Beach Tennis at High Tide

One summer afternoon in 1971, in a small town of just 5,000 inhabitants by the Cantabrian Sea, there was a sandy beach, a clay tennis court defined by grooves made with a stick, a net made of scraps of fishing nets held up by two wooden stakes, an umpire on a step ladder, and a megaphone to announce the points provided by the town’s priest, along with a group of friends who had grown up with the successes of Manuel Santana. With these elements, a great story could already be constructed. But there was one missing ingredient: a mother. A mother named Eloína who, in 1973, approached the tournament organizers and said, “let Juanín play; he’s 12 years old but loves tennis.” The tournament rules stated that the minimum age was 13, but who could say no to a mother’s love, especially since she had gifted Juanín his racket for good grades. The boy was eliminated in the quarter-finals, but he would return a year later to win the championship trophy. He would win it eight more times. That boy was Juan Avendaño, and over time, other tennis players such as Álex Corretja, Carlos Moyá, Juan Carlos Ferrero, and Pablo Carreño would inherit his champion throne from the Luanco Beach Tennis Tournament, one of the most unique competitions that exist.

Splendor in the Sand (Luanco Tennis Club) is the book in which journalist Mario Díaz Braña gathers the, so far, 54 years of history of a tournament —not held between 1986 and 1994 nor between 2014 and 2021— that takes place when the tide goes out, leaving a sand suitable for tennis, on the Asturian beach of La Ribera. It’s a dynamic and entertaining narrative in which it is fascinating to follow the evolution of that court that any child would have drawn in the sand of any beach, transformed today into a stadium with a capacity for about 2,300 spectators —and another 500 who watch from the wall— that the Cantabrian covers at high tide.