Tennis for Health: Borrego’s Own Elite Pro Has Been Teaching the “Sport of a Lifetime” Here for Decades

Photo courtesy of Mike Rogers.

As pickleball booms, Mike Rogers reminds us why tennis is the sport of a lifetime

Pickleball is everywhere these days. But for more than a decade, the Borrego Sun’s pages have been full of another game, taught by the same man: tennis, and Mike Rogers.

Rogers is a USPTA Elite and USPTR P-One certified teaching professional who has lived in Borrego Springs for about 30 years. He was a student of the late Vic Braden, one of the best-known tennis teachers in the game. Rogers worked for Braden in Europe and assisted at his seminars in Coto de Caza. He also holds a recreational tennis teaching degree from Tennis Tech in Tyler, Texas.

His slogan has always been “Tennis for Health.”



Coach to a generation of Borrego kids

Rogers began volunteering with Borrego students years ago with the support of Martha Deichler. In 2013, fresh from a seminar at the Vic Braden Tennis College, he was offering free after-school beginner lessons on Mondays, a Tuesday class at the middle school, and free introductory sessions for adults.

In 2015, Rotary Club volunteers cleaned up the weed-choked high school tennis courts so his after-school students could use them. The next spring, he put twenty fifth-graders through 90 minutes of drills at the de Anza courts. In 2017 he ran a 10-week Team ASES Borrego Kids Tennis program at La Casa del Zorro, using games he invented to teach forehands and backhands.

Many of those kids are adults now, and they still call him Coach when they see him around town. Rogers still has the equipment, including a stock of brand-new kids’ rackets, and says he could start a youth program again.

Tennis clinic at La Casa del Zorro in Borrego Springs, hosted by Geoff Griffin and Mike Rogers, both USPTA Elite Professionals.

Putting Borrego tennis on the map

In October 2015, La Casa del Zorro named Rogers its resident tennis pro. A few months later, he and guest Elite pro Geoff Griffin of San Diego’s Balboa Tennis Club hosted La Casa’s first Tennis Clinic and Pro-Am. Clinics, exhibitions, and visiting tennis families followed. For years, the Sun’s calendar listed his free social round robin with a simple note: the public is welcome.

Rogers also wrote for this paper, with columns breaking down the footwork at Indian Wells and urging readers to “be a net worker.” In 2015, asked what he would teach everyone if he could, he told the Sun: “Other than the love of tennis, I would teach everyone how to have fun and not to take life so seriously.”

A career built on service

Before Borrego, Rogers taught for 20 years at the Balboa Tennis Club at Morley Field. He founded the San Diego Junior Tennis Association, whose after-school program reached hundreds of kids, and he received a 2012 Community Service Award for that work. He served as vice president of the USPTA San Diego Division from 1998 to 2000. In the summer of 2019, he spent three days a week coaching 200 kids at the Mountain Empire school near the border. By 2015 he had taught tennis for more than 20 years in the U.S. and Germany. 

While Director of Tennis at the Poco Diablo Resort in Sedona, Arizona, Rogers organized a wheelchair tennis tournament. Before it took place, he was badly injured in a car accident and ended up in a wheelchair himself. With help from fellow pros, he ran the tournament from his chair. He later took part in San Diego’s Wounded Warrior wheelchair tennis program.

Tennis vs. pickleball

Rogers knows both games. He ran La Casa’s first pickleball round robin in 2016 and has taught pickleball alongside tennis. But he says the two serve different purposes.

To Rogers, tennis is a long-term investment in your health, a skilled sport you build on for years and can play for life. Pickleball, he said, is more of a casual game: cheap, easy to pick up, and social. For dedicated tennis players, it isn’t a substitute.

Both games can share the desert. But with an Elite pro living in town, Borrego doesn’t have to let tennis fade.

Get on the court



Rogers tailors lessons to each student, with size-appropriate equipment for kids and video analysis for adults who want to sharpen their game. Lessons are available for all levels, on your court or his. To book, call Mike Rogers at 858-361-1135.

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