David Berens "Break Point"

Marshall Jon Fischer "A Terrible Splendor"

Becky Gunn Holmes "Totally Tennis For Me"

Bill Patton "The Art of Coaching High School Tennis"

Midtown Athletic Clubs is without a doubt one of the biggest success stories in the history of US tennis and fitness facilities. Excerpt from my 2013 blog post Tennis and fitness - member wellness pays off for tennis clubs - "Billie Jean King has called Midtown Athletic Club “the best place to play tennis in the world.” Midtown Athletic Club Chicago, originally established in 1970 as Midtown Tennis Club, is one of the world’s largest indoor tennis facilities and a state-of-the-art fitness center, featuring 18 tennis courts, a 3,200 square foot group fitness studio, dedicated Pilates and cycling studios, numerous social events, and a pro shop.

The club was founded in 1969 by Alan Schwartz, an accomplished tennis player, winning eight National Public Parks Tennis Championships and seven Illinois State Tennis Championships. Schwartz has served as Chairman, President and CEO of the United States Tennis Association (USTA) and President of the National Indoor Tennis Association. He serves on the Boards of the Tennis Industry Association (TIA), the Tennis Channel and the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and its Davis Cup Committee. He also co-developed the National Tennis Rating Program.

Schwartz is Chairman of TCA Holdings where his son Steven is President and CEO. TCA Holdings started as Tennis Corporation of America (TCA) with Midtown Tennis Club as its core facility. TCA’s web site states: As members’ interests expanded, TCA responded by adding fitness centers and other sports to the clubs. Beginning in 1980 in Rochester, New York, TCA redefined the health club. In 2005, TCA Holdings, LLC split into three divisions: Midtown Health, which manages the corporate centers and wellness programs; Tennis Corporation of America, which develops and licenses tennis products and programs; and Midtown Athletic Clubs, which manages the company’s sports and fitness clubs."

Midtown Athletic Clubs states on their web site: Midtown provides members with a place to practice a healthy and happy lifestyle and the people to help them do so. We have the best of everything, including world-class tennis courts, swimming pools that rival those of five-star hotels, bistros, boutiques, social events for the whole family, and of course, state-of-the-art fitness equipment. We also have the best associates and coaches who take your experience personally. Together, it’s what makes Midtown one heck of an upgrade from an ordinary gym.

Posted to the Midtown Blog April 22, 2016

It's Earth Day, and our commitment to protecting the planet is important to us.

Company-wide, we've begun using the Revolution trash bag in place of a traditional petroleum-based product. This has saved 9.6 metric tons of greenhouse gases from being released into the atmosphere.

In addition, this year Midtown Athletic Club in Palatine partnered with Retour Tennis and installed Ad-In Bins located near our tennis courts, so members can recycle their used tennis balls. Since January, members have kept 1,000 tennis balls out of landfills by using these bins. We hope to roll out this program across all clubs in the coming months.

Most of our clubs also feature water bottle filling stations to encourage members to bring and use their reusable water bottle instead of buying a plastic one. The waste from many hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles has been eliminated through the use of these filling stations.

In addition, our tennis and basketball courts feature motion sensor lighting, so that we save on energy usage when the courts are not in use.

These are just a few of the many green initiatives we've implemented, with many more to come in the future.

We're so excited to announce a new program at Midtown Athletic Club in Palatine, IL that combines two of our favorite things: green initiatives and giving back to the community.

We're collecting used tennis balls in Ad-In Bins to donate to local schools and charities, and to businesses that can use them to make new court or playground surfaces.

According to retourtennis.com, 125 million tennis balls are sold each year in the United States. It takes 400 years for a tennis ball to biodegrade once discarded, and 200 tennis balls are discarded monthly per park. 125 million tennis balls enter U.S. landfills annually.

We're hoping this program helps reduce waste as well as the club's environmental footprint. The program kicks off on Monday, January 11, 2016 and if successful, we plan on rolling it out to our other clubs.