Ventana Canyon's Tennis Pro Is Back. The Sport Around Him Isn't.

"Great facility with 8 pickleball courts, 7 tennis courts and beautiful rooms." That's how one visitor summed up the racquet setup at Ventana Canyon Golf and Racquet Club earlier this year. It's an accurate count. What the review didn't mention is who's running the program behind those courts this fall, and that the answer is a name the club hasn't posted on a schedule in more than two decades.

Jonas Ehrlin is back at the Lodge at Ventana Canyon as Director of Racquet Sports. He held the same job once before, starting in 1995, and left in the early 2000s to become head tennis coach at Weber State University in Utah. He's returned to a program that, on paper, looks like the one he left. In practice, it isn't. The sport drawing the biggest crowds on those courts right now didn't exist as an organized club activity when Ehrlin packed up the first time.

The Coach Who Left for Utah

Ehrlin's path to Tucson started on a tennis court in Sweden. He came to the United States to play for Weber State, where he became the program's all-time winningest player and earned a spot in the school's Athletics Hall of Fame, a distinction that also covers his standing across the Big Sky Conference. After his playing days, he moved to Ventana Canyon and ran the club's racquet program for roughly a decade before Weber State called him back, this time to coach rather than compete. He stayed on as the Wildcats' tennis coach for years afterward.

None of that history is unusual for a club professional. Coaches leave for bigger jobs, and clubs replace them. What's unusual is the reverse move: a director who left a private Arizona club for a Division I coaching job, stayed in that role for over a decade, and then chose to come back to the same Tucson address. Ventana Canyon's own program materials still describe him simply as the club's tennis professional, guiding clinics, camps, and a Saturday morning drop-in doubles session that regularly draws more than 40 players. That level of turnout on a weekend morning is the kind of detail a club doesn't get by accident. It's built over years, and it's part of what Ehrlin is stepping back into.

What Wasn't on the Schedule the First Time

Here's the part that separates this return from a simple homecoming story. When Ehrlin left Ventana Canyon in the early 2000s, pickleball had no presence at the club. It wasn't a line item on the racquet sports calendar because almost nowhere in the country had made room for it yet.

That's no longer true. The club's own description of its current program calls pickleball the fastest-growing sport in the country and says it's growing just as fast inside Ventana Canyon's gates. The person leading that growth is Brian Branscome, a USA Pickleball Ambassador and certified instructor who's been involved in the sport since 2015, working out of the Los Angeles area before joining the club. Branscome runs private and group lessons, organizes team events and competitions Monday through Saturday, and teaches beginner sessions on Tuesday and Friday mornings from 7:30 to 9:00, all on courts with lights that keep evening play in the schedule too.

So the program Ehrlin returned to isn't a reunion tour. It's a club where the fastest-growing piece of the racquet operation runs on a sport that didn't exist there when he handed in his keys. He's not rebuilding what he left. He's stepping into something that grew up without him.

Two Courts, One Address, Different Access

There's a detail worth clearing up for anyone trying to find these programs, because Ventana Canyon actually has two separate racquet setups sharing the same general address, and residents sometimes conflate them.

The 398-room Loews Ventana Canyon Resort has its own small courts on-site for hotel guests. The larger racquet facility, the one with Ehrlin's name on the clinic schedule and Branscome's pickleball program, belongs to the member-owned Ventana Canyon Golf and Racquet Club and its boutique companion property, The Lodge. Both share the same two Tom Fazio-designed golf courses through an arrangement between the two operations, which is likely where the confusion started. If you're calling the hotel front desk looking for the pro who's been getting attention this season, you're calling the wrong building.

Why This Is the Season to Notice

Tucson's tennis and pickleball culture doesn't really pause for the calendar the way colder cities do. With well over 300 sunny days a year, local players describe a rhythm that just shifts rather than stops: early mornings and evenings under lights carry the summer heat, and the schedule normalizes again as temperatures ease into fall. That's roughly where Ventana Canyon sits right now, heading into the stretch when court time stops requiring a 6 a.m. alarm.

It's also the stretch where the club's longer-running credentials matter more than a single season's headline. Ventana Canyon's tennis courts have been named among the "Top 100 Tennis Resorts in the World" by tennisresortsonline.com every year since 2008, a run that predates both Ehrlin's departure for Utah and his return. That kind of sustained recognition isn't built by one pro in one season. It's the reason a program can lose its director for over twenty years and still have enough structure underneath for him to walk back into a Saturday doubles group that's already drawing 40 players without him having lifted a racquet there in decades.

The practical version of all this: if you're a Ventana Canyon resident who hasn't been over to the Club side in a while, or you've been assuming the hotel's small courts are the whole story, the Racquets Pro Shop at (520) 577-4009 is the number that actually connects you to Ehrlin's tennis clinics and Branscome's pickleball sessions. Ask about the Saturday morning doubles drop-in, or the Tuesday and Friday pickleball fundamentals sessions, and you're asking about the part of the neighborhood's recreational life that's changed the most this year, even though the name running it hasn't.

If you own inside Ventana Canyon and you're curious how amenity changes like this one tend to show up in what buyers ask about when they tour homes in the community, Lorenia Ruiz is happy to talk through it over a complimentary consultation.