Karlyn Martin and Dave Martin strategize pre-game. | PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES GUSTIN
By Bill McLean | Country Magazine
The father is a Barrington Hills lawyer. The daughter is a Vermont hematologist. Together, this duo has reached amateur tennis’ pinnacle of success— the Grand Slam.
Last November, in Wellington, Florida, Dave Martin and Karlyn Martin achieved a career pinnacle together—on a tennis court. They battled Wisconsin teaching pros Lyle and Kalla Schaefer in the Super Senior division final of the United States Tennis Association (USTA) Father-Daughter Clay Court Championships. In the middle of the Martins’ fifth match point in kiln-like conditions—with all four players planted near the net—a Schaefer lifted a lob over Dave.
Aiming high | PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES GUSTIN
That was no small feat. Dave stands 6 feet 5 inches, a talented, ageless skyscraper in sneakers. Karlyn, who at age 41 hasn’t lost a step since her All-Ivy League tennis days at Yale, pivoted quickly and dashed to the baseline to keep the point alive, lofting a jetstream high lob.
“The father yelled, ‘I can’t see the ball!’” Dave recalls. The Martins won the point to seal their 6-3, 6-4 victory.
But Dave—father of six, grandfather of nine, and half of the Illinois high school boys tennis state doubles championship duo in 1969—and Karlyn, who had captured the Illinois high school girls tennis state doubles title for Barrington High School (BHS) with her twin, Ashley Martin, in 1999, celebrated more than a national father-daughter championship that day.
They had completed a 2023 Calendar Grand Slam, a feat as rare as a total solar eclipse. The duo had previously won USTA national father-daughter tournaments in Providence, Rhode Island (indoor) in May, in San Diego (hard court) in June, and in Boston (grass court) in August.
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