About MTG

From Village Voice ad to vibrant LGBTQ+ tennis community

For more than four decades, Metropolitan Tennis Group (MTG) has brought LGBTQ+ tennis players together in New York City. What started with a conversation, a newspaper ad, and a small group of players grew into a community that has connected people on and off the court for generations.

MTG was born in the early 1980s, a pivotal time for LGBTQ+ life in New York City. Visibility and activism were growing, and LGBTQ+ communities were creating new spaces to connect, organize, and support one another. At the same time, discrimination and stigma remained widespread, and the emerging HIV/AIDS crisis was beginning to devastate gay communities.

Finding your people mattered. Creating spaces where LGBTQ+ people could come together, feel safe, and simply be themselves mattered, too.

In 1982, Terry Fonville attended the Dallas Leadership Conference, bringing together LGBTQ+ leaders from across the country. During a break, Terry met Susan I. Frankel near the tennis courts. They discovered that other cities had gay tennis groups and started asking a pretty simple question:

Why not New York?

Not long after, Terry put an ad in the Village Voice looking for gay and lesbian tennis players who wanted to meet and play. About 20 people responded.

The ad gave a member's apartment on the Upper East Side as the meeting place. Today, that might sound like a perfectly ordinary way to organize a tennis meetup. In 1982, it took a little more trust—and for some, a little courage—to show up at a stranger's apartment because of a newspaper ad.

But they showed up.

Terry and Susan began bringing those players together, and a tennis group started to take shape. There was tennis, of course. There were also friendships, social gatherings, and the doubles parties that became an early MTG tradition. What started as a way to find someone to hit with became a way to find your people.

Over the years, MTG grew into a volunteer-run organization with its own leadership and structure. In 1990, MTG was incorporated as a New York not-for-profit organization. In 1993, MTG launched the Liberty Open and joined the international tournament circuit of the Gay and Lesbian Tennis Alliance (GLTA), connecting New York's growing tennis community to a much bigger one around the world.

More than four decades later, the idea is still pretty simple.

Tennis is what brings us through the door. Community is what keeps us here.

Today, MTG welcomes players across generations, backgrounds, identities, and skill levels—from people picking up a racquet for the first time to seasoned competitors chasing their next title. Through leagues, programs, social events, tournaments, community partnerships, and the Liberty Open, we're always finding new ways to play, connect, and create community.

Terry and Susan started with a question: Why not New York?

We're still answering it.

A place to play. A place to connect. A place to belong.

Because MTG has always been more than tennis.

It's a community you can play in, grow with, and call your own.