Bob Davis

Our very first guest is Bob Davis. Bob has been actively involved in the business of tennis for more than 30 years.  He has degrees in both Electro-Chemical Engineering and Business Administration.  As a tennis player, he competed in the U.S. Junior Nationals at Kalamazoo and at the U.S. National Championships at Forest Hills (U.S. Open).  He is a two-time A.T.A. National Champion in both singles and doubles.  Bob leased/managed the Americana Tennis Club for twelve years.  The Americana was the largest privately owned tennis facility in New York State at the time.  Bob and his family also owned the Taromar Tennis Academy, the first and only minority-owned sleepover tennis academy in America either before or since.  In 1987 he accepted the position of CEO and National Program Director for the Arthur Ashe Safe Passage Foundation.  This was an national organization founded by Arthur Ashe and Nick Bollettieri that eventually grew to include nine cities and taught tennis, preventive health instruction and academics to more than 15,000 inner-city youngsters. 

In 1997 he founded Black Dynamics, Inc., which provided training scholarships to the most talented minority tennis players in the world to the Bollettieri Tennis Academy.  In 1999, he created Panda Enterprises, Inc. and the Panda Foundation.  The Panda companies help children develop literacy skills and unite the celebration of ethnic diversity and the joy of reading. 

Bob is the President of the Black Tennis Hall of Fame, an organization created in 2007 by New Jersey businessman Dale Caldwell, to recognize and honor the founding fathers and mothers of Black Tennis.  The first formal induction ceremony was at the ATA National Championships on August 5, 2011.