked for their balance: location, the ease of tennis opportunity and overall wow vacation factor.
The Ritz Carlton, Marina del Rey, California
We stayed at The Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey, California, near Los Angeles airport (LAX), Santa Monica pier, and Venice Beach. Nearby the beach, hiking, sightseeing (we did the Hollywood sign hike), and shopping. Our room overlooked the marina, swimming pool and tennis courts. We loved the energy of the fun tennis clinics, as we watched from above. We quickly registered online for Elite Racquet Sport’s Sunday Mimosa clinic, the next day. When our weekend was over, the locals nicely invited us to come back any time! We definitely will!
Monterey, Sunrise, Monterey, CA
The town of Monterey, 1 1/2 hours south of San Francisco, exceeded our expectations. The coastal view was as awesome as the area was quaint and nostalgic. To find a wonderful, well played, public tennis facility in Monterey, The Monterey Tennis Center, was a bonus. We stayed closeby, at the Intercontinental The Clement Monterey, with its fabulous customer service, on the ocean and on the main drag of the local shops and attractions.
tennis court, La Quinta Resort and Spa, Indian Wells, CA
Each March, the BNP Paribas Open, is held in Indian Wells, California. We absolutely love going to this tournament. The tennis and the venue are always fantastic. We’ve stayed at different hotels and resorts through the years. Last year we stayed at The Ritz-Carlton Rancho Mirage. We found that La Quinta Resort and Club hosted tennis clinics. Although we stayed in Rancho Mirage, it was a quick drive each morning to our tennis clinics at La Quinta Resort. After the clinic, we would attend the tennis tournament to watch the professional tennis tournament and then relax in the evening at our resort (Getting there: Fly directly to Palm Springs (PSP), or drive from LAX or neighboring airports (Los Angeles (LAX)138 miles, Ontario (ONT)-86 miles).
Kapalua Tennis Garden, Kapalua, Maui, Hawaii
We learned that the symbol for Kapalua, Maui, Hawaii was a butterfly with a pineapple in the middle. Pineapple was Hawaii’s biggest export and the butterfly signified the spirit of the island. A part of Maui will remain with me each time I play tennis (my vibration dampener (Kapalua symbol) for my tennis racquet). We stayed at The Ritz-Carlton Kapalua, Maui, Hawaii. This beautiful oceanside resort was about a 45 minute drive from the Maui airport (OGG). We played tennis on one of the resort’s two tennis courts on our first day; however, spent most of our tennis time at the closeby Kapalua Tennis Garden. Kapalua’s gorgeous views and year round warm weather, with easy access to tennis made this an ideal tennis vacation spot.
Cliff Drysdale Tennis, The Ritz Carlton, Key Biscayne
The reason why The Ritz Carlton – Key Biscayne made the top of our list was because of the fantastic weather (year round), the beautiful resort with it’s amenities (The Nostalgia Band (cuban band) on weekends, beach, pool and spa), ocean and bay views and the outstanding Cliff Drysdale Tennis Center on the resort property. The resort was easy to travel to, from Miami airport (MIA) and Fort Lauderdale (FLL) airport. In addition, it was close to the cruise ports, which made it a great place to stop before or after a caribbean cruise.
It was hard to choose five worthy tennis destinations from all the wonderful tennis destinations and events we reviewed in 2017. We found that staying at resorts with tennis was great. It made it easy to not leave the property because the resort provided everything you needed for a balanced vacation such as tennis, spa, restaurants, beach, pool, shopping and entertainment. On the other hand, there were many times when we picked destinations that needed more planning. Please checkout tennistravelsite.com for updated postings, our current postings, and our new tennis travel adventures.
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