It wasn’t Wimbledon, but we had fun

Last night I dreamed I was making a flyer for a tennis tournament. Odd, except that years ago my brother and I hosted our own event: The Murphy Invitational Tournament.  

Normally I don’t write about dreams or non-Redlands topics, but it is pouring rain right now, so what the heck. And I promise I’ll connect it to Redlands somehow.

The 1970s gave us two movements, the running boom and the tennis boom. We jumped on both.

I got so into running that I subscribed to Runner’s World Magazine and read Jim Fixx’s “Complete Book of Running.” Unfortunately, Fixx died of a heart attack at age 52 while jogging. Conversely, I managed not to die and even ran the San Francisco Marathon a few times.

The tennis boom was aided by Billie Jean King’s 1973 victory at the Houston Astrodome over Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes.” It boosted both tennis and the women’s rights movement.   

It also got us playing tennis, and before long we were hosting our own tourney. It was not Wimbledon – I recall playing in Levi’s. But we had fun.

The flyer for the event said the post-tourney party “won’t cure your backhand but will quench your thirst.”

The site was a middle school in the toney Bay Area enclave of Burlingame. We did not properly reserve the venue, just marched in and requested that folks dressed in tennis whites leave the premises. We had spunk.

Then we rolled a keg onto the court.

The post-tourney blowout was as promised. But I apparently multi-tasked too much that night because I was supposed to dog-sit my neighbor’s poodle. The man’s name was Fennelly, and he was the commissioner of the West Catholic Athletic League, the most powerful high school athletic league in Northern California.

Unfortunately, I lost Fennelly’s dog. We scoured the neighborhood, only to learn another neighbor found the pooch barking at his door at 2 a.m. Oops.

Despite that episode, Fennelly entrusted me a few months later to take his daughter to the 1975 SNACK Concert at Kezar Stadium. Sixty thousand turned out for the concert that was headlined by the Grateful Dead, the Doobie Brothers, Santana, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and former Redlands resident Joan Baez (and that’s your Redlands connection).  

Well, I managed to take better care of Fennelly’s daughter than I had his dog and returned her safely from the concert.

As for the tennis tourney, my brother has a scrapbook of the long-ago event. It includes a picture of yours truly in my Levi’s, whacking a serve.

So now -- 50 years hence -- do I revive the Murphy Invitational? Do I gather family, friends, assorted coaches and the like for one last orgy of tennis and merriment? Uh, probably not. At age 69, the threat to life and limb is too great.  

Reach John Murphy at berdooman@gmail.com and follow him at @PrepDawg2.