A new sports league will take flight in San Diego Monday.
The San Diego Aviators of World TeamTennis – co-founded by retired star Billie Jean King – will make their debut Monday night at the Valley View Casino Center, aiming to provide enough fun to make fans in San Diego.
“It’s sports and entertainment meeting together,” Aviators CEO Billy Berger said. “We have a real opportunity to really make this fun, where people walk away from this event and they say to themselves, ‘That was really fun. It was great tennis, but it was fun.’
The venue – formerly known as the San Diego Sports Arena – will be configured to offer what team owner Russell Geyser called “intimate seating” that will provide an “up-close setting for our fans.”
Geyser – the founder and managing member of Geyser Holdings, an Encinitas-based early stage venture capital, syndication and real estate firm – purchased the New York Sportimes in January and moved them to San Diego.
Tickets start at $25. The season continues through July 23. Berger said averaging 2,500 fans for the season’s seven home matches would be “fabulous.”
The Aviators will take on the Austin Aces, a team that is also making its debut, having moved to Texas after playing 11 seasons in Orange County, where they were known as the Breakers.
Austin’s roster features Andy Roddick, once the world’s top-ranked men’s player and 2003 U.S. Open singles champion, who is in his second season of playing in World TeamTennis. He retired from tournament tennis in 2012 at the age of 30.
The biggest name on the Aviators’ roster is Daniela Hantuchova, who has won 15 Women’s Tennis Association tournaments in singles and doubles and is among 15 players to complete a career Grand Slam in mixed doubles.
Hantuchova, 31, is from Slovakia, and has been as high as fifth in the WTA singles rankings.
Somdev Devvarman, the NCAA Division I men’s champion in 2007 and 2008 while playing for the University of Virginia, and the highest player from India on the Association of Tennis Professionals singles rankings, is expected to play men’s singles for the Aviators Monday.
A key difference between World TeamTennis and tournament tennis is that fans are allowed to cheer during points.
“As Billie Jean King puts it, leave your silence for after you leave the match,” Berger said.
King, a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, was among the league’s founders. She will be honored at Tuesday night’s match against the Philadelphia Freedoms, which she owns.
World TeamTennis matches consist of one set each of men’s and women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles and mixed doubles. The team winning the most games winning the match.
The league began play in 1974, suspended operations following the 1978 season, then returned to action in 1981.
Geyser said he chose the team’s nickname to evoke the city’s long history of military and commercial aviation.
The CEO, Berger described the plans for Aviators’ matches as being like a “tennis party” where “a tennis match breaks out.”
The fun elements include interactive booths around the arena and contests between sets where fans compete to win prizes, Berger said. Players will sign autographs for fans 16 and under following the matches.
He hopes the combination of a party atmosphere with competitive tennis could make the Aviators a popular San Diego attraction.
“If we can pull that off, that’s going to make this have a two-, three- , five-, seven-, 12-year run,” Berger said.
San Diego had WTT teams from 1975-78 and 1981-83, nicknamed the Friars, and 1984-85, nicknamed the Buds. The Buds won the championship in 1984 and 1985.
– City News Service contributed to this report.
