Interview with Bob Hilborn, Owner of Scarborough East Tennis Club

Fifty Years of Rallies, Relationships, and Reinvention

What started as an internship for a Muskingum college graduate turned into a 45-year career — and eventually, ownership of one of Columbus’s most storied tennis facilities. Bob Hilborn came to Columbus in 1980 to earn his master’s degree in sports administration at Ohio State, landed at Scarborough East Tennis Club as an intern, and never left.

Today, Bob leads a club that has outlasted the rise and fall of Columbus’s original tennis boom, survived a recession, pioneered pickleball in the city, and just celebrated its 50th anniversary. We sat down with Bob to hear the story behind the courts.

Scarborough East has been around since 1974. Walk us through the early history.

The club was built in 1974 with around ten different partners involved at the start. By the time I arrived in 1980, the tennis industry had already gone through a dramatic shakeup. When I came to Columbus there were ten clubs in town — within a year, five of them had folded. Racquetball was taking off, aerobics was just getting started, soccer was growing. Tennis just lost a big chunk of its potential audience. We went through a receivership early on, but we survived it. Bob Wyler and Don Kelly took over from that point and ran the club until 2010. They were real estate guys, and they trusted myself and Al Matthews to run the operations. We pretty much ran the place from 1982 on.

So how did you go from running it to owning it?

In 2010, Al decided to move on and Bob and Don offered our group the opportunity to buy the majority partnership. I’d been there nearly 30 years at that point. I had a good group of investors who had confidence in me and backed me. It was the right time. It also happened to be right at the tail end of the Great Recession, which actually gave me confidence. We were down maybe 10 to 15 percent during that period, but we were still making money. We didn’t need to inject capital just to stay afloat. If we could get through that, I felt like we were about as recession-proof as any business could be. We eventually bought out Wyler and Kelly entirely in 2019.

Once you had ownership, what was the vision?

We wanted to modernize. The facility had gotten a little run down over the years, and the plan from day one was to reinvest back into the club rather than just extract money from it. We put in all new LED lighting, redid the courts multiple times, added new insulation — when you walk in today it looks like a brand new facility. We renovated the roof, repaved the parking lot, and kept upgrading as we went. The thinking was simple: if the club is run down, ultimately the club fails. Building back the brand and the image was the cornerstone of everything.

You’ve also invested in some pretty cutting-edge technology.

That’s always been important to us — being first. We were the first tennis club in Columbus to put down integrated pickleball lines under the USTA lines. We were the first club in the state of Ohio to install PlaySight technology. We partnered with Head Sports, who sponsors all of our pros and our junior tournaments. We have a serving machine — nobody else in town has one. Our ball machine is the best money can buy. We try to provide our members with a high-quality product, and we want to do things nobody else in Columbus is doing.

Let’s talk about what makes Scarborough different from a member’s perspective.

A few things. First and foremost, we’re family oriented. The vibe here isn’t transactional — people genuinely know each other, the staff knows the members, and that matters. Second, our goal has always been to provide more value at a lower cost than anybody else. I don’t want to just match the competition — I want to exceed what our members expect.

And a big part of that is continuity. If you look at our teaching staff, our front desk — the average tenure of an employee here is probably 15 to 20 years. You walk in and you see the same faces. You don’t have to constantly figure out who’s there now and who isn’t. That kind of stability builds real trust.

Tell us about the pros.

We’ve got a great group. Kelly Story played tennis at Ohio State — she was team captain, and she actually has a mural in the Schottenstein Center. Blaine, my son, just finished school recently, played Division 1, and was a two-time sportsmanship award winner in his conference. Across the board, our pros have played Division 1, Division 2, and Division 3, so they bring different perspectives and experiences. But more than credentials, we’ve got good character at this club. I think that bleeds into everything.

Scarborough has a long history of developing junior players. What’s the philosophy there?

We’ve had some remarkable players come through — Annie Grossman and Lily Osterloh were both top 50 in the world, Cassie Acala was a four-time player of the year in the MAC Conference, DJ Thomas was ranked in the top 10 in ITF juniors 16-and-under. But honestly, what matters most to me isn’t the ranking. It’s the kids who come back as adults and keep playing.

We want competitive players, but we want character more. How many of these kids are going to play on the tour? Not many. So what are they going to take away from tennis? Hopefully a love of the game — but also the experience of working hard toward a goal, dealing with wins and losses, learning to handle both. That builds the kind of character they’ll carry for the rest of their lives.

Pickleball has exploded. How has Scarborough navigated that?

We were the first tennis club in Columbus to incorporate pickleball — a lot of clubs said the two sports don’t mesh. We proved them wrong. We’ve got two banks of four courts each, and we tend to keep pickleball on one side and tennis on the other to manage the noise factor. It’s worked really well for us.

We’ve always tried to do things before everyone else does them. Pickleball fit right into that mindset.

What’s next for Scarborough East?

We’ve got an air dome going up later this year, which will be a significant addition to what we can offer members. Beyond that, the focus stays the same — keep investing in the facility, keep our staff, keep providing the kind of experience that makes people want to stay for 20 years, not just 20 months. We just celebrated our 50th anniversary, and the number of people who came up to me and said they were there when we opened in 1974 was genuinely humbling.

If someone’s on the fence about joining, what’s your pitch?

Expect great value for your money. Expect friendly faces. Expect to have access to the latest in tennis knowledge, the best equipment, and a community that’s going to push you to be better. We offer the social side, the competitive side, and the physical side — and we’re going to bring those together better than anyone else in Columbus. Tennis has been found to add nine-plus years to your life. We take that seriously. Come see for yourself.