He’s got a good serve, when it’s on, and likes to blast the forehand. He hits his backhand with one hand, and when he gets into a good slice the shot can be effective (“I like to frustrate with that slice,” he says with a laugh). He freely admits that coming to the net is not much of an option, and guess what—he’s not freshly retired Andy Roddick.
But he knows Roddick, the tennis player whose friendship and frequent care packages of tennis goods—Shoes! Racquets! Strings!—helped suck him into the game as a player as well as a fan.
I’m talking about Boyd Calvin Tinsley, the gregarious, perpetually enthusiastic 48-year-old Virginian who’s better known as the violinist and mandolinist (among other things) for one of the most popular rock acts in the country, the Dave Matthews Band, than he is for that wicked slice or good serve.
Big deal, you say. Tennis is awash in celebrities and artists who hobnob with the stars, cop choice seats in player boxes or the USTA’s presidential suite, and get plenty of face-time during U.S. Open broadcasts. Some of them even swing a racquet now and then in a pro-am/media opportunity.
Tinsley is a little bit different and warrants special mention, less because of what he does in the game (he cheerfully admits to being “about a three-point-oh (3.0) player—on a good day”) than what he does for the game.
Tinsley is the front man for the eponymous Boyd Tinsley Clay Court Invitational at the Boar’s Head Inn tennis resort in Charlottesville, Va. It’s a $50,000 ITF tournament that female players have come to love. The tournament was last in the news a few months ago when Melanie Oudin, the darling of the 2009 U.S. Open, won it in the course of a brief resurgence that earned her a wild card into the French Open.
“I’m so happy with that tournament, especially when players tell me that it’s their favorite,” Tinsley told me recently, while preparing for an upcoming DMB tour and reaching out to promote a movie he made recently, Faces in the Mirror. “The town (Charlottesville) really embraces them, they just open up to them with housing and hospitality and everyone just has a good time.”
When Tinsley first joined Boar’s Head it was a small operation, but it has expanded significantly and is now the home facility of the University of Virginia tennis program; Tinsley is particularly proud of the fact that the UVA courts are named in his honor.
“Sometimes I think I feel more comfortable in a locker room than backstage,” Tinsley told me. What he most loves about actually playing tennis is that it’s one of those places where he can be “totally in the moment” and focused exclusively on the task at hand. He’s had good training for making the most of that opportunity, of course, as a showman facing the mandate to communicate his passion and find his A-game every time he steps onto the stage. With the band, Tinsley regularly plays in front of as many fans as Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic did in the U.S. Open final.
Tinsley’s engagement with tennis began when he was laid up with a broken leg following a serious motorcycle accident in the summer of 1985. “It was the summer of Boris Becker (who won Wimbledon that year as an unseeded 17-year old),” Tinsley said. “His story pulled me in, and that was the beginning of it.”
But Tinsley’s interest didn’t fully mature until he met Roddick, a DMB fan, a few years later. Tinsley soon became a regular in Roddick’s guest box, and the player fueled his interest by making sure he was well supplied with tennis gear. How could he not lace ‘em up and go out to play?
Over the years, Tinsley also became good friends with, among others, the Bryan brothers, John Isner, and Mardy Fish (”I kept telling Mardy, ‘With that serve and forehand, no way you’re not Top 10!”). He added, “The American guys have been very welcoming to me. They make me feel at home when I see them.”
Because of his celebrity and itinerant lifestyle, Tinsley has played in many places, including Margaret Court Arena in Melbourne Park (it wasn’t during the Australian Open, and he paid his five bucks court-use fee just like everyone else).
Tinsley also played on Wimbledon’s Court No. 1. Only on that latter occasion, he played violin—not tennis. He was commissioned by ESPN to write some theme music for their Wimbledon coverage and they were going to film him fiddling. “You should have seen all those security people descend on me when we walked out on the court,” he said. “They didn’t know we’d arranged it. They thought I was some guy sneaking on one of the world’s great court to do who knows what.”
At Wimbledon, Tinsley also knocked around and spent some time up on Henman Hill. He remembers the wonderful Hill People vibe as he joined them in watching Rafael Nadal dig himself out of a two-sets-to-none hole against Robert Kendrick in 2006. “I’ll never forget that. I thought Wimbledon would be so stuffy, and not much fun. But it really is—the crowd has a lot of energy. It’s just such a joyous place.”
The Dave Matthews Band was on a hiatus of almost a year, but the break enabled Tinsley to finish a project that’s close to his heart, and in which he takes deep, obvious pride. Faces in the Mirror is a film he conceived (and eventually produced) while trying to get himself out of what he calls “a bad place” some four years ago, after the unexpected death (from complications following an ATV accident) of DMB saxophonist LeRoi Moore.
Reversing the usual formula, the experimental indie film began as music, with the images and what plot there is added later. It’s a moody, abstract work with little dialogue about a young man returning home to attend the funeral of his estranged father. Tinsley has described it as “A dance of film and music,” and in an interview and review in Rolling Stone of the importance of the music: “It’s almost like the film is the score.”
By the time Tinsley emerged from the creative cocoon of his film earlier this year, tennis had changed. “I was so busy the entire summer that I hardly saw anybody. Imagine my surprise when someone told me that Federer was number one, Djokovic was two, and Nadal had fallen to three. Being able to do that—to me that just underscored Federer’s legendary quality. This is a guy you can revere.”
Tinsley didn’t forget about his old pal Roddick, either. He made it to New York for Roddick’s farewell match at the U.S. Open. “It hit me so suddenly,” Tinsley said. “I was really sad because I wanted more. I felt numb.”
Now that Roddick is retired I’m not sure where Tinsley will get his tennis equipment, but I have a funny feeling he’ll manage.
Faces in the Mirror is available on iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play. The Dave Matthews Band will be touring through all of December in the Midwest and East. Details available on the web.