Jacob, Jay and Jimmy Weinacker. Jimmy and Jay have racked up nine national father-son championships.
By Lee Hurley
This Father’s Day story starts with a mother.
Marcia Weinacker of Mobile passed away in 2015 at the age of 88 after leaving a legacy that few will equal.
Marcia held multiple state championships in tennis, including singles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles. She was nationally ranked in singles and played in tournaments both nationally and internationally, including the U.S. Open at Forest Hills and the European Women’s Tour.
Her 18th state title came in 2000 at the age of 72.
In 2008, she was inducted into the Greater Mobile Area Tennis Hall of Fame, and that same year she was inducted into the Alabama Tennis Hall of Fame.
Meanwhile, she bore nine children – Marcia, Bobby, Sidney, Jimmy, Jerry, Mary, Sue, Peggy and John Pau. She taught them all how to play tennis on a handball court her husband built at the house.
One of those nine kids, Jimmy Weinacker, was good enough that he played tennis and basketball at Springhill College in Mobile and, thankfully for this story’s sake, made tennis his lifelong passion and career.
Like Father, Like Sons
Jimmy Weinacker has been the director of tennis at Pine Tree Country Club since 2005. Until the closing of Birmingham-Southern College, he was head coach of the men’s tennis team, taking them most recently to a national ranking of 40th and their league conference championship, where they lost only to 15th ranked Sewanee.
Tennis enthusiasts might also remember Jimmy as director of tennis at Mountain Brook Swim and Tennis.
Among other accolades, Jimmy was inducted into the Alabama Tennis Hall of Fame in 2010, and in 2014 he served as head coach for the Alabama Junior Davis Cup Team.
Yet, if you ask Jimmy his proudest tennis accomplishment, he might offer up the nine national father-son championships he and his son Jay Weinacker racked up.
Jay, a Mountain Brook High School graduate in 2005, played number one on the tennis team all four years of high school and – along with Hunter Carney, Trey Walston and doubles partner Hunter Perry – helped win four state championships in a row.
Jay went on to play scholarship tennis at North Carolina State, where he still holds the school record for the most singles wins at 106.
He was named an All-American his senior year.
Jay isn’t the only son of Jimmy who fell in love with the game. Jacob Weinacker came along nearly a decade later and worked his way up to number one on Mountain Brook’s team, which lost the state championship to archrival Vestavia Hills.
Jacob went on to play at Birmingham-Southern and had the type of success that got him inducted into the Birmingham-Southern Tennis Hall of Fame.
Today, Jay is the head of racquet sports at Birmingham Country Club, where Jacob also works as a teaching professional. Jimmy, Jay, and Jacob talked tennis and family one Tuesday in early June.
OTMJ: As the only one out of nine kids who did not attend (the University of Alabama,) did you feel left out?
Jimmy: I went to a DKE fraternity rush weekend while in high school and had a great time. But then I started thinking about it and realized that the whole time I was in Tuscaloosa nobody ever called me by my name. Three of my brothers were there at the time and people called me “Little Womack,” “Little Peanut,” or “Little Snidely,” and I realized I won’t even know who I am if I go to Tuscaloosa!
OTMJ: As a father and a coach, tell us about the differences in Jay and Jacob?
Jimmy: Jay and Jacob are both very good athletes, they just have different personalities. Jay is going to put his foot on your throat and crush you.
Jacob is a more feeling person, but as he went through college, he became a fierce competitor. His sophomore year we were playing Rhodes and we had sponsored a court in Marcia’s honor at Birmingham-Southern. He was playing on that court and down 4-1, so I sit down to talk to him and he turns to me and says, ‘I got this dad.’ He then won five straight games to win on mom’s court.
OTMJ: What was it like being coached by Jimmy?
Jacob: After my freshman year at Birmingham-Southern dad asked me one night, ‘What would you think if I became your coach?’ I said, ‘Dad, you’ve coached me since I was 9 years old, why not for three more years?’ So we got to finish out my college career together.
Jay: At tournaments I would play the matches and then run off with friends, but dad was always going back to watch other players to figure out how they were playing to see how he could help me and others. He would use those trips as fun for us and part of our tennis journey but also to become a better coach.
OTMJ: Did Jimmy push tennis on you guys?
Jay: Jimmy did a good job with all four of us boys in keeping us well rounded. He insisted we try different sports. I credit our love of tennis for Jimmy not burning us out. One of Jimmy’s best quotes is ‘tennis is a marathon, not a sprint.’
Jacob: Ill piggyback off that. I saw tennis as a way to spend time with Dad. Being a tennis pro can be a time-consuming job, sometimes you work late into the night, and so I figured out at eight or nine that if I wanted to see dad, it meant tennis clinic.
OTMJ: Did you know you wanted to make tennis your profession?
Jacob: After I played college tennis, I knew I didn’t want to work a desk job and I got to see how good dad and Jay were at teaching and how much they enjoyed it. I really enjoy it, too.
Jay: After 22 years straight of playing tennis and after college, a great guy and friend of Jimmy’s named Dave Oberman let me test the waters at Merrill Lynch. I started in March and by October I was looking out of the 20th floor window from the Wells Fargo building (now Shipt) and it was 75 degrees and beautiful outside and I called Jimmy and said. ‘Do you have a spot for me?’ He said, ‘Sure, come on.’
OTMJ: Who are the most famous players you have played?
Jay: Jimmy and I played Mike and Bob Bryan in an exhibition match in the convention center in Mobile.
Jimmy: We come out of the tunnel and we shake hands with the Bryan brothers and they kind of knew who (we) were and they asked, ‘Have you guys hit any balls?’ Before we could answer, the announcer said, ‘No warm ups!’ So here we are about to play the number one doubles partners in the word with no warm up.
Jay: So, Lefty Bob Bryan is serving to dad and dad likes to run around his backhand to return a forehand. Bob slices this serve in and Dad keeps trying to step around and the serve keeps spinning away from him and dad falls down. Before he can get up, Bob Bryan has jumped the net and sprinted over and picked dad up off the court and asking if he is OK.
Jimmy: So now the brothers are thinking they need to take it really easy on us. Then Jay hits a cannon serve and aces Mike Bryan. So at least they realized they had to try. They beat us 10-4 but we gave them a game.
