Stinson destroys Angelov 6-0,6-0 at Tilles Park
Fake News or the truth….. read on and you shall find out!
On a beautiful March afternoon Stan and Scott decided to take a break from their respective real estate duties at ReMax Select and Central Realty and play a match at Tilles Park. The name Tilles Park in St. Louis commonly means a large park in St. Louis County off McKnight road. We have played there before and discussed Andrew Tilles history in our blog The Quest for the Golden Set. However on this day we wanted to explore the other Tilles Park in St. Louis City. This park is located at the intersection of Hampton and Fyler and was created by the City of St. Louis selling the Tilles Park in St. Louis County to the County and using the proceeds to buy these 29 acres in the 1950’s. Additional funding for this project came from a massive 110 million dollar bond issue passed in 1955 by Mayor Raymond Tucker.
Upon arrival we quickly made notice of a couple things. This Tilles park is much smaller but cements together its Tilles Park Neighborhood. Right outside of the courts was a large playground which was in heavy use the entire time we were playing.
The next thing we noticed is that these courts have recently been resurfaced as part of a comprehensive program the City of St. Louis parks and recreation dept has been implementing. For tennis players the bad news is where there were once three courts there is now only one. The remainder have been converted to very nice pickleball courts.
The park packs a lot of amenities and also includes a roller hockey rink, 3 soccer fields, a soccer kick board, 3 softball/baseball fields, a basketball/volleyball court, 2 racquetball courts picnic pavilion, an exercise station and walking path.
As we began our warm up we noticed this new surface was very slow and theoretically would be an advantage for Scott. We completed our warm up on one of the pickleball courts and then moved to the remaining tennis court to start the match. After warming up on the pickleball court we both noticed our perspective was off on the normal court. It took a couple minutes of hitting to get our normal tennis strokes back.
As the match began it was a tug of war with both players winning their serves until the score got to 3-3. At that point Stan’s backhand was dialed in and he really took control of the set winning the next three games by stroking winners from almost any position on the court.
After the first set Scott realized his only chance was to try to blow Stan off the court with aggressive shotmaking. Implementing this new strategy did not seem to make a difference as Stan’s defense was rock solid and eventually Scott would wear out during the points. Finally at 0-3 Scott had a great game where at 30 all he ripped a cross court backhand winner.
The next point with Stan at the net Scott ripped a hard backhand right at him 
which was dumped in the net. He was on the board and thought he had some momentum. He did not – Stan focused even harder and kept returning the barrage of hard hit balls eventually closing out the second set 6-1. Another win for the Bulgarian 6-3, 6-1.
This court was in excellent shape and receives at rating both in location and quality of 10! After the match we headed across Hampton to the highly regarded Salume Beddu which prepares artisan cured meats. We enjoyed a quality lunch of soppressata sandwiches, Billy Goat Chips and an appetizer of Lonza Ends.
