Longtime tennis club owner and operator Ken Stuart, a proud member of the Southern California Tennis Association Hall of Fame, died April 4 at age 78.

Stuart was born Oct. 22, 1943, in Los Angeles and went one to become the 1964 NCAA men’s doubles champion at Long Beach State and to play briefly on the Association of Tennis Professionals Tour. He made his first mark in the tennis business when he designed, built and managed the John Wayne Tennis Club in Newport Beach in 1974, the same facility Stuart would own 21 years later, changing the name to Palisades Tennis Club.

Ken Stuart holding his Southern California Tennis Academy Hall of Fame award in 2017 (Courtesy of Toni Saucedo)

Stuart became friends and business partners with Wayne, when the legendary former silver screen icon’s wife, Pilar, wanted to build a tennis club and name it after her non-tennis playing husband. Stuart and Wayne negotiated a lease with The Irvine Company in 1973 at its current site along the Back Bay, adjacent to the Hyatt Regency Newport Beach and nine-hole Back Bay Golf Course. (The Irvine Company no longer owns the land.)

Al Auer, president of The Irvine Company in 1973, “became a charter member of the John Wayne Tennis Club and was a good friend,” Stuart said in 2017, remembering their first meeting. “When we walked into his office, he began with, ‘What can I do for you Mr. Wayne?’ And John Wayne replied, ‘No, please call me Duke. Well, my wife and these guys have an idea to build a tennis club and I have consented for them to use my name. Let me let Kenny show you.’ And with John Wayne’s introduction I pulled out a map and essentially said, ‘We need some additional land here’ and I took a marker and outlined the parcel of land that now houses the clubhouse, some courts and the ball-machine court.”

A No. 1-ranked tennis player in Southern California as a youth, Stuart became an entrepreneur and inventor after his pro playing career.

In 1974, he joined forces with Wayne and served as the John Wayne Tennis Club’s director of tennis, general manager and head professional during the tennis boom of the 1970s.

In 1975, Stuart sent his innovative match-making design to the United States Tennis Association, asking for help developing a universal rating system as the Wayne Club was bursting at the seams, hosting more than 700 guests per month and requesting assistance in rating tennis players from around the nation.

Stuart’s outline and contribution to the USTA provided one of the formats used today in the National Tennis Rating System.

In 1991, Stuart opened the Palisades Tennis Club behind the Acapulco restaurant on Bristol Street in Costa Mesa with five courts and no lights. With a strong and loyal membership base, but leased land about to expire and become storage units, Stuart closed the small club, purchased the John Wayne Tennis Club in 1995 for a reported $1.4 million and moved his members to the current facility in Newport Beach.

With the merger and renaming, the new Palisades Tennis Club has thrived in the community and provided an ideal backdrop for hosting tournaments, including the 1997 U.S. Davis Cup matches.

On the Palisades Tennis Club Facebook page announcement of Stuart’s passing members expressed thanks for his dedication to the game and to making people happy.

He’s survived by his three grown children: Josh, Cody and Hannah, and his myriad friends at the Palisades Tennis Club. A celebration of life is planned for May 22 at the club.

Richard Dunn, a longtime sportswriter, writes the Dunn Deal column regularly for The Orange County Register’s weekly, The Coastal Current North.