Tennis a love story for former Lowcountry association president

As a 26-year veteran of the Navy, including a stint as commanding officer of the Charleston Naval Supply Center, Bob Peiffer developed an aptitude for logistics and organization.

As a boyhood baseball player, he harbored a dream of one day running a Major League Baseball team.

And as a red-blooded male, he developed an appreciation for a trim, fit tennis player named Susie.

The 66-year-old Peiffer has found the perfect confluence of those passions for the past 16 years as the president of the Lowcountry Tennis Association.

Peiffer's run as LCTA president, which ended in January, enabled him to make full use of his administrative skills in helping the association to achieve unprecedented growth, to fulfill his goal of running a sports organization and to spend quality time with his wife of 18 years (and one of the best senior tennis players in the country), Susie Nepveux Peiffer.

"I knew that if I was ever going to see her, I needed to be playing tennis," Peiffer says with a laugh. "Because that's where she was going to be, on the tennis court."

Subs and service

Born in 1943 in Carmel, Calif., Peiffer spent much of his youth on the move as the only child of an Army man, Lt. Col. Robert D. Peiffer, and his wife, Mary Lilla.

After graduating from the University of Miami in Oxford, Ohio, the younger Peiffer considered his options -- "the dream job would have been general manager of a baseball team," he said -- and joined the Navy.

He served for three years on submarines and then in the Navy Supply Corps. The Navy sent him to the University of Michigan for a master's degree in business administration, and he spent most of his career in the U.S. and the Philippines.

Peiffer's three years on diesel submarines, 1965-68, taught him the value of teamwork.

"The camaraderie on a sub is greater than in almost any other place of work in the Navy, or anywhere else," he said, "because everyone is so dependent on everyone else for personal survival. If one person makes a mistake, it can cost the lives of everyone else on the submarine."

In the Supply Corps, Peiffer rose to the rank of captain and ended his career as commander of the Charleston Naval Supply Center, retiring in 1991 -- but not before meeting the tennis player who would change the rest of his life.

Love match

Bob met Susie in 1989, when he ran the Naval Supply Center and she worked at the base in the public affairs office.

"I would snap his picture whenever he spoke or something," said Susie, daughter of longtime Charleston dentist Dr. Felix Nepveux.

As they contemplated marriage, it did not take long for Peiffer to realize that he was about to become a tennis player.

"When we got married, I asked her where she wanted to go on our honeymoon," Peiffer recalls. "And she said, 'Let's go to a tennis camp.' So that's where we went, a tennis camp in Asheville for our honeymoon."

Susie did not take up tennis until she was 30, but quickly became good at it. She's the assistant pro at Pine Forest Country Club and has been ranked as high as No. 3 in the nation in her age group in singles and No. 2 in doubles with partner Cindy Babb.

Their lives, which include a blended family with four grown children and eight grandchildren, became more centered around tennis.

But Peiffer, who joined the Medical University of South Carolina in 1998 as the administrative manager of the Center for Drug and Alcohol Programs, wasn't content to just hack around the court on weekends.

As he and Susie became involved in league tennis through the Lowcountry Tennis Association, Peiffer saw ways that he could help.

"Bob has the biggest heart and the strongest work ethic of anyone I know," Susie said. "And that's a good combination, most of the time."

Added Bob, "Sometimes, it gets me in trouble."

The LCTA

When Peiffer took over as president of the LCTA in 1994, the organization had about 1,984 names on rosters in its various leagues. Bob remembers stacks of rosters and scorecards overrunning the family living room.

Today, the LCTA has about 11,172 names on rosters, the second-largest league in the Southern Section of the U.S. Tennis Association, behind only Atlanta. All scorecards and rosters are kept online, and the LCTA has its own Web site (www.lctatennis.org) and Facebook page (Lowcountry Tennis Association).

Peiffer also has made certain that the LCTA has a presence at the Family Circle Cup, beginning today at the Family Circle Tennis Center on Daniel Island, and has made diversity a priority on the LCTA board of directors.

"I really believe that if you have diverse leadership, it will help you have a diverse group of players," he said. "And we need to start with our local leadership."

Colleagues say much credit for the LCTA's growth goes to Peiffer, who remains with the group as treasurer.

"Bob has done a phenomenal job and is directly responsible, to a large degree, for the growth in the Charleston area," said Bud Spencer, past vice president of the LCTA and state league coordinator for USTA South Carolina. "He's a very hands-on guy, a strong leader, and always a voice people would listen to. He's also very perceptive and forward-looking."

So forward-looking that starting four years ago, Peiffer helped select and train his successor, Ken Edwards, who took over as president of the LCTA in January.

"Bob's highly respected," Edwards said, "both for his knowledge and his ability to be very impartial and positive. He's always told me that his philosophy was not to try to go in and build up the LCTA, but to make it as organized and efficient as possible, and that it would grow from that. And it has."

Said Peiffer, "That's my skill. I'm not an engineer. I don't change the oil in my car, and if I do, I will screw something up. But when it comes to administration, I'm good at that. So the LCTA was a natural fit for me."

Reach Jeff Hartsell at 937-5596 or jhartsell@postandcourier.com.