For two weeks each summer, the best players in the world convene on these courts to contest the U.S. Open championship. For nine months that span the school year, the students — including 15-year-old Andrew Hornstein, 10-year-old Daniel Thomaschek and 7-year-old Patrick Flanagan — and their parents meet every Saturday morning to participate in the Serving For Autism program.

On the surface, veteran USTA National Tennis Center instructor Mike Littman is teaching tennis lessons, but watching him interact with the kids it's clear they are learning life lessons.

"Let's face it, none of these kids are on the fast track to the U.S. Open," says Joel Hornstein, whose son Andrew has participated in the program since it began. "But I really believe this program has helped the kids in so many valuable ways. It helps the children not only with motor skills, but with their self-esteem, learning to focus, learning to pay attention, learning patience, learning to wait your turn, learning to understand directions, learning to improve their language skills and learning to interact with other children. We're not training for the U.S. Open here, but this program and Mike's teaching — he's so patient and understanding of the kids — is hopefully helping our kids learn valuable skills that they can apply for the rest of their lives and that's something very important this program gives to our kids."

Autism is a brain disorder that afflicts about one in every 500 hundred Americans. The National Institute of Mental Health reports autism "often results in a lifetime of impaired thinking, feeling and social functioning — our most uniquely human attributes. Autism typically affects a person's ability to communicate, form relationships with others, and respond appropriately to the external world. The disorder becomes apparent in children generally by the age of 3."

Degrees of autism span the spectrum of children who can function at a relatively high level, attend school and carry on a conversation to the more severe autistic cases of children who may not speak at all, seldom make eye contact with others or show signs of any social interaction.

The life of a severely-afflicted autistic child can be a solitary one, which is one reason why the parents of participating students believe sports can be so vital to improving their child's quality of life — it connects the kids with a common purpose.

Serving for Autism — which is also conducted in Brooklyn — was created four years ago by Andrew Baumann, president of New York Families for Autistic Children. Founded in 1998, NYFAC.org provides programs for autistic children and their families to participate in recreational activities. Baumann, whose 11-year-old son Anthony is autistic, joined forces with New York State assemblyman Mark Weprin to help launch the program. The USTA donated one hour of court time each week at the National Tennis Center, USTA-Eastern liaison Lara Schneider helped procure funding for the program and Littman, who spent 32 years working for the New York City Board of Education as a teacher and dean of students on the Lower East Side and has extensive experience teaching developmentally disabled children, volunteered to teach tennis to the kids at a reduced rate.

"You can tell from watching them play, the kids love tennis," Baumann said. "They absolutely love it. At NYFAC, we will deal with any child from very severely affected child to a high functioning child. We've had children of all different functioning skills participate in the program. They not only play together, but have been able to learn discipline, turn taking and a limited sense of camaraderie. Honestly, friendships are hard to make for these children, but they do often display a fondness for one another. It's a kind of a bond, on a different level, that you and I might not really understand."

Initially, the program founders were concerned that tennis could become a dangerous contact sport as autistic children swinging racquets around for the first time could hurt themselves or others, but those fears have been unfounded.

"Children with more severe cases of autism can be aggressive and cause self injuries," Baumann says. "So when we started this program, I was worried about kids hitting themselves with the racquet, hurting themselves or each other, but fortunately we've never ever had that. When we started the program, we used bigger balls with six-foot streamers to help the kids keep their focus and attention and then we reduced the size of the balls little by little until we had them hitting with a softball-sized tennis ball and now as you see they hit with the same ball you and I hit."

They're taught the same skills as any other kids who take lessons at the National Tennis Center. Littman starts each session at the net rallying with the players from a few feet away and gradually moves further back until he's feeding them balls from behind the service line. The most popular part of their weekly lesson is when Littman takes the tubes used to collect the balls and sets them up near the service line and the kids fire away in a target practice drill that brings smiles to the faces of both players and parents.

"I teach all types of students — from beginners to advanced — and these children are doing just what any other kids can do on the tennis court," Littman says. "And that's the main thing we're trying to accomplish — to mainstream them and give them the opportunity to experience the same activities other kids do. As you can see, they're doing very nicely."

On this day, most shots they strike hit the center of the strings. The children line up behind each other and take turns hitting the balls Littman feeds them. On the occasion when their eyes wander to the other courts or to their parents who stand courtside to watch the lesson, Littman stops, holds a tennis ball up to eye level and asks them to focus on the ball before he hits another shot.

"Autistic children have a very difficult time focusing," Littman says. "Focus is one of the primary goals because they do have focusing problems in life and concentrating on the ball, in my opinion, does help them. For instance, if there is something going on on another court and they see it or hear it, they can be distracted. Even in making eye contact, you'll notice they'll often look right through you or off to the side of you, but they won't necessarily look directly into your eyes. Playing tennis actually helps because they're forced to focus on the ball coming at them in order to hit it."

While they do focus on the ball, the children don't always interact with one another. But they do speak to Littman, who stands near the front door of the NTC's indoor facility and makes a point of looking each child in the eye and greeting him warmly as he enters the building.

"I find that's an important way to start each session — to greet the children, make them feel welcome and let them know you're here for them," Littman says. "They like routines so that's a routine we follow each week and they do notice when one of the kids is absent the others will ask about him. So even though they don't always show it, they are aware and interested in the other kids."

Queen's resident Patrick Flanagan, whose thatch of red hair makes him look a bit like a young Jim Courier, saw his first sign of tennis soaring in the stars during the U.S. Open and pleaded with his parents to play.

"We live pretty close to the U.S. Open and every year we see the blimp flying over our house when the U.S. Open is on and Patrick knows its tennis time," Tina Flanagan, Patrick's mother says. "We watch the U.S. Open every year and he would beg me to take him to play tennis. He's been watching tennis on TV for years, so finding this program has been fantastic for Patrick because he's very energetic and loves sports. His father does target practice shooting so since he was a baby he's been watching his father and I think that's helped him develop his eyes."

The youngest member of the Serving For Autism, Flanagan bounces around the court like a veteran player and shows sound eye-hand coordination. After the class concludes, the students sit inside the Grand Stand court eyes riveted on the action as NTC director of tennis Bill Mountford conducts a clinic with a group of advance junior tennis.

"I just love tennis," Patrick says, eyes unwavering from the the bouncing ball on the court. "I always watched it on TV and always wanted to play. I just like hitting the ball. It's fun."

Sports have always provided a stabilizing foundation for Patrick, who swims once a week and tosses the football around with his parents on their block.

"When we first joined the tennis program, I said Andrew, 'I feel guilty, my kid doesn't seem as autistic as some of the others.' So I felt guilty about receiving services because my son wasn't as severely autistic as other kids," Tina Flanagan recalls. "Andrew said: 'If your kid had a little bit of cancer what would you do? You would still treat it, right?' You can't just give a child meds and expect it to work — though he has a true pharmaceutical need for medication — the meds need to be an aid to help him learn. Patrick's focusing has come a long way because of the combination of the therapies, social skills training, education and programs like this one. He needs a more modified environment to learn and grow to his potential — I'm not going to set him up to fail — and the small successes give him the confidence to grow up."

These small successes give Super Saturday a new meaning as you see the enthusiasm the kids exude as they hit balls. It's a reminder that in addition to the social skills the players learn, perhaps the most valuable part of the program is the purity experience is the purity that comes from having fun on the court.

"In Andrew's case the sheer enjoyment of playing tennis is so important," Joel Hornstein says. "He's always talking about tennis and asking 'Dad, are we doing to tennis on Saturday?' On the rare occasion when we need to miss a session, he's very upset about it and asking 'When can we go back to play tennis?' It's a blessing to us that NYFAC sponsors this, that Mike commits his time and of course that the USTA donates the court. If we had to pay for something like this on an hourly basis, with all the money we spend weekly on services, there's no way we'd be able to afford a program like this ourselves. So we are all very grateful and it's a joy just seeing these kids have fun."

Baumann hopes the two Serving For Autism programs in New York will serve as models for future programs around the nation. NYFAC has written a guide book to serve as a course curriculum for instructors to follow.