Ginny Graybiel

It was April 1, at 59 years old, when Davida Dinerman took on a new job: racquet sports professional at Longfellow Tennis and Health Club in Wayland, Mass. But her long-range goal isn’t just to teach tennis (and pickleball, by the way). She wants to impart her love for tennis and its many benefits into a way of life for her students of all ages and abilities.

When her nearly three-decade-long, highly successful career in tech PR and content marketing came to a close, “I was beating my head against the wall with a variety of things that I thought I should do,” she said. “Then it occurred to me: “Why don’t I blend my passion for tennis into my work?’”

She had played tennis most of her life as well as taught tennis, but she wanted to go to another level in helping other people appreciate the sport that has given her so much. “Being a tennis instructor means teaching the athlete first and then the sport,” she said. In short, she wants to help people become their best selves, on and off the court.

Davida started her tennis career by going to the nearly century-old Sudbury River Tennis Club in Framingham, Mass., with her dad, Lee (a World War II veteran and a centenarian), when she was 2 years old. Her dad let her skip around a court, dragging a ball and his Jack Kramer. By the time she was 10, she was playing with a junior wood racquet. She was off and running.

As a teenager and in her 20s, she taught tennis at a summer camp and at public parks. Then, at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., she was on the varsity tennis team (winning the Spirit Award) and the varsity squash team.

After graduating with a degree in psychology in 1986, she spent some time teaching in grade schools, but then, eschewing the administrative duties and politics that she thought were inevitable in education, she pivoted to Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., for her MBA, awarded in 1992. She kept more than busy on the side with “a little entrepreneurial venture,” a school-funded biweekly newsletter for her fellow grad students.

Master’s degree in hand, she tried out a few jobs: running a couple of retail businesses, a marketing job with an unforeseen shortage of duties. Then, on the advice of three friends, she interviewed at “a hot new PR firm in Boston,” Schwartz Communications, where she worked from 1996 to 2018. She joined another PR agency in 2018 and stayed there until March of this year when she decided on a change to full-time racquet sports.

Her marketing work was intense, focusing on cutting-edge business-to-business tech, digital health, and cybersecurity. But she’s convinced there are many synergies between tech PR and tennis. Just as before, she’ll need a game plan and the ability to make split-second tactical decisions. “Not everything is going to work every time; you’re not going to win every point and/or see every pitch get accepted,” she wrote in January on a marketing firm blog. “But if you’re ready to adjust and refocus, you’ll also fulfill the most important factor – learn from the past to improve in the future.”

Davida has been married to her husband for nearly 28 years, and they live in Ashland, Mass. Her daughter is an oncology nurse at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and her son, an honors student and academic all-American wrestler at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I., is on his way to an MBA. Both kids captained their high school tennis teams and continue to enjoy playing tennis as a family.

Davida’s only tennis hiatus came in the decade after college when she focused on squash. In the mid-90s, she started playing again, maybe twice a week, and eventually she joined USTA leagues, played some local tournaments, and began coaching at a local high school. She also had the privilege of representing New England on intersectional teams and on the prestigious Addie Cup and Friendship Cup. 

Over the years, Davida’s game has evolved. She has always been primarily a singles player, and she’ll always be honing her singles skills. Only as an adult did she start learning the art of doubles, which is now a work-in-progress. In addition to match play, she loves to drill and discuss strategy and tactics with teammates. “My game isn’t about power,” she said. “It’s more about having a variety of shots to be able to adjust to what’s working for me that day, and what’s not working for my opponent.” But there’s more to tennis than shot making. “I’ve enjoyed getting to know people,” she said. “The social aspect of tennis is a tangible benefit as is meeting people who have the same passion you do.”

Although Davida dabbled in pickleball here and there in the past, an injured tennis player re-introduced her to the sport about three years ago, and this time it stuck. She enjoys fun but competitive games with advanced players and sees benefits to her volley and improved reflexes at the net.

But a mystery remains.

“A tennis player can learn pickleball and have fun on the court pretty quickly,” she said. “But can a pickleball player pick up tennis as easily? That I don’t know.”

She’ll find out that and much more by sticking to her overall game plan: As she wrote on the marketing firm blog, “Plan, Pivot and Be Resilient.”

*Davida is currently serving as a board member for NWTO