Every day last week, Edgar Blount showed up at Forestmeadows and perched himself in the same spot.
He wanted a good view of the action on stadium court. The guy gets so zoned in that if the person next to him were to pinch him he wouldn’t feel it. Early in the week is especially important to Blount. That’s when he picks the player he’ll root for during the week-long Tallahassee Tennis Challenger. This was a tough year to pick the way seeded players fell, but two years ago Blount saw his man early. He liked Jo-Winfried Tsonga. That wasn’t a bad choice. The Frenchman went on to win the whole thing. When he showed up on television nine months later, Blount got to tell his friends about how he had a chance to rub elbows with Tsonga. And, just think he didn’t have to leave town to get close to a world-class tennis player. This was just the idea Allen Long and Jim McCloy had when they brought the first pro tournament to Tallahassee. They figured it was a way to promote the game, get recognition for the city and give it a signature professional event.
It’s been about six years since they’ve turned over the reins to director Karen Vogter and about 300 volunteers.