Tennis Club

PLAY STARTED Thursday in the first John Graves Memorial Tennis Championship at Columbia's Wilde Lake Tennis Club. Early play in this club championship winds up today with final and championship matches running Thursday through next Sunday. This Columbia-wide championship was named for Graves, who died June 13,1999, playing the sport he loved. The retired Social Security Administration executive, also known in golf and duplicate bridge circles locally, began making his name in county tennis around 1980.

Neila Block, a retired Baltimore County recreation center supervisor who had been a Pimlico Hotel hostess, died of lung disease March 30 at her daughter's home in Santa Fe, N.M. She was 82 and had lived in Randallstown and Mount Washington. Born Neila Beal in Minneapolis, she earned a degree in recreation from the University of Minnesota. She became a civilian employee of the Army and set up and managed military recreation centers in France and Germany in the 1950s. While working with the military, she met her future husband, Fred Block, a Hochschild Kohn department store buyer who later owned women's clothing stores, including the Fashion Post.

The hulking metal barns are treasured by the area's tennis community. Thousands of people have volleyed with friends on the indoor courts, including Pam Shriver, who practiced here nearly every day during the peak of her career. Now, more than three decades after it was built, the Green Spring Racquet Club has been sold to developers who are considering razing the barns and building offices. Neighbors, complaining of crowded roads, are gearing up for a fight over the site's fate. Although the new owners say play will continue for more than a year, players are scrambling to find new courts.

Mary R. "Jenia" Brown, a homemaker and avid tennis player, died Monday at her Roland Park home after being struck by a falling tree limb. She was 66. Mrs. Brown had returned to her Falls Road Terrace home after playing tennis when she was struck by the tree limb, said her husband of 45 years, W. Taylor Brown, a retired Baltimore lawyer, who said the incident was not related to last Sunday's storm. Mrs. Brown, who died at the scene while paramedics were treating her, was later taken to Sinai Hospital, her husband said.

Columbia tennis players are lobbying the Columbia Association for a permanent indoor tennis facility after the bubble covering five courts at Owen Brown Tennis Club collapsed during last week's snowstorm. Through an e-mail campaign, tennis players are telling association officials that their indoor playing facilities are now cut in half, and the bubble should be replaced with a permanent structure. But that is not likely to happen soon. The association plans to repair and re-inflate the bubble within two months.

It is a sprawling hangar of a building on a patch of coveted real estate, where former Oriole Jim Palmer has volleyed with tennis star Pam Shriver and legends such as Virginia Wade have lectured on the game's fine points.With its prime location and its unequaled expanse of indoor courts, the Greenspring Racquet Club has for years drawn players from throughout greater Baltimore to the threshold of Baltimore County's valleys.But now, with the club's owners pressing forward in their bid to raze the building to make way for an office complex, some players are wondering whether the 22-year-old club is nearing its own match point.

William H. Jensen, 87, owns something rare -- white tennis duck pants --which he just might wear to the Clifton Tennis Club's 100th birthday party Sept. 14, celebrating a century in Baltimore as Maryland's oldest municipal tennis club. But partygoers won't have to worry about the brick red clay dust that used to mark shoes, shirts and shorts so clearly that people knew you had just come from Clifton Park. The clay courts were replaced years ago with a hard surface. Jensen's long white pants recall the genteel look of the 1930s.

A venerable Baltimore County tennis club whose players once included Pam Shriver went on the auction block yesterday, selling for $3.45 million to a Baltimore businessman who promised to continue operating it as a sport complex. John W. "Jack" Dwyer, president of Capital Funding Group, a Canton-based financial company, bought the 4-acre property and Bare Hills Sportsplex at a foreclosure sale at Alex Cooper Auctioneers. Dwyer's wife, Nancy, said she's played for 15 years at Bare Hills Sportsplex, formerly Bare Hills Tennis Club.

Laura DuPont, an international tennis champion and former manager of the Orchard Indoor Tennis Club, died Wednesday at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., of cancer. She was 52. Ms. DuPont, who lived in Lutherville from about 1980 to 1997, was once the ninth-ranked women's tennis player in the world. She was the U.S. clay court women's singles champion in 1977 and winner of the German Open in 1976, the Argentine Open in 1977 and the Canadian Open in 1979. On the tennis court "she was unflappable," said retired tennis star Pam Shriver, a Baltimore native who was DuPont's doubles partner on the professional tour.

The Bel Air Athletic Club will expand into the tennis market next month when it assumes responsibility for the operation and management of the Harford Tennis Club.With the addition of the 4-acre tennis complex, athletic club owners Elaine and Roger Ralph hope to turn their facility into one of the largest, most diverse and most successful health and fitness clubs in the United States."We are delighted to expand into the tennis market," said Mr. Ralph at a news conference at the tennis club Wednesday.

The hulking metal barns are treasured by the area's tennis community. Thousands of people have volleyed with friends on the indoor courts, including Pam Shriver, who practiced here nearly every day during the peak of her career. Now, more than three decades after it was built, the Green Spring Racquet Club has been sold to developers who are considering razing the barns and building offices. Neighbors, complaining of crowded roads, are gearing up for a fight over the site's fate. Although the new owners say play will continue for more than a year, players are scrambling to find new courts.

A venerable Baltimore County tennis club whose players once included Pam Shriver went on the auction block yesterday, selling for $3.45 million to a Baltimore businessman who promised to continue operating it as a sport complex. John W. "Jack" Dwyer, president of Capital Funding Group, a Canton-based financial company, bought the 4-acre property and Bare Hills Sportsplex at a foreclosure sale at Alex Cooper Auctioneers. Dwyer's wife, Nancy, said she's played for 15 years at Bare Hills Sportsplex, formerly Bare Hills Tennis Club.

A co-worker just recommended Splenda to me. What can you tell me about it? How does it stack up against other sweeteners? Buckle your seatbelts, sugar lovers. For those who don't know Splenda, it's roughly 600 times sweeter than sugar. Wow! Just as NutraSweet and Equal are brand names for aspartame, and Sweet 'n Low is the brand name for saccharin, Splenda is the product name for sucralose. Unlike its predecessors, calorie-free sucralose is actually made from sugar. According to the Food and Drug Administration's Web site and the official Splenda site, sucralose makers begin the process with sucrose.

Old South Country Club is committed to inducting more black members, club president Mark Adams has assured the Anne Arundel NAACP in response to concerns from the organization about the club's racial makeup and the roles of black employees. "We would be extremely pleased to process 5, 10 or 20 applications from African-Americans for membership, and would do so promptly," Adams wrote in a letter dated March 22. Adams added that the south county club, which counts three blacks among its membership of 375, has never turned down an African-American applicant or discouraged anyone from applying.

TEEN-AGE players will abound at Wilde Lake Tennis Club this week during the 23rd Columbia Junior Open tennis tournament. But if you stop by, not all will be what it might appear. Which is not to knock this annual tournament a whit, because that's how tennis has to be played. Still, although it has borne the new town's name for more than two decades, the Columbia Junior Open isn't really about Columbia. Not anymore, that is. Of 121 players registered to compete in four age groups for boys and girls, only six list Columbia as home.

The five courts at the Owen Brown Tennis Club, where the bubble cover collapsed during last month's storm, are scheduled to reopen Monday, the Columbia Association announced yesterday. Last week, association employees and the bubble's manufacturer, Soper's Engineered Fabric Solutions in Ontario, Canada, began repairing the rips in the canvaslike structure. The bubble slowly deflated Feb. 16 after snow piled into a pocket of the structure and association workers were unable to remove it. The bubble, which was erected in 1998, cost $640,000.

The five courts at the Owen Brown Tennis Club, where the bubble cover collapsed during last month's storm, are scheduled to reopen Monday, the Columbia Association announced yesterday. Last week, association employees and the bubble's manufacturer, Soper's Engineered Fabric Solutions in Ontario, Canada, began repairing the rips in the canvaslike structure. The bubble slowly deflated Feb. 16 after snow piled into a pocket of the structure and association workers were unable to remove it. The bubble, which was erected in 1998, cost $640,000.

Long before University of Maryland senior Chris Chiu was slamming forehands and ripping aces for the Terrapins' men's tennis team, he had an interesting training ground. As a youngster, Chiu -- a Columbia native, now 20, who played No. 1 singles for the Terps as a sophomore and No. 2 singles as a junior -- used his driveway for a court and his father as coach. At the time, options were limited for a young child or beginner in Howard County to get started. Today, things for county residents outside of Columbia-oriented programs run at the Columbia Association's two tennis clubs are changing because of work by four men who founded the Howard County Tennis Association in 1996.

Columbia tennis players are lobbying the Columbia Association for a permanent indoor tennis facility after the bubble covering five courts at Owen Brown Tennis Club collapsed during last week's snowstorm. Through an e-mail campaign, tennis players are telling association officials that their indoor playing facilities are now cut in half, and the bubble should be replaced with a permanent structure. But that is not likely to happen soon. The association plans to repair and re-inflate the bubble within two months.

William H. Jensen, 87, owns something rare -- white tennis duck pants --which he just might wear to the Clifton Tennis Club's 100th birthday party Sept. 14, celebrating a century in Baltimore as Maryland's oldest municipal tennis club. But partygoers won't have to worry about the brick red clay dust that used to mark shoes, shirts and shorts so clearly that people knew you had just come from Clifton Park. The clay courts were replaced years ago with a hard surface. Jensen's long white pants recall the genteel look of the 1930s.