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After 10 years without a men’s tennis team, a group of Hamline students started a tennis club.

The club practiced at the Como Tennis Club, sweeping the courts in exchange for being able to use the facilities after closing time.

Artz said couldn’t stand to see this group of talented and dedicated players without a team to play on, so he began pressuring the athletic department to change the tennis club back into a recognized Hamline sport.

At that point, however, there were equal numbers of men’s and women’s sports, so adding just men’s tennis was not an option.

Artz recalls then-Hamline athletic director Dick Tressel jokingly suggesting to him that the two of them “just go into the racquetball court and fight it out.”

“You have to understand, I do not do that,” says Artz. “I am probably the biggest wuss. I am the least macho of any person on the Hamline campus.”

Even without anyone resorting to violence, men’s tennis by the early ’90s was able to make a comeback as an official Hamline sport. The athletic department chose to start a women’s hockey team, which opened a slot for the men’s tennis team to return.

Unfortunately, during the years when tennis was a club sport only, Hamline’s courts had deteriorated to an unusable degree.

A call to Darryl Holt, a Hamline alum who had played tennis during his own college years, yielded all the funds necessary. “One request for an $80,000 check” was all it took, Artz said.

Artz’s tennis career began incidentally when, one summer while in college at the University of Cincinnati, he decided to learn how to play.

“My girlfriend’s brother, who was a tennis coach, worked with me for a whole summer,” recalls Artz. “I don’t know why č probably because I was dating his sister.”

At the end of that summer, Artz played in his first tennis tournament. Though he did not win, he was surprised to open the Dayton Daily News the next day and find a large picture of himself, under the headline “Artz artful, but loses two matches.”

Thus began his lifelong love affair with the game.

More recently, Artz won the state of Minnesota 55 and over division, and also held the number-one ranking in the northern section, which includes Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and western Wisconsin.

“I did really well in the ‘old man’s division’,” says Artz.

Unfortunately, Artz has been sidelined the past couple of years due to a rotator-cuff injury.

“I think everybody needs a hobby that is so different that it just exercises a whole different part of your being,” Artz reflects. “I feel very fortunate to have been able to have tennis as part of my life.”

On the other hand, he wonders, “How can someone get so much pleasure out of knocking around some dumb little ball?”

Teaching is truly Artz’s first love, however, with tennis providing “a little escapism.”

“My students, that’s the reason I’m here,” says Artz. “The great thing about teaching here at Hamline is the students.”