Tom Konchalski, center, with his uncle John Coman, right, at the West Side Tennis Club in the 1980s.
Coman, a longtime tennis umpire, coaxed his nephew to try it.

By Kevin Armstrong

Tom Konchalski still keeps a close eye on the courts where he once worked.

At 71 and self-employed, Konchalski is best known as the publisher of High School Basketball Illustrated, a scouting newsletter for coaches that he produces, in large part, from his home on the 19th floor of a Queens high-rise.

What many people don’t know about Konchalski is that he was once a linesman at the United States Open and that nostalgia is the reason he moved into this apartment three decades ago. Hints of his life in tennis dot the crowded space. He keeps a Dunlop Maxply Fort, the wooden racket his hero, Lew Hoad, used when he played, amid the reams of paper documenting onetime basketball prospects like Connie Hawkins, Michael Jordan and LeBron James.

To step onto Konchalski’s terrace is to trek back decades. He overlooks the West Side Tennis Club, the exclusive world where, at 21, he worked as a linesman during Arthur Ashe’s Open semifinal in 1968. These days, it’s common to hear music from summer concerts rising from the courts below.

“They had Bob Dylan two summers ago, they had Paul Simon,” he said. “I can look into the stadium. They’re not all sellouts.”