Family of man who created National Tennis Center claims USTA is pushing them out

The United States Tennis Association has no love for the family of the man who created the National Tennis Center, erasing his legacy from the famed sports complex in Queens while squeezing his heirs for nearly half a million dollars, a lawsuit claims.The children of William “Slew” Hester claim the USTA has violated a decades-old settlement agreement by demolishing their box in Arthur Ashe Stadium and offering “inferior” seats to the US Open — and only if they pay a whopping $460,000.The stunning price tag left Hester’s surviving children, Bill and Kathryn, with no choice but to sue — for a second time — the organization their dad once led, they told The Post.“It’s disappointing that the USTA’s current board doesn’t have a better understanding of who Slew Hester was, and what he did for the USTA and the US Open,” Bill Hester said.A Mississippi oil man and one-time USTA president, Slew Hester was said to have been flying into NYC in the 1970s when he spotted what was then known as Singer Bowl, a city-owned facility used for the 1964 World’s Fair that had fallen into disrepair.Hester met with city officials and convinced them to build what became Louis Armstrong Stadium to host the US Open, ripping the competition from the staid, private West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills where it had been held and thrusting it onto a far more prominent — and lucrative — stage.Construction was finished in a lightning fast 10 months, in time for the 1978 US Open.

A grateful USTA rewarded Hester lifetime box seats for him and his heirs; a memorial plaque gracing the entrance and a namesake restaurant, his family said in a federal lawsuit.“There was no better seat in the house” than the Hester family box, which Slew “treasured,” his children said in court papers.Hester and his kids attended the open every year at “The House That Slew Built” until his death in 1993 at age 80.The USTA’s “attitude toward the Hester family changed” after ...