Ted Reese, co-tournament director for the Cary Tennis Classic, joins us to discuss the ATP & WTA Challenger 100 event. Fans can see pro men’s and women’s tennis up close in Cary, NC! The athletes compete for ranking points on their way to the US Open!

Tickets to the Cary Tennis Classic

Find ticket and other information about the Cary Tennis Classic here.

Adult rec players can get a lot out of watching pros play in person. We talked to another tournament director about this in a related episode.

Transcript of our Conversation with Cary Tennis Classic’s Co-Tournament Director Ted Reese

Carolyn: 0:07
Hi, this is Carolyn and I’m here with Erin, and we really appreciate Ted Reese being with us. He is the co-tournament director of the Cary Tennis Classic Men’s and Women’s Pro Challenger Tournament. He’s the current executive vice president of the Southern Board of Directors and he’s the past president of the North Carolina Tennis Association and North Carolina Tennis Foundation, and he’s done all these other things that we will include in our show notes, but it’s too much to list. So, ted, thank you so much for being here.
Ted: 0:32
Well, thank y’all for having me. It’s such a pleasure to get to chat with y’all.
Carolyn: 0:35
Can you start off and tell us a little bit about your tennis background?
Ted: 0:38
Well, I have to go back a little before that because there wasn’t much tennis background. Like most people that have played pro or taught pro tennis, I started out playing baseball, basketball and football in a small town and tennis just wasn’t accessible for me. So if you weren’t a member of the one country club, there weren’t really tennis courts. So I played those sports and was lucky to go to NC State to major in engineering and play baseball, because I really needed a lot of assistance to get to college. And it was only after I graduated and moved to Cary that I kind of started playing tennis. I had a fraternity brother that was a dear friend that played tennis at a pretty high level, had played one year in college and a girl that I was dating played in college and they would drag me out to the court. So that kind of got me playing. I met some people at the neighborhood courts where I lived and, like everybody’s story, why’d you start? It’s because somebody asked you to, and so I just started playing some with these guys. A few months later I played in the B level of the tournament, which was the lowest level, Played. A guy that was about 40 years older than I was in two knee braces and an arm brace in the finals and turned out he ended up being a lifelong friend. About a year later I kept playing and was playing in some pro events. So I went from just jumping in and getting started to being really lucky and I kind of call it Mickey Mouse pro stuff, playing with other teaching pros. So that’s kind of how I got into tennis.
Ted: 1:58
I got really involved with teaching a little bit and left engineering and ended up doing some consulting and then started a company building clubs and have designed many facilities, coached kids at the top 10 level throughout the nation and just had a great time working with top 10 kids and running clubs and getting involved a lot as a volunteer. So just a different background. Certainly for anybody that’s gotten to teach top kids the first question is not usually did you start playing tennis after you were 22? So kind of a different background.
Erin: 2:32
That’s a crazy story. My background is never touch a racket. Pick it up at 40, become a two, five. I think I was the greatest thing since sliced bread and now I’m a four, oh and that’s as far as it.
Ted: 2:43
a woman next year? You never know.
Erin: 2:44
That’s it. Nope, I’m on the downslide. You’ve seen me play. I’ve peaked already.
Carolyn: 2:49
Yeah, ted has seen us play. How do we compare to the top 10 kids in the nation?
Ted: 2:54
Well, I’d say that your passion probably exceeds there.
Erin: 2:58
So you know, you’ve got those positives no-transcript all the time now, when I’m standing in the correct spot correct-ish, I don’t do it right all the time, but yeah, because I really had no clue where to be and Ted knew that from looking at us. Right, right, but, carolyn, did you see her crash the net too? Was she crashing the net at that point?
Ted: 3:50
Yes, very quickly. She moves very quickly a lot of places.
Carolyn: 3:55
No direction, have no idea where I’m going. I’m just moving, I’m going.
Ted: 3:59
No, moving is good. Moving is better than not moving. That’s definitely the key.
Erin: 4:03
Okay, that’s good At 4-0, I know you’re well beyond that, but at 4.0, that just works to just kind of look crazy on the other side of the net, because typically you’ll just get an unforced error from your opponents if you do that, that’s right, okay, so I’m shocked at your background because most people do not come into tennis that way. So you started playing and then got really good. It sounds like playing pros and then teaching as well. So how do you go from all that and running tennis clubs, getting into designing and running tennis clubs into what we want to really talk about and focus on today is running a pro tournament with people that actually know how to play tennis and get paid for it?
Ted: 4:43
Yes, Well know how to play a lot better than I do as well, but I’d say one it shows I’m not really bright. I probably should have stayed in engineering and had a nice, calm life and a really good, stable job.
Erin: 4:54
But I didn’t do that.
Ted: 4:55
But no, you know, it’s just serendipitous really, Having been involved in tennis then for a while, building clubs, through a long process of managing programs for the town of Cary through one of the companies I owned, Mary Henderson was the Parks and Rec director and she talked to me a lot about how they had had high school kids and then all of a sudden these little clinics we were running that had like four or five people, were having 20, 30, 50, hundreds and there were only a few facilities in Cary that had courts and the biggest one had four courts and I was like we really need a big facility because these clinics we can’t even get them all on the court. And she’s like, well, what’s a big facility? And I’m like could we get like six courts at one place? That’d be great. And that turned into a vision that she and I shared and talked through about building a big facility in Cary. And they hired me to design and help create the vision for that facility, which turned into Cary Tennis Park.
Ted: 5:51
That was in a 32-court facility that’s now even grown beyond that. So as I did that, it was a dream of what could we do at this facility. We want to bring kids in, we want to bring adults in, we want to have high-level play, low level play, league play, casual play. But a couple of the things we really wanted to do, having traveled and coached all around the world, is have some bigger events, and so I was able, through a friend of mine, Jim Russell, to bring the ACC tournament here, and it’s been here pretty much ever since, which is just so much fun, especially with the three universities we have that are, all you know, really top 15, 20 schools perennial in the men’s and women’s.
Carolyn: 6:27
And for people that are outside this area, that’s NC State, duke and UNC. Yeah.
Ted: 6:32
Yeah, three wonderful programs men’s and women’s. Carolina won a national championship not too long ago and really all are perennial, just top 20 teams. So the ACC tournaments really as strong as the NCAA tournament, which is just so neat for, you know, the casual tennis player to walk up and watch tennis right there in their backyard. So the other vision we had was would it be able to hold maybe an international event or a national event, maybe a pro event? And then when Sean Ferreira was hired as the director at the facility, he had also coached a lot of kids and I knew Sean from way back and we kind of shared that vision and started working through. So, with some of the volunteering I do for the USTA, we really worked with the head of the USTA year after year to try to get our name on the list and finally we had a cocktail party one night down in Florida. Gordon Smith came up, who was the CEO, and said hey, have you got a few minutes? I think we’ve got something you might want to look at. And so they had two or three dates that they were looking at expanding, and so that led to the first tournament that we had back in 2015.
Ted: 7:35
It’s grown since then and just the community has embraced it so much. Y’all both been out there. It’s really cool to have the top players in the world that are coming through, carry on their way up or even on their way down and get to see them up close, because you really can get right up within 10 or 15 feet of the court, get a feel for how athletic they are, how hard they hit the ball and also just the movement and the exertion in the points. It’s such a physically active game. It’s just amazing. Yeah, that’s just amazing.
Erin: 8:04
Yeah, that’s why, when league players think that they can take a point off anyone at that level or Djokovic, they are kidding themselves when you see it up close.
Carolyn: 8:14
That’s exactly right. I remember I was a 3-0, and I thought I was pretty good because I was winning a lot of my games. And then I watched the players and it just blew my mind how good they were.
Ted: 8:24
Yeah, it’s crazy when you get on court with them too. I remember you know John Isser grew up in North Carolina, so I’ve known John. I always tell people since he was like my height or less.
Ted: 8:33
And one of the kids that I coached. That was top 10, he and John played some doubles together but being in Greensboro, you know John growing up there, I would see him a fair amount of time. But anyway he did a charity event here after he came a big deal and we were reconnecting and my two boys were with me who played tennis and they were like probably six and eight. And so John did this thing where he had people getting out on the court to see if they could return a serve and it’s just he’s hitting them like half speed and the ball’s bouncing over their head, it’s going past them and you just really don’t get a sense for how fast the ball moves unless you’re out on the court or very close to the court.
Ted: 9:07
And another funny story is we were at the first Atlanta open and my boys were really really little. We were sitting on the front row and John Isner, as he is right to do, sometimes gets tired and he’ll give a game or two away. Tired and it’ll give a game or two away. And Kevin Anderson, who was a huge, huge server, hit 132 mile an hour serve.
Ted: 9:28
John put his racket out and then just moved it out of the way and it bounced up into the stands and hit my eight-year-old son right in the chest and all the friends around me from the USTA were like freaking out, like oh my God, is he dead? And he’s like it, it didn’t hurt, ah, it’s no big deal. And so I was just like we’re all on TV. I’m getting texts about seeing us on TV and I’m like this is great. His mom just saw him get hit by 132 mile an hour serve on TV. She’s going to be down here putting him in the hospital soon. We’ll never get to leave home again. So it’s it up close and realize just how talented they are. But also just the pace of the ball, even in my years of playing is just increased because of the equipment and the athleticism.
Erin: 10:10
Yes, yeah, Can you explain to Carolyn? And I barely know the answer, but can you explain what the different levels of challengers, what that whole thing looks like?
Ted: 10:21
Well, you know, you start with the grand slams, which are obviously the four majors, the big tournaments, and then you have the ATP top level that lead to those, the 250s, like a Winston-Salem, the 500s, the 1000s, like an Indian Wells, and then the majors, and so those are kind of your major leagues and the number associated with it is how many points the winner of the tournament gets. So if somebody wins Winston-Salem, which is an ATP 250, you get 250 ranking points. And that’s what determines how you get in tournaments is your ranking and your ranking points. Our event in the past has been we started at a lower level, at a 50, and then we’ve been at a 70 or an 80, which means that’s how many points you get if you win. So the winner of our tournament will get a 100 points. So that difference in point differential means you get better players and it’s more valuable to them. So it just elevates the tournament a little bit, which is going to put us kind of at the AAA. If you compare it to baseball. We’re not the major leagues but we’re right there. So we’ve got players that are playing back and forth in the Grand Slams and Indian Wells, that are also playing in our events that might be ranked, you know, 75 to 100 in the world. So they’re playing kind of at both levels, straddling that, trying to get up on the main tour and stay there. So we’re getting guys that you’re going to see on TV, like maybe the next week at the US Open. This year our date switched to August, so we’re right leading up. When people finish here, they’re going right to the US Open, either to practice or to qualify. People finish here, they’re going right to the US Open, either to practice or to qualify. So we’re right leading up to that.
Ted: 11:45
So we’ve had players in the past like Jack Sock, who was top 10 in the world. We’ve had Ben Shelton, who’s a top player right now. Sebi Korda and his dad were here when Sebi was just getting started. Francis Tiafoe, who is just such a great, great personality. So we’ve had just a lot of really top players. But we usually see them on the way up. In Jack’s case it was actually on the way down because he was trying to get back up there after some injuries and different things. So the opportunity to see these players and then maybe a week or two later or a year or two later, like Chris Eubanks, is a great example. Chris has played here like gosh several times and after his run last year on the grass courts he moved all the way up into like the top 30 in the world. You know, I always tell the players that I get to know we would love to have you back next year, but we hope you’re at such a high level that we’re not going to get to see you here. We’ll get to watch you on TV. So it’s kind of cool to be a part of kind of that rise that they make to get up onto the main tour and really be able to make a living playing tennis One of the other things we’re so excited not only elevating to 100, we’ve been working on this for years, but we’re going to be the first combined 100 event that I think is in the US right now, and that means that we’re going to have a men’s tournament like we’ve had in the past, and a women’s tournament going on at the same time.
Ted: 13:04
So we normally are playing on three courts. We’ll be playing on five courts almost every day, so you’ll be able to walk out there and pick from singles, from doubles. Do you want to watch men? Do you want to watch the women and we’ll be alternating them some old stadium so everybody gets to play there and you get to see them. So we’re going to have so many matches. So we’re going to have more than double the matches that we had last year and it’ll be men’s and women’s. So that’s really cool. We start off usually with the qualifying for the singles and usually the second or third day start doubles. So you know the doubles is just some of the most exciting. Most of us play more doubles than we play singles anyway. So to get to go out there and see what these ladies and gentlemen are doing on the court together they make the court look so small and when I play it feels like it is so big I can’t cover anything. So just having that experience of getting out there and watching.
Ted: 13:53
And then you mentioned the college players. That’s been a linchpin of why we wanted to have this tournament. We work on showcasing the top amateur players at State, duke and Carolina and we’re able to, working with the USTA, provide some wild cards to their top players. So we’ve had some of their top players, like a Will Blumberg, who played at Carolina, the only 10-time All-American ever in the NCAAs that played for Chapel Hill. He’s played in our event several times and actually won a round, and now he’s playing doubles on the Pro Tour.
Ted: 14:23
So it’s neat to get to. You know, give those kids a step up, help maybe help them get their first professional ranking point, because that is such a big deal. They can’t get into other tournaments without one ranking point. So just going from zero to one is massive. And so we’re able to do that and we worked really closely with all the college programs because that’s a great stepping stone. When I first started coaching, collegiate tennis was not as strong as it is now. Now, if you get an opportunity to go watch State Duke in Carolina, you’re seeing future pros the guy that just won the doubles in Wimbledon.
Erin: 14:55
Yes, I saw that.
Ted: 14:56
UNC Asheville yes.
Ted: 14:58
So you know you never know who you’re going to be watching and you know tennis is so international and there’s so many internationals coming into the US to play collegiate tennis. So you’re going to see a lot of Americans in carry. But you’re going to see people from all over the world and they’re coming here to get ready to go to Fleshing Meadow and play at the US Open. So you know we’re part of their preparation to try to go up there and see if they can compete for a lot of money and a lot of ranking points.
Erin: 15:24
Yeah, that’s nice. Is there anything else we missed about the Cary Tennis Classic that we want our audience to know?
Ted: 15:31
Well, you know, one of the other reasons that it was so important for us to have this tournament is community involvement and impact. When we first got the tournament, sean and Mary had asked if I would be involved in running it and I was like no way, I’ve got five clubs to run, I’ve got two boys, they’re playing national level tennis, au basketball, they’re doing all these different things. And I can’t imagine. And they were like well, you know, how about help a little? And I was like no, no, no. And they said Sean came to me and said how about, if we do it together? And if we do it together we’ll run any community events that you want to run? And that’s kind of like the heart tug for me. So right now we do probably a dozen or more community events. Just a few of them are like we work with Abilities Tennis Association, which y’all know, which really bring kids with intellectual disabilities into tennis. Lou Welch does just an amazing job running this throughout the state. So we have a clinic and dinner free tickets, and then we do a stadium exhibition for two of their athletes. We do the same thing with Wheel Serve and wheelchair tennis athletes. I’ve gotten involved with Wheel Serve, kelly and Helen that run Wheel Serve are amazing. I was going down twice a month to Pinehurst, driving down there to help them get a wheelchair program started. Oh, it’s just amazing to work with those athletes. We do a stadium exhibition and a clinic for them out there. We do a kids day for underserved kids and kids in the NJTLs. That’s a program Arthur Ashe started for kids that are in underserved communities to expose them not only to tennis but education. So that’s really cool. And one of the things I’m really excited about we started this year with Raleigh Tennis Association is working with those NJTLs to do ball kid training. So that group is working three times to do trainings and we’re going to have some of these kids that have barely started playing tennis from underserved communities on court with the pros being ball kids. So that exposure. We’ve heard stories of Roger Federer talking about remembering being a little kid in Basel, switzerland, and being a ball kid and how that helped him dream of what he wanted to do. So we’re hoping we can help kids dream like that as well.
Ted: 17:31
We’re involved with the business community. The Cary Chamber does a big after hours out there. Last year Mike McNulty, who y’all know is a good friend of mine is a favorite of me. Mike came in and we just had a discussion during the business after hours, with this wonderful dinner, and just the whole business community came out and embraced that. This year. Another great friend, martin Blackman, who’s in charge of player development, all of the coaching for all of our American pros, is a good friend and he’s going to fly into town and we’re going to do the same thing this year so we’re able to bring the community in from that standpoint. And then Western Wake Tennis Association and Raleigh Tennis Association are just great, great supporters of tennis. Western Wake is located in Cary and they do a big charity event and so we host that now at our tournament instead of it being separate to try to elevate it, provide free tickets for those participants because it raises money for the community. That event’s raised over a quarter of a million dollars for hospice in our community and about $60,000 or $70,000 for college scholarships. So these are ways that the community can get impacted by this professional event.
Ted: 18:36
It’s not just about professional tennis and watching great players, but it’s a chance to really impact the community, to give back and try to grow tennis, because you know, tennis has been a lot to me and it means so much. It’s one of the only sports that you can play for a lifetime. There’s a national championship in the 90 and over. I hope I can just like walk to the court when I’m 90. And you know I’ve been involved in tennis for quite a while now. I’ve been a volunteer for over 35 years with USTA. That’s one of my big passions is to try to volunteer and give back.
Ted: 19:07
But you know I wrote an article for several years for the newspaper and I always talked about tennis is the best first sport and I really believe that, having played all the other sports at a pretty high level, that it prepares you for everything because you’re moving in different directions. It’s just so. It’s just so good for you. You’re working on your hand but you’re moving, the ball’s moving and you have no control over the ball once you serve it. So it’s great. You’re by yourself, you’re learning to be resilient, be independent. But tennis is also the best last sport because you can play it socially. You can play it as long as you want, and so you know 70% of tennis is played on the public parks.
Ted: 19:45
Cary Tennis Park is a public facility. It just happens to be one of the best and award-winning in the nation, but it’s a public park. Anybody can go out there and get a court and play. So you know it’s just all these things that really combine to make having pro tennis be something that impacts it. And you know, we’d love to see everybody at least have the opportunity to play. I didn’t have that as a kid. I want every kid to have the opportunity to play, if they won’t. And all sports are great, anything that gets you active and moving. So we’re just really fortunate to have a facility like this, a community like this and people like y’all that are supporting tennis, that help get it to the masses and give everybody an opportunity to experience it.
Carolyn: 20:26
Yeah, I love that.
Ted: 20:27
Try to make it very social. It’s just really something that you know you can come out with your friends and, whether you’re a hardcore tennis player or not, it’s almost like a cocktail party and there’s tennis going on behind you. So it’s a great time to come out with your teams, with your friends, and socialize. And then, you know, july is National Parks Month, so the USDA is partnered, and so it’s really cool that now we’re talking about tennis in July, leading up to our tournament in August, when it’s, you know, we just had National Tennis Month in May, now we’ve got National Parks Month and then in August we’re going to be leading right up to the US. So we think it’s great timing and a great time of year to go watch tennis.
Erin: 21:04
It is cannot wait.
Carolyn: 21:05
I cannot wait either. And Aaron, are we going to play in the over nineties? Together, I think this is the only chance we have to win a national championship.
Erin: 21:12
Only if Ted coaches us to the nineties.
Ted: 21:14
I know I’m thinking that my chance for a gold ball is going to be if I can still walk at like 90. But the only thing is I’ve seen some of these people play. I’m not sure I could beat them today. That’s the problem. I’m not sure I’m going to get better. I may be still getting worse.
Erin: 21:29
I know I feel the same way. I feel you.
Carolyn: 21:32
Thanks very much to Ted for coming on the podcast. We’ve included more information about the Cary Tennis Classic in our show notes. Also, if you go, please look for Erin and I, because we will be there. Thanks so much for listening and hope to see you on the courts soon.

We hope you enjoyed our episode about the Cary Tennis Classic with Co-Tournament Director Ted Reese!