Travel Piece Winner: “Tennis Courting”

By BETH BRETT While most honeymooners would be content to spend their first trip as husband and wife at a luxury island resort, my husband, Adam, and I had a different idea in mind. Three weeks. To us, that meant choosing a place of natural splendor far away from the world’s trouble spots, but with access to tennis courts. A trip to New Zealand was a no-brainer. Aptly named Aotearoa, ‘Land of the Long White Cloud,’ by the early Polynesian settlers, New Zealand is a country of mystifying beauty stretching nearly 1,000 miles from north to south and consisting of two large islands, a sprinkling of smaller ones, plus a few far-flung islands hundreds of miles away. A microcosm of all the world’s attractions, New Zealand allows you to trek on the slopes of active volcanoes or in remote rain forests or climb glaciers of blue ice that almost seem to touch the Tasman Sea. You can cruise on fjords, swim with bottlenose dolphins, watch whales, fish for rainbow trout in cold mountain streams and view fur seals frolicking in the surf. The adventurous can go bungee jumping, white-water rafting or snowboarding’a seemingly endless variety of activities. Fresh air, magnificent scenery, and outdoor activities drew us to the South Island. But, above all else, we were after our favorite cement oasis’the tennis court. Few would travel 10,000 miles to play a game of tennis. But then again, not many couples can claim to have met on court as we had in a Manhattan mixed-doubles league four years ago. It was a ‘love match’ at first sight. Later that year, Adam proved himself a keeper when he came to my rescue during the finals of a women’s tournament when I managed to pop all my racket strings. Adam valiantly strung one, returning with it just in time for me to win the third set. Strangely enough, ‘tennis courting’ runs in the family. My mother and father first eyed each other at the Central Park Tennis Center, and Adam’s parents met in similar fashion while students at American University. Going back another generation, both sets of grandparents met playing handball. So it should come as no surprise that on the first day of our honeymoon, we sat at the breakfast table poring over a map of Christchurch, searching for the courts. Lovingly, I marked the spot with a giant X and we set out for a walk through town that would end at Hagley Park’s public courts. I was well trained by my father, Harold German (who captained the tennis team at Princeton University in 1963 and played in the U.S. Open), in finding courts. Most of our family vacations included hunts for treasure’the local tennis court. Whether in Barcelona or Budapest, our visits to museums and churches were interspersed with games of tennis. When we arrived in Christchurch in mid-September, we expected the sky to be a symphony of gray. Instead, the sky was clear, the clouds white as chalk. It was springtime. I felt lucky to be in love. Luckier still to have a beautiful day for a game of tennis. Armed with our beloved rackets, we set out to explore the city by foot. En route to the city center, we walked past a bunch of ‘Nanavilles,’ the Kiwi way of describing Christchurch’s many antique shops that share a certain likeness to a grandmother’s attic. We danced past the daffodils that dotted the banks of the meandering Avon River as we practiced moves that we had executed during our first dance on our wedding day. We stopped at Cathedral Square, which was abuzz with street life. Then we headed west along Worcester Street to the Arts Centre, a weekend marketplace where you can find anything from jade jewelry to rich kauri wood furniture. It was mid-afternoon and the Botanic Gardens spread before us like an Impressionist painting. A canvas of pinks, yellows and greens, the garden was a perfect portrait of paradise. Cherry blossoms fell to the ground like snow and the azalea bushes blazed fiery hues of red and orange. Finally, the tennis courts were in reach. While for many couples, a romantic day in Christchurch would be punting along the Avon, our notion of romance involved smacking balls at each other until the sun set over Lake Victoria.