In November 2003, New Yorker Marc Altheim was vacationing in Aruba with his family. After a game of tennis at a local resort, he walked along MooMba Beach, tennis racket in hand, and saw a large crowd of people gathered around the beach volleyball nets. They were watching a game, but it wasn't beach volleyball; it was beach tennis.

"I stood there and watched and I thought, 'This is so cool!'" Mr. Altheim recalls. "I hung around for a while and eventually I got to try the game. It was strange at first, playing tennis on the sand, but before long I really got into it. "

Mr. Altheim then was introduced to Sjoerd de Vries, who runs the Aruba Tennis Academy and is the founder of the Aruba Beach Tennis Foundation. According to Mr. de Vries, he discovered beach tennis in his native Holland and brought it to Aruba in 2000. It caught on so quickly that in 2001 he formed the Aruba Beach Tennis Foundation and began organizing events to promote the sport. In November 2002 the first International Beach Tennis Tournament was held in Aruba and in 2003 two tournaments were held. Mr. Altheim, who was in Aruba at the time, competed in the Fall 2003 tournament.

"I went home and told my friends about this great new sport I found in Aruba," says Mr. Altheim, who lives on Long Island. "The following summer, a group of us played beach tennis locally in the Hamptons and Atlantic Beach in New York and in Manhattan Beach in California while we were on vacation. It felt a little awkward getting out there with tennis rackets on a beach volleyball court, but once we started playing a crowd began to gather. They were really intrigued and, more importantly, they all really enjoyed it."

In November 2004, Mr. Altheim and his family again decided to vacation in Aruba, largely because he wanted to play in the 2004 International Beach Tennis Tournament. Over 300 participants competed day and night in the event, which now attracts players from other countries.

The turnout for that event impressed Mr. Altheim so much that he enlisted his uncle, Fredric Finkelstein, an advertising and marketing executive in New York City, to officially bring beach tennis to the United States. Together with Sjoerd de Vries, they formed Beach Tennis USA LLC to promote the sport in America. They also established a governing body, the National Beach Tennis Association, in anticipation of the sport being played competitively in the U.S.

Beach Tennis USA is introducing Americans to this fun and exciting new sport through a series of teaching clinics and tournaments. The inaugural beach tennis tour launched in the spring of 2005 with an event in Charleston, South Carolina, and then proceeded up the East Coast for the remainder of the summer.  The 2006 National Tour kicked off with two thrilling events in Southern California followed by stops on the east and west coasts of Florida and continued north before concluding in Long Beach, NY.

The U.S. Beach Tennis Open Championship has become a marquee event that attracts players from across the nation as well as other countries.

Capitalizing on the growing interest in alternative sports, Beach Tennis USA has created a fun, fast-paced and exciting hybrid sport that has captivated players and spectators alike.