‘Let’s Play Clay’ to honor memory of beloved youth tennis coach
A scholarship will be given in his name at the annual USTA Aces Awards ceremony
ATHERTON » Tyler Nii won’t ever coach again. That doesn’t mean his influence within the tight-knit community of youth tennis will soon be forgotten.
Two months after the 27-year- old perished during a skydiving accident in New Zealand on Jan. 10, a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 3 p.m. Saturday for “Let’s Play Clay” in Atherton will honor his memory at Holbrook-Palmer Park.
“Tyler was an outstanding individual,” said Tamara Rajaram, whose 11-year-old daughter Natasha spent the past four years under Nii’s tutelage. “I don’t think I can say enough about him and the impact he had as a friend, as a coach and a mentor to our daughter. We really wanted to do something more for him.”
The Rajaram family spearheaded the effort to donate a public clay court in the Bay Area, settling on Atherton with the help of Michael Jessup, managing director of Player Capital Tennis, which operates the site.
“It’s the first public clay court in Northern California that we know of,” Jessup said. “So it’s really exciting for our community to be able to experience kind of what you see on TV at the French Open. There’s just a lot of benefits to clay for our junior players. Also, as far as our senior population, clay courts are great because they’re softer on the body and it allows tennis players to play a lot longer into life.”
Tyler Nii felt drawn to a tennis racket at 3 years old, but it wasn’t until the age of 8 that he began to focus on the sport after dabbling in other athletic endeavors.
“As his parents we couldn’t keep up, so we told him he had to narrow it down,” said his mother, Nancy. “So he picked tennis and basketball.”
A 2008 graduate of Leigh High in San Jose, it was only 10 miles away from his alma mater that Tyler caught one of his big breaks after Jason Scalese hired his eventual replacement to coach the JV teams at Archbishop Mitty in San Jose.
“A lot of the kids saw him as a big brother, as a counselor,” Scalese said. “He was firm, but at the same time laid back, very fun loving. Certainly had a goofy side to him.”
Nii took over the boys program in 2014, when Scalese opted to retire.
A year later, bothwere reunited at Player Capital, a youth tennis program that holds lessons in Holbrook-Palmer Park, as well as Palo Alto, Redwood City and Cupertino.
“My first impression of Tyler is hehad a lot of passion,” said Jessup, who founded Player Capital in 2004 and brought Tyler on board as a teaching professional. “He had a purpose at young age that he wanted to be coaching youth tennis. I could tell his heart was in the right place and that he would be a great teacher and coach.”
Her mother said: “He was just coming into his own with being a tennis coach and you could really sense a change in him. He was starting to just really enjoy life and the coaching really helped him develop and grow and mature.”
That’s what makes it so hard for so many to reconcile with the tragic news of Jan. 10, 2018, when Tyler Nii sunk to the bottom of the Lake Wakatipu, near Queenstown — his body never recovered.
“Itwas shocking and sad,” Jessup said. “Everything was going in the right direction and then that just kind of just hit.”
Player Capital partnered with USTA Nor Cal, on which Tyler Nii was a board member, with a mission to keep “Tyler’s name embedded in the tennis community for decades to come.”
That’s the reason the Tyler Nii High School Tennis Award was established, which beginning in 2019will award a high school boy and a girl a scholarship at the annual USTA Aces Awards ceremony.
The goal to raise $100,000 is roughly two-thirds of the way to fruition, and Saturday’s “Let’s Play Clay” event should boost the effort to fund the award for the foreseeable future. A two-hour clinic followed by cake and drinks will take place from 3-5 p.m.