By Lisa Mushett

Patty Egart of Anoka, Minn., started out as a basketball mom. She would take her then six-year-old daughter, Allie, to basketball practice and notice all the parents involved. A mother to two older children - Christy and Ben who both played tennis - she admired the parent support and organized programs available for sports such as basketball, soccer and tee-ball and thought, “Why can’t this happen for tennis?”

Egart, who did not start playing tennis herself until after Allie was born, wanted to give more opportunities to her youngest daughter and decided to start her own junior tennis program in 1999.That summer, she had 165 kids register for her first-year program, but much to her chagrin, only six parents agreed to help her.

“With my older kids, I always saw softball parents chalking lines, soccer parents setting up nets and cones or hockey parents wearing ‘hockey mom’ hats,” Egart said. “Have you ever seen a ‘Tennis Mom’ hat? I kept trying to get parents involved with my tennis program, but all I heard was ‘I have never played tennis and do not feel comfortable being out on court.’”

In the meantime, Egart had also been looking for tennis books to recommend to the kids and parents in her programs, but could never find any. Ironically, she also was getting more questions from parents asking how they can keep playing with their kids once lessons were over for the summer.

“It was then I had a ‘Eureka’ moment and thought parents and grandparents would get involved if they knew what a groundstroke or a rally was, or if they knew more about tennis etiquette and scoring,” Egart said. “I decided I would write a simple, yet comprehensive, brochure for them.”

That simple brochure turned into a 32-page book, complete with her own illustrations, called Let’s Play Tennis! A Guide For Parents and Kids by Andy Ace! which was released this past April - quite a feat for someone who had never dabbled in the literary world prior to this project.

Not really knowing where to start, Egart leaned on her own experience as a tennis mom and program provider, writing down everything she thought would be helpful for a parent and child to start playing tennis. She also went to the library and bookstores collecting information on cartooning and art software programs. She then referred to tennis magazines and instructional books and used them as a guide to create proper stroke drawings.

“I had taken art in high school, but that was about it,” Egart said. “I originally wrote three fiction stories about the Tennis Tigers using the characters from this book, but then had the idea of an instructional book and decided to start there. I really wanted the book to be fun and appealing to both kids and parents, as well as informative. The characters, like Andy Ace and his sister Alley Ace (named after her own daughter of course) and Lucy Love are just that. And now, the first fiction book will be released later this year.”

Egart hopes that Let’s Play Tennis! will be read together by parents, grandparents and children and somehow finds its way into a tennis bag and used on the courts.

“This book is especially geared to children between 5-10 years of age,” Mike Goldammer, Executive Director of USTA Northern, said, "Unfortunately, parents with limited exposure to tennis can shy away from the notion that they can get their kids started in tennis the right way. Let's Play Tennis! is the perfect resource for parents to help their kids. This book offers a unique blend of easy reading, kid-focused illustrations and tangible technical advice making tennis easier to learn and fun to play."

Now a grandparent as well to Christy’s children, Wes and Ella, and her youngest now 17 years old, Egart knows what tennis has brought to her family and hopes to share that with other families around the world through “Let’s Play Tennis!”

“This book is a great way to bring tennis parents, both playing and non-playing parents, together with their child and start having fun together on the court,” Egart says.

Let’s Play Tennis! is available online and at most retailers including Barnes and Noble, Amazon and Borders. To learn more about the book, visit www.andyacetennis.com.