Melvin built a career teaching tennis in South Florida, including a stint at Bill Adams Tennis Academy that ended when he learned a talented young player wouldn't be sponsored because her family couldn't afford it. After time away from the game — including a stretch working at a Caterpillar factory — he found his way back through Shula's Athletic Club, where a director first introduced him to pickleball. Like a lot of tennis players, his first reaction was dismissive. That didn't last.
Toward the end of COVID, a chance conversation with a future business partner turned into one indoor pickleball court in Hialeah. Community demand turned that one court into three, then eight — plus a tennis court, a pro shop, food trucks, and a two-story facility with local history and art on the walls. That's The Yards today: part pickleball facility, part community gathering place, host to everything from open play to full-on concerts.
The episode also covers Melvin's growing friendship with JC, owner of the nearby outdoor facility The Lab (the two met years earlier at a tennis certification course, long before either of them owned a pickleball business), and closes on a personal project: Melvin and Mark are organizing a trip to Mahagual, a small village in the Dominican Republic, to deliver paddles, balls, and shoes to kids playing on a court built by hand in a local resident's backyard.