Darrell McDonald, Chattanoogan going into Tennessee Tennis Hall of Fame

Retired Chattanooga Times sports editor Buck Johnson once described him as “Mighty Mouse” for his basketball talent. Out-of-town tennis opponents have dubbed him the “Scottish mosquito.”

Other references from foes over the years have been much less reader-friendly.

But Darrell McDonald will have a new description six months from now: State Hall of Famer.

McDonald, retired administrator of the Chattanooga Parks and Recreation Department, will be inducted in the Tennessee Tennis Hall of Fame on Jan. 31 at the Marriott Cool Springs in Franklin, Tenn. Two other inductees are from Nashville and Memphis.

McDonald, who will turn 70 before that, keeps adding to his credentials. In fact, 2007 was his best year as a tennis player.

Since returning to competitive tennis in 1983 and winning his first adult tournament at the age of 40, he has won 55 city, 30 state, one national and eight Southern championships. He was part of the South’s runner-up USTA 5.5 team in 1983, the only year of that classification, and helped win state titles at 5.0 the next three years.

He has been ranked No. 1 in the South in doubles with four partners: Tommy Bartlett, Roger Layne, Bob Helton and Clive Kileff.

Most of his titles, McDonald pointed out, were with Bartlett, one of Chattanooga’s first two inductees into the state tennis hall of fame.

“I never had a partner who wasn’t better than me,” McDonald said, extending his contention that quality players made him a championship softball and basketball coach in his younger days.

But his ability has been a big part of all those successes. In tennis he’s known for using the angles, drop shots and lobs — and running down everything. Weighing 145 pounds on his 5-foot-8 frame, he doesn’t even feel slower at 69, he said.

“Darrell McDonald is extremely deserving to be inducted into the tennis hall of fame,” Zan Guerry, another early local state inductee, said Thursday. “He is one of the toughest competitors ever in Chattanooga.”

McDonald and Kileff were undefeated last year, winning the TVOC, state, Southern Closed and National Intersectional team 65 doubles championships and the 60 as well as 65 divisions in the 120th Vancouver Island Grass Court Championship in Duncan, British Columbia — in McDonald’s debut on that surface. He also won Southern Cup 65 doubles with Thay Butchee.

“I think I’m playing better now than I ever played at any age,” McDonald said Wednesday at his East Brainerd home. “I think that’s because I’m playing great players all the time.”

He was referring primarily to his opponents at Manker Patten Tennis Center, where he plays almost daily and sometimes more than once a day.

“The toughest competition I have is around here,” he said.

Growing up in Ridgedale, he began playing tennis at age 10 and won several city championships. He then focused on basketball, however, and was all-city after averaging 21 points as a Kirkman Technical High School senior, setting a school record with 44 in one game.

He also set local YMCA and church league records with 47 and 45 points in single games, and he was a player-coach for the Jorges Pacesetters, who won YMCA and AAU regional titles and regularly scrimmaged the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for several years. The Pacesetters won the AA city championship the same year the Candler Methodist men’s team he managed was the only church team ever to win the AA City Series in fastpitch softball.

Coaching the Speedline girls’ fastpitch teams from when his daughter was 8 years old to 23, McDonald guided them twice to ASA nationals in Binghamton, N.Y.

Johnson once wrote that McDonald was a “skinny 125-pounder who, pound for pound, may have been the finest all-around athlete this city’s produced.” He was similarly adept at managing teams and various aspects of Chattanooga’s recreation department as he rose through the ranks during his 39-year career.

He organized and headed the first National Junior Tennis League in Chattanooga in 1974, with more than 1,000 inner-city boys and girls, and took a group to the national tournament.

“Basketball is my first love, but tennis is what did me the most good over the years, as far as getting to travel and meet people,” McDonald said.

Bartlett is 10 years older and “played down” with him from when McDonald was in the 45s through 55s age groups.

“We had a good run,” Bartlett said Thursday night. “Darrell has physical ability. He’s quick, he’s a man who can make shots and he’s real good at the net. That’s the best part of his game.”

Part of McDonald’s focus in Parks and Recreation was improving and building tennis courts throughout the city, and after retirement when he served on a contract basis as project manager for the Champions Club. In that role he worked closely with Zan and John Guerry and their Hamico Foundation for what Warren Clark, the Southeastern Tennessee representative for the hall of fame, called “the finest public facility in the nation.”

Clark praised McDonald for “giving back” to the sport and for his continued development as a competitor.

“He is the No. 1 senior tennis player in the area now. He has won tournaments all over the country — and in Canada,” Clark said. “He’s a great guy and he’s a true champion.”

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