Fiend at Court Unplugged
One of my more offbeat memories from my junior tennis days was people sidling up to the umpire who gave birth to me to ask if they could get a copy of her detailed tennis maps of various cities scattered across our local section. As the oldest child in a tennis playing family it was my birthright to ride shotgun which also put me in the role of navigator. I had a close personal connection to those maps.
When the umpire I gave birth to first started traveling for USTA tennis, GPS systems were available but not commonly in use. Smart phone based navigation was not yet a thing. At the onset of that era, I once printed out maps from Yahoo for Georgetown Texas, only to discover that the exit names and the names of the cross streets on the map did not have any semblance of alignment. Fun trip.
While setting out for another tournament, with the Trophy Husband leaning into my open driver’s side window of my car as witness, the umpire I gave birth to pointed due south when asked which direction was north. We were sitting in the driveway of our house. The house that she had lived in for her entire life. An aftermarket GPS unit was purchased shortly thereafter.
When I first drew out the maps of the 50 mile radius rule for Dallas and Forth Worth, I was asked for maps for the cities in other parts of the state. In order to do that, you have to know the city center for each of the playing areas. From a practical standpoint, these are the qualified CTAs. As discussed in “Geography Lessons from USTA Texas,” the city centers are determined by Google, and thus could change without consulting USTA Texas.
To capture this unique point in time, there is a lengthy table at the end of this post that contains a list of all the qualified CTAs in Texas, sorted in descending order of population for the city where the CTA is located. I also provided the most significant landmark and address of that location. I also created an Interactive Qualified CTA Map, which captures those pin locations for anyone who is interested.
Google does not have a tool for drawing a circle around a point on a map. Thus the map I produced as a banner for this article is an overlay of a screen shot of a Google map.
Examining the city center column yields some interesting observations. Some are clearly landmarks that have been manually selected by some unseen hand at Google. Others not so much. A few make me ridiculously happy. For example, the Flying Saucer for Fort Worth and Lubbock having perennial USTA Texas sponsor Whataburger as the city center. Well played, Lubbock. Well played.
Sometimes there is a kind of ambiguity with the city center. Two of the CTAs are not located in the city that bears their name. The Dallas Tennis Association is actually in Addison and the Greater Fort Worth Tennis Association has a mailing address in Colleyville. In those cases I took the city center to be the location of the city in the name.
For the remainder of the CTAs in the list, I took address city of the CTA as the one to use as the city center. I would be happy for any of the CTAs to point me to a more authoritative location.
I have one additional post to make on this subject. There is an undocumented CTA that also receives an automatic bid to sectionals that does not appear in the CTA Directory on USTA Texas. Thus, it is not explicitly on the list of CTAs and does not appear on my map. You have until tomorrow morning to puzzle that out.
| City | CTA | Population | City Center |
| Houston | Houston Tennis Association (HTA) | 2,099,451 | Houston City Hall 901 Bagby Street |
| San Antonio | San Antonio Tennis Association (SATA) | 1,327,407 | Bexar County Courthouse 100 Dolorosa |
| Dallas (Addison) | Dallas Tennis Association (DTA) | 1,197,816 | Dallas City Hall 1500 Marilla St |
| Austin | Capital Area Tennis Association (CATA) | 790,390 | CVS Drug Store 500 Congress Ave |
| Fort Worth (Colleyville) | Greater Fort Worth Tennis Coalition (GFWTC) | 741,206 | The Flying Saucer Draught Emporium 111 E. 3rd St |
| Corpus Christi | Corpus Christi Tennis Association (CCTA) | 305,215 | Overpass I-37 and SH 181 |
| Laredo | Laredo Tennis Association | 236,091 | Melrose Family Fashions 319 Convent Ave |
| Lubbock | South Plains Tennis Association | 229,573 | Whataburger 1702 19th St |
| Amarillo | Amarillo Area Tennis Association | 190,695 | Castle Furniture Store 800 N Fillmore St |
| McAllen | Rio Grande Valley Tennis Association | 129,877 | Stripes 1001 W. Miracle Mile |
| Waco | Waco Tennis Association | 124,805 | Cash America Pawn 1724 W Waco Dr |
| Beaumont | Southeast Texas Tennis Association | 118,296 | Paul A Brown Learning Center 88 Jaguar Dr |
| Abilene | Abilene Tennis Association | 117,063 | Overpass S 1st Stand S Pine St |
| Midland | West Texas Tennis Association | 111,147 | Bank of America Financial Center 303 W Wall St |
| Wichita Falls | Wichita Falls Tennis Association | 104,553 | Wichita County Courthouse Annex Parking Lot 900 7th St |
| Bryan | Brazos Valley Tennis Association | 76,201 | Brazos County Courthouse 300 E 26th St |
| San Angelo | Concho Valley Tennis Association | 93,200 | Bealls Department Store E Harris Ave and S Chadbourne St |
| Longview | Northeast Texas Coalition Tennis Association | 80,455 | Taco Bell 200 W Marshall Ave |
- 2010 Census: Population of Texas Cities, Arranged in Descending Order, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/popcity32010.html
- USTA Texas CTA Directory, https://www.usta.com/en/home/organize/partner-organizations/texas/usta-texas-cta-directory.html, viewed 23 July, 2020
- Interactive Qualified CTA Map (Created by Fiend at Court)
