Kiawah Island Golf Resort - blog - Kiawah Island Golf Resort Among the Top Tennis 10 Tennis and Pickleball Resorts (original) (raw)

| May 20, 2024May 20, 2024

For the 17th time in the last 19 years, readers of the leading online tennis travel website, TennisResortsOnline.com, named Kiawah Island Golf Resort among the top 10 tennis and pickleball resorts in the world.

The Roy Barth Tennis Center at Kiawah Island Golf Resort

The rankings typically appear each May listing the top 75 tennis resorts in the world and are based on the overall tennis and pickleball programing, including instruction, teaching staff, and facilities, as well as other resort facilities such as lodging, cuisine, service and value.

For the past 16 years, the tennis program at Kiawah ranked first, but with a format change this year, TennisResortsOnline.com grouped all top programs among the top 10 rather than in an ordered ranking.

Under the direction of Roy Barth since 1976, the tennis program at Kiawah Island grew into one of the finest tennis programs in the country. The combination of Barth’s teaching experience and professional background made him an integral part of Kiawah’s tennis programs. Barth played professionally for seven years during which time he was ranked in the top 50 in the world and competed against such tennis greats as Smith, Ashe, Borg and Connors. In 1990 he was awarded the PTR Pro of the Year, in 1997 Barth was inducted into the South Carolina Tennis Hall of Fame, in 1999 he was inducted into the Southern Tennis Hall of Fame, in 2013 he was inducted into the San Diego Tennis Hall of Fame, in 2019 he was inducted into the Intercollegiate Tennis Hall of Fame and in 2020 he was inducted into the Professional Tennis Registry Hall of Fame.

Upon his retirement in 2018, Barth was honored as Director of Tennis Emeritus. Barth’s son Jonathan was named as Director of Tennis upon his father’s retirement, and oversaw the consolidation of all tennis programming into a newly expanded Roy Barth Tennis Center and the revitalization of the tennis academy into the Barth-Hawtin Tennis Academy, which has quickly grown into one of the nation’s premier full-time tennis academies for highly competitive junior players.

Over the past four year, the center has also significantly expanded its pickleball programming, adding more courts and bringing in a full-time dedicated staff to focus solely on the fastest growing participation sport in the US.