West Ashley’s Own National Champion

West Ashley tennis pro Brian Burke has brought back a national championship for the sixth time in the past 10 years.
Burke, the current manager of St. Andrews Family Fitness, traveled with four other local players and one from Atlanta to Las Vegas for the annual U.S. Tennis Association’s annual championships.
They competed in six doubles matches over three days in the over-40 years of age, “open” category, which allows competitors to be professionals.
In fact, the team Burke and his teammates defeated were comprised largely of journeymen professional players that had made deep runs into major tournaments in the past. Like Wimbledon, the U.S Open, and others.
And, if that were not enough, the other finalist team “stacked” its draw. It’s an old tennis trick, whereby you have your best duo play the other team’s second-best duo, and your second-best duo faces the other team’s third best.
By basically sacrificing your third duo to the other team’s best squad, the hope is to pick up a 2-1 win by cheating the system. And every squad facing the Charleston crew had stacked, unlike Burke and Co., who played it straight.
Burke and his teammate, Chris Waters, a teaching professional at Mount Pleasant Tennis Complex on Whipple Road, both took to the court in the finals injured.
Burke was nursing a chronically sore shoulder that has muted the upper end of his once monstrous serve; and Waters was sporting a hurt leg that reduced his mobility.
They lost. But the other duos overcame the stacking ruse, with captain Charly Rasheed, the tennis director at Wild Dunes Resort, paired with coworker Martin Zumpft winning the number one slot.
Second-teamers Phil Whitesell, a local teaching pro who used to head the College of Charleston’s men’s program, and Ramon Bernard out of Atlanta had the harder draw, as they were facing the other team’s best duo.
Where most of the teams they face were peppered with teaching and playing pros from disparate parts of the country, the Charleston squad was all from Charleston, save Bernard.
And where many of the competitors hail from pricey and elite country clubs and tennis centers, half of the Charleston team was from public facilities.
Burke got his start on the rough-and-tumble Jack Adams public courts located in the Westside of downtown Charleston, right behind the Citadel football stadium. To this day, the level of tennis played on those courts is matched by the amount of trash-talking combatants take part in.
Burke began as a tennis instructor while still in St. Andrews High School, working for local tennis lynchpin Joan Lee, who has gone on to work at just about every other local facility, public or private.
From there, Burke played number one singles and doubles for three of his four years at South Carolina State University up the road in Orangeburg.
After college, Burke tried his racquet at satellite tour events, the bush leagues of international professional tennis. He made it two years before he “starved out,” as many call the tour that didn’t make the jump to ATP.
“What were the highlights of playing on the satellite tour?” ponders Burke. For a while. A long while.
“I guess meeting people? There weren’t a lot of wins over big names.”
After that, he pulled 15 years as the tennis director at St. Andrews Parks and Playground, where he built up amateur leagues, augmented summer camp programs, and lead teaching clinics.
His older brother Phillip, who succeeded him three years ago as tennis director, was a bit more sanguine about his brother’s satellite “highlights” while sitting next to him at the Playground Road facility. “There was the last day … getting to come home and get a job … getting to eat,” Phillip said with a laugh.
Burke has also worked with local talent, like Ryan Young, who after two years on the international tour joined the USC men’s tennis program where he still is an assistant coach.
He admitted that he wasn’t going to lay in this year’s tourney, wishing he’d gotten in shape before the grueling event. But as the married father of three, Burke said finding time to train and practice is impossible.
“But if there’s anyone out there who’d like to take a lesson from a national champion, we’ve got some really great Saturday morning clinics I lead,” he said with a laugh.