About Us

Our Story

In 1969, Bob and Hiroko Ray walked into a small pro shop at the Balboa Tennis Club, San Diego's largest public tennis facility, tucked into the northeast corner of Balboa Park with 25 courts. Bob taught lessons on courts 1 and 2 alongside Wilbur Folsom. Hiroko ran the shop. What started as strings, grips, and a handful of racquets became the seed of Southern California's longest-running tennis specialty retailer.

For the first decade, Ray's Tennis lived inside the club. Bob and Hiroko built their reputation one customer at a time, stringing racquets by hand, fitting shoes, and offering the kind of honest, personal guidance that players couldn't get anywhere else. They understood something fundamental about this sport: trust is built through expertise, not salesmanship. Players came back not because of price, but because Bob and Hiroko remembered their grip size, their string preference, and the shoulder injury they were working around.

By 1979, the business had outgrown its pro shop roots. Bob and Hiroko opened the doors at 1434 University Avenue in Hillcrest, just minutes from Balboa Park, where Ray's Tennis has remained ever since. The new space gave them room to carry a full inventory from the sport's top brands and to build out the professional stringing operation that would become legendary in San Diego tennis circles.

Through the decades, Ray's Tennis grew with the sport. The shop became a gathering point for the local tennis community, a place where club players, college competitors, teaching pros, and weekend warriors all walked through the same door. Hiroko remained the constant presence behind the counter, dedicated to the craft in a way you never forgot once you saw it. Her deep knowledge of equipment, her attention to every stringing job, and her quiet commitment to getting it right earned a loyalty that spanned generations. Families who walked in as beginners brought their children back years later for their first racquet.

Roger Ray eventually joined the business and took on day-to-day operations, bringing decades of institutional knowledge to the role. Under Roger's care, Ray's Tennis continued to evolve, adapting to new racquet technologies, expanding its stringing expertise, and maintaining the personal relationships that always set the store apart. Over the years, the stringing bench at Ray's Tennis has completed more than 500,000 string jobs. That number speaks not just to volume, but to the trust this community has placed in the Ray family.

Ray's Tennis has weathered every cycle the sport has thrown at it. The graphite revolution. The oversized racquet era. The rise of polyester strings. A global pandemic. Through each one, the store survived because the foundation Bob and Hiroko built was never about trends. It was about knowing the customer, knowing the equipment, and caring enough to match the two honestly.

Today, Ray's Tennis is one of the few remaining independent tennis specialty retailers in the country. A 57-year-old business in an era when most have been replaced by online megastores and big-box chains. We now serve not only tennis but the rapidly growing pickleball and padel communities, carrying equipment from Babolat, Head, Völkl, Wilson, Yonex, Asics, Lacoste, and more. Our hitting room, our expert stringing service, our demo program, our shoe fitting process. These are things no algorithm can replicate.

The name on the sign hasn't changed. The address hasn't changed. And the mission hasn't changed either: to be San Diego's trusted destination for racquet sports equipment, expert service, and community connection, helping players of all levels perform their best on the court.

Come in and see us. We've been here since 1969. We're not going anywhere.