A Modern Umpire Chair from McKinnon and Harris

Luxury outdoor furniture maker, McKinnon and Harris, has introduced an elegant hand-crafted tennis umpire chair named for the legendary physician and tennis coach, Dr. Robert Walter ‘Whirlwind’ Johnson. Marking the company’s 30th anniversary, the Dr. Johnson Tennis Umpire Chair is being released on the eve of the U.S. Open in Flushing Meadows New York, site of the classic umpire chair that served as template for the McKinnon and Harris design.

Inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame in 2009, Dr. Johnson was an African American physician who transformed his personal home and tennis court in Lynchburg, VA, into the backdrop for a ground-breaking training and mentoring program for young Black tennis players during the 1960s and 1970s—and who, most notably, launched the careers of tennis’ first African-American champions, Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe.

Fellow Lynchburg residents, Anne Harris Massie and William McKinnon Massie, Jr, have more than professional reasons for investing in the design of an umpire chair. Their own father, also a doctor, served as Dr. Johnson’s personal physician during the last years of his life. Their umpire chair is a tribute to an iconoclast whom they knew personally, and whose role in helping to integrate tennis remains an invaluable legacy, preserved by the Whirlwind Johnson Foundation.

With its hefty price tag ($22,000), the Dr. Johnson Tennis Umpire Chair is, needless to say, not your standard umpire chair. Its statuesque aluminum form (80”) and meticulous detailing—steps crafted from synthetic teak, bespoke copper nameplate—echo Richard Schultz’s Mid-Century furniture line for Knoll, a brand of esthetic cache rarely expected of utilitarian (sports) accoutrements. We can only hope Wimbledon is taking note.

Image Credit: McKinnon and Harris