Nick Pachelli: This place was built by someone going through some shit
Breaking tennis barriers, crisscrossing the globe, avoiding monotony, and what Challengers gets right, with 'The Tennis Court' author
VANCOUVER — As he scoops up the pickleball and walks off the court, Shomas remarks “You guys learned the scoring really fast, so that’s nice.”
He and Kevin have invited us here, to the public tennis courts at Jericho Beach, to pop our pickleball cherries. Shomas’ mom, Hot Chef Irene, is one of the best pickleball players in the country, and apparently, it runs in the family.
Shom is really good. Leah and I are not.
At least, not yet.
We watched a two-minute YouTube video before taking the court, and the rules haven’t quite cemented in our minds. We did manage to rally a few times, however, and I’m beginning to see the appeal.
We have to wait while a few other games cycle through, so we go back to the grass, where Shom has set up a folding chair, and drop our bags.
“This is why we need our own court,” says Leah.
“I know,” says Kevin “But I like how approachable it is.”
Leah nods in agreement, her blue eyes hidden behind her black Ray-Bans.
“It’s not like tennis,” she says.
Over my shoulder, the pop of hard plastic punctuates the August evening.
I think back to my conversation with journalist and photographer Nick Pachelli. About his love of tennis, and tennis courts, but also the barriers facing the sport, the stereotypes that are being subverted in media like Challengers. We never talked about pickleball, but I know a lot of tennis fans don’t fuck with it, which is too bad because, as far as I can tell, it’s not going anywhere.
I stare through the chainlink fence. There are six courts, and every one of them is full. Players from all ages and backgrounds are batting neon green balls back and forth.
It reminds me of what Nick calls the “egalitarian view” of tennis’ future. That there is something buried beneath the layers of pomp and circumstance so often associated with the sport that is worth preserving. That tennis can be a lifeline for people, even if they only ever play on a public court.
I smile and look at Shomas, who is listening to Kevin and Leah intently.
In an hour the sun will dip below the trees and cast everything in shadow. Shom says it’s too dark to play then, so I hope people hurry up.
I want to play at least one more game.
I want to book a tennis lesson.
NP: Hey – sorry about mixing up the times before. That’s my bad.
ES: All good man. I’ve done that a couple of times myself.
NP: How was your wedding?
ES: It was great, thank you for asking. I’m not sure how well you know B.C. but there’s a string of Gulf Islands off the coast here. We got married on one of those. It was beautiful.
NP: Sick. Is that near South Cowichan Lawn Tennis Club? This is how I think about things now — in terms of tennis clubs.
ES: I’m 99% certain that’s on Vancouver Island. These islands are just east of that.
NP: How many people attended your wedding?
ES: 65. It was pretty intimate. I wasn’t going to ask about your dating life, but since we’re on the topic of romance, what’s your situation? Have you found a tennis lover to cohabitate with?
NP: I am dating someone and living in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Would I cohabitate with a fellow tennis player..? Yes. Laughs.
ES: Is that a baseline requirement for you? Must love tennis?
NP: A while ago the answer would have been absolutely not, I would’ve rather they know nothing about tennis. But now, I think maybe it’d be nice to have someone to go hit with. It’s hard to find good-hitting partners.
Do you play?
ES: Not even a little bit. I have an appreciation for the sport. I love beautiful objects, I love aesthetic places. But no, I have not even held a racket.
NP: Laughs. What is your perception of the sport then? Not like the pro-level, but of tennis culture generally.
ES: I mean… I think the sport still feels exclusionary and intimidating. It’s not something you can just pick up on a whim.
NP: Yeah. It’s intimidating from an access and play level… But I think there’s a lot of pockets where that’s changing, whether it’s in the U.S. or abroad. In the book, I tried to give less space to the hyper-exclusive, historic places that cost $35,000 per year to be a member. I joke that places that espouse an egalitarian view of the future of tennis receive a lot more space.
ES: I imagine you must have quite the mental Rolodex after finishing this.
NP: I was out in The Pines last week, on Fire Island, and a few people came up to me like “You’re the tennis guy.” Someone will tell me they’re from Tuscon and it’s like “Have you heard of these 11 places where people grind it out?” I’ve started shying away from asking people about it. I’ll wait a while before bringing it up, or not bring it up at all.
ES: We don’t need to talk about it all if you don’t want to.
NP: The first question I usually get is “Have you seen Challengers?”
ES: I was hoping to avoid Challengers…
NP: Of course, I was thinking about it when I was in The Pines. I’m obsessed with Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross scores. The iconic quote from Luca Guadagnino [via Reznor] about how the movie is just unending homoerotic desire. I’m talking to people about Challengers at Fire Island Pines – the epicenter of homoerotic desire.
ES: Did you take every single photo in the book?
NP: No, I took about 65-70% of the photos in the book. I couldn’t get everywhere. Between Summer 2022 and Summer 2024, I had 510 days of travel across, 32 countries, and a little over 250 cities or towns. But there were more places we had to include. My good friend and colleague Pete Kiehart shot the courts in Ukraine that were shelled at the beginning of the war… Another friend of mine shot courts at a new facility in Pakistan that’s starting to host tournaments for men and women… I didn’t make it to the rural African courts or to the super remote courts, the court in the Himalayas. Laughs. Maybe I will bring a copy to every single one of those places once I figure out what the hell I’m going to do next.
There were also some spots where I was doing both interviews and photographs, and I had a friend, who is principally a photographer, also shooting. So it’s a mix. I’m proud to say that every photographer in the book enjoys or has some sharp views about tennis. There was nobody who was randomly hired. Everyone is either a community member at those courts or a friend who likes tennis and can shoot photos.
ES: That comes across. Everything feels very cohesive. It doesn’t feel like a group project at all. There’s a singular reverence for tennis that I find quite impressive. You should be proud.
NP: Thank you.
ES: Which court were you most excited to visit? What was your white whale on this project?
NP: It’s tricky… I think the average reader or tennis fan would be most excited to visit one of the stadiums; Monte Carlo, or Rome, or the Australian Open, to complete their ‘fan slam’ as it’s called. I’d been around tennis a long time, I used to report on the sport for work, so I find the stadiums less exciting. I think the smaller tournaments are far more accessible and fun than the majors.
But there were some white whales like Båstad Sweden, which is a tour stop on the Swedish Riviera. That had always been a tour stop I thought was incredible. It’s won Tournament of The Year so many times from the governing body of tennis, it was a bucket list item for me and it delivered…
Part of it is because the Swedish are super incisive about tennis. I think the average tennis fan doesn’t get too particular about enjoying the company of the people in the stands, but I was trying to talk to as many people as I could. The Swedish fans and the Italian fans were the ones that I wanted to sit with. The Italians because they’re just fucking crazy and will bicker about everything in life that has nothing to do with tennis, or everything to do with tennis…
I’ll also say I enjoyed getting in with the communities outside the slams. The super fan courts. Individual courts that were built by people who, when they built them, were at some sort of inflection point in their lives. Heldman House in Santa Fe, NM, Bunabhainneadar in Scotland, and Dansk Tennis Club in Denmark.
I went to Dansk for just 48 hours this past winter. It’s an indoor court and it’s fully maintained by the National Museum of Denmark. There’s all these super gay Egyptian paintings on the walls. It was built by a pro tennis player who was ostracized for being a f*ggot in Denmark in the 1920s. He got an inheritance from his dad and he built his own court. He traveled around Bali and Egypt, and was at a point in his life where he was thinking “I just got kicked out of tennis, what do I do with my fortune?” The other ‘turning point’ courts are less dramatic than that. And way less gay. But they’re pretty sick. You feel it when you’re there. This place was built by someone when they were going through some shit or figuring out their lives. There’s a power to that.
ES: I mean that begs the question: were you going through some shit when you took on this project? Because it seems like a massive undertaking.
NP: That’s a good question. I will say that the book was initially conceived as The World’s 50 Greatest Tennis Courts, which I never liked. 50 is a low number, I think we wound up featuring 216. I also didn’t want a number anywhere on the cover. I didn’t want it to feel anywhere remotely close to a listicle. Ostensibly the book is about pretty tennis courts and pretty photos, but my main hope is that people will read the words. There are 35,000 of them in there and it represents people you don’t typically see in tennis.
Was I going through shit that made me need to get out of the country? Laughs. Sure, yes, of course… I had a long-term partner at the time when I set out to do this. Someone I still consider family and one of the closest people to me. But… Whether I wanted it or not, the book trip brought a lot of alone time, a lot of introspection… But also a lot of healing. It was a balm for me… I don’t love solo travel, but I do love intermittent solo road trips. It was the time to process stuff going on in my life. I would say I’m in a much different phase with the book coming out.
ES: Where are you at for this phase? You’re going to Fire Island so it can’t be that bad.
NP: I would say I’m at a more measured, settled phase of my life right now. I’m on the board of my non-profit tennis community here in Fort Greene. It’s this rabid, culty tennis community. I’m vastly overwhelmed by the volume of work and time this book tour is going to take, but it’s not bothering me much… I’m prioritizing the good, healthy, fulfilling relationships in my life and allocating my time in a way that gets shit done.
ES: You started the conversation by asking me for my perception of tennis… But what is your perception of it? Especially given you’re part of the LGBTQ community. Is the undercurrent of sexuality depicted in Challengers true to your experience? Or is that just Hollywood injecting horniness where there is none?
On one side it’s this balletic, rhythmic, beautiful game. But, for people at the level depicted in Challengers, it is brutal and torturous.
NP: My friend Eric Schwartau wrote a really good essay on this a year ago. It was through a queer lens… Oh my gosh, the relationship between sport and sexuality. Sigh.
ES: Not the heavy sigh! Laughs.
NP: I thought the writing in Challengers… You know… I was aware the writer of that movie is married to the person who wrote Past Lives…
ES: Which sucked, by the way.
NP: Laughs. I thought it was well-written, though.
ES: It felt more like a play than a movie to me. It relied too much on the last scene to give the whole thing a sense of emotional catharsis that didn’t feel earned, in my opinion.
NP: I agree. I went back and read the script for Challengers and it has these super quick sections of dialogue. Any scene with Zendaya and either of her co-stars. The dialogue mandates it be super fast-paced. I think you would find that reflected in a lot of tennis players… They can almost speak like journalists who are too logged on on Twitter, you know? The wit and speediness are just there, and I think it’s dictated by the pace at which our brains work when we’re playing tennis and we’re all alone out there on the court. There’s something in the aloneness and the individuality, and how our sport switches mediums and canvases. It’s unlike any other sport. On one side it’s this balletic, rhythmic, beautiful game. But, for people at the level depicted in Challengers, it is brutal and torturous. That’s how I see tennis more often. All that energy, especially in this one-on-one drama or play that you’re in with another person, feeds some feverous sexual energy…
ES: On the writing side of things… I was wondering how you kept things fresh given the subject matter is sort of repetitive. It’s all variations on a theme. I feel like it would be hard to find fresh ways to talk about tennis and the aesthetics of the sport.
NP: I think the thematic structuring of the book helped. I had to force myself to go at it from a community-specific approach… I mentioned the Italians, but as I was traveling around, exhausted, dealing with logistics, I tried to stay hyper-focused on people’s stories, and getting them talking about their communities… You can get out of the monotony if you learn about all the rivalries and achievements within these places. It doesn’t have to be from a competitive perspective, but every place in this book has these personal and communal histories floating around. It all starts because there’s some tennis going on, and you walk up to someone and ask them who they’re watching. Who are these people on the court? We’re so much more vulnerable when we’re playing or exposed to sports…
There’s an energy that comes through that is unique to each place; Hungary is different from New Zealand, which is different than the Philippines, which is different than Argentina… When you read the book, you’ll probably be able to tell which places I really dug. Like, “Oh he spent a few days here.”
ES: I don’t want to ruin the mystery, but I was wondering how you paid for all of this. Laughs.
NP: Yeah, this was expensive. I got the advance, which functioned as a salary that covered the travel. It was like “Have fun, see ya later!” I dunno if that’s everyone’s experience but that’s how it felt for me.
I was organized at the beginning. I started in Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand. There were spreadsheets. Google Map pin itineraries, a running budget. But it got expensive, especially when I spent six months in Europe. I have a shit ton of points.
It’s fucking hard to get your protein around southern Europe.
ES: Who do you fly with?
NP: I typically try to fly with Delta but I mostly have a shit ton of Marriott points.
ES: Was room service an option? Or did we not budget for that?
NP: I got pretty good at going to local markets and getting a rotisserie chicken. It’s fucking hard to get your protein around southern Europe. It’s easy in Germany and Austria, a little bit of Scandinavia. But if you’re floating around Spain, Portugal, France, Hungary… I dropped weight. I could not get enough… If I did do room service, it would just be a burger.
The meals were sad… I would give myself one meal a month somewhere cool. Towards the end of the trip, I started begging friends to come with me because I was over it. If I got a whiff of a friend with some unused vacation days, it was like “The room is on me, let’s fucking go.”
ES: I don’t want to take up too much more of your time, but the US Open just started and I wonder if you can give me some predictions?
NP: I’m sad Rafa’s not playing. Indian Wells was the pro tournament I grew up attending, and I would always make a “¡Vamos, Rafa!” sign. He always signed it…
But yeah… I want to see a Carlos Alcaraz-Jannik Sinner semi if we get one. Sinner is my favourite guy on the men’s side, I want to go skiing with him and not talk tennis at all.
I think Novak Djokovic will go far but I don’t think he’ll win…
I would like Coco Gauff to do well, I think Iga Świątek will make it to the semis and then fall… I would love to see Amanda Anisimova make a sick American run. I’ll say Jessica Pegula—Amanda Anisimova final. That’d be awesome.
Nick Pachelli is a writer and photographer. He lives in Brooklyn.
You can buy The Tennis Court: A Journey to Discover the World's Greatest Tennis Courts wherever books are sold.