‘Their own personal country club’: Battle over S.F. park’s tennis courts reaches boiling point

In theory, San Francisco’s Rossi Park should be a tennis utopia on weekends. Located in the bustling heart of the Richmond district, the park keeps two of its three courts free and open to anyone, with the third governed by a reservation system. A few years ago the Rossi Racquet Club, which has no official relationship with the city, started organizing doubles matches and commandeering between two and three courts on Saturday and Sunday mornings. While Recreation and Parks staff ask that people generally limit themselves to one set, the club bypassed this rule, detractors say, by rotating matches among its own members. “Gatekeeping” is not uncommon in San Francisco’s public fields and sports areas, and it has led to disputes over turf that sometimes go viral. Twelve years ago, a confrontation between tech workers and teens over rights to play on a Mission soccer field came to symbolize a larger debate over gentrification. Tensions have also simmered between the tennis and pickle ball communities, whose players typically compete for the same space. The Rossi courts have in the past been a battlefront for tennis-pickle ball spats, with six thefts of pickle ball nets documented, and at least one net slashed. The intra-tennis fight sparked by the Racquet Club could be seen as the latest chapter in an ongoing struggle to make public space more inclusive, and encourage people to cooperate. Yet it’s also blown up in a more public fashion than other conflicts over courts or fields, owing largely to the city’s social media culture. A thread published this week on the San Francisco subReddit accused the Rossi group of functioning as a “private cabal” and “treating these public parks as their own personal country club.” According to the Reddit thread and two emails submitted to Recreation and Parks over the weekend, the Rossi Racquet Club charges membership fees for anyone seeking to join the group and use what is supposed to be city property. The Racquet Club locked its website shortly after the Reddit thread surfaced, but a search of archived pages shows a suggested price of $5 for each Meetup event, and $250 for a yearly membership. As of Tuesday the Racquet Club home page displayed a chain-link fence with a padlock and the Racquet Club logo, along with a box to type in a password for access. “We have done nothing wrong, illegal or unwelcoming. We always play fair for ALL!!” Moore wrote in a January 2025 email to Jessica Hing, property manager for Recreation and Parks. Hing had written to Moore and two other representatives of the Racquet Club, noting that her department had received a note expressing concerns that “Rossi tennis courts 1 & 2 have not been as welcoming as we all understood them to be.” Hing sent Moore a follow-up email that April, after Recreation and Parks received additional complaints about the Racquet Club. Up until then, the department had waived the reservation system for its third court on Saturday mornings, primarily to accommodate the club’s continuous doubles matches. With the escalating pushback, parks officials decided they would no longer hold that court open. “It is our expectation that you and your group will not reserve it for your group play and that others will have access,” Hing wrote to Moore. Aparton said the department is investigating the recent allegations and could take a variety of actions, including making all the courts reservation-only or dispatching a ranger to stand out there and educate people. “Someone had recommended I join the club,” said Inga Lim, who was wiping sweat off her brow after an intense singles match. Lim shrugged. Although she had seen the criticism on Reddit, she had never interacted with the meetup group. She tends to play on weekdays to avoid crowds. Pickle ball players who had reserved another Rossi court on Monday said they had no knowledge of the Racquet Club, though several were amused to hear about a spat between tennis players. After all, Rossi has long served as a sort of feudal territory where tennis and pickle ball collide. Even as Rec and Park officials alleviated much of that strife by imposing a reservation system, they apparently could not stop the meetup group from taking over.