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By Stephen Press
Hometown Weekly Staff
A seven year-old girl watched as the tennis ball approached her. She fixed her gaze on the approaching shot, confidently steeled herself, and delivered a perfect forehand return. Meanwhile behind her, her instructor shouted encouragement.
"Good, good!" Her return found a seam between her opponents. "Game," the instructor called. "Take a 30 second water break and switch sides!"
This was the Wellesley Recreation Department's tennis clinic at the Hunnewell Courts, and the kids - ranging up to age 12 for this session - were all smiles on this sweltering summer day.
"The goal is to get out and for the kids to have a lot of fun," said instructor Adam Merkin, a rising sophomore at Syracuse University and a former Wellesley varsity tennis player. "Hopefully for them to progress in one or two areas each day," he added as his smiling students gulped down water.
For some of the kids on the court, this was their first real exposure to the sport. Count Mike Sabin, coach of Wellesley's varsity tennis team, among those who hope to see the kids' first summer dalliance with tennis turn into a lifelong love of the game.
"It's more of a kind of a 'get your start in the sport,' not so much a 'we're going to train for the high school team,'" he said.
He then acknowledged that some of the pint-sized Pete Samprases would undoubtedly find their way into the tennis program as high schoolers. "I know there's going to be a few we get where that's the case," he said. He then pointed to a young man on a far court as an example. "Leon is an instructor in the gray shirt down there. He was in this camp at one point. I've had kids like Leon, who's worked his way through and is on the tennis team."
He paused for a moment to count. "On the current team, there's, offhand, three or four," he proudly stated. "A lot of them will get their start here
