Tennis Court

I'M NEVER GOING on vacation again. Every time I take time off, something happens that needs to be properly addressed in the Kickoff section, and God forbid Ray Frager try to do it. I'm referring, of course, to the attack of the tennis-playing bison. I was sitting at the breakfast table Wednesday morning and right there on the front page of The Sun was a photo of a small herd of bison - I prefer to call them buffalo, but apparently there is some subtle difference - congregating on a tennis court in Pikesville.

Led by sophomore Felix Hong, Severn's tennis team opened its defense of the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association B Conference title Thursday with a 5-0 victory over Annapolis Area Christian School at Anne Arundel Community College. Hong, who was the B Conference singles champion last spring, swept the Eagles' Adam Sheir in straight sets, 6-0, 6-0. Hong, who has a 4.0 grade point average and counts chess, drawing and fitness among his interests, wants to pursue a career in architecture and said chess helps his tennis game "with the strategy tactics and my mental aspect."

WIMBLEDON, England -- Nowhere is tradition held more dear than here at the All England Club, but even Wimbledon is not immune to the pressures of expansion and big business.Because of that, the most intimate court in pro tennis, the No. 1 Court, which has been home to Wimbledon, Wightman Cup and Davis Cup matches and provided tennis fans with some of the sport's most exciting, dramatic and notorious moments, will be jackhammered into extinction next month.But no one can erase the memories that have been created over its 72 years.

Entering her freshman year at Arundel, tennis player Amy Olson didn't know what to expect. She knew that Anne Arundel County competition was filled with solid, older players. She also knew that tennis wasn't her main sport. So Olson didn't see herself being a threat to take the county championship. But then she started to win. "People would tell me when I was going to play somebody good," said Olson, now a sophomore for the Wildcats. "Because I was a freshman, the other players didn't know anything about me. They weren't ready to play a tough match.

It was love at first sight. Don and Carole Fortney met 11 years ago at a tennis match. He's a microbiologist. She works for the Social Security Administration. Both were avid tennis players, so a mutual friend introduced them at an exhibition at Greenspring Valley Tennis Club. A courtship quickly followed. When they married a year later, the couple chose to tie the knot on the tennis court. Both wore their tennis whites: he in shorts and an athletic shirt, she in a white tennis dress and a veil.

Royal Weaver took a stand, 47 years ago, on a tennis court in Druid Hill Park in Baltimore. On July 11, 1948, he and a group of fellow tennis players played a match aimed at ending segregation.Any number of events in which African-Americans pressed for equal treatment after slavery could be called the beginning of the civil rights movement. This occasion was six years before the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, seven years before the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.The protest in Druid Hill Park challenged the city's segregation laws and became the subject of a column by H. L. Mencken.

According to county zoning regulations, a homeowner can build a tennis court on the front lawn regardless of how annoying it is to neighbors across the street.But start giving tennis lessons on that court and those neighbors can cause you trouble.Robert Anderman learned that lesson the hard way after building a tennis court and then giving tennis lessons on the front of his 3-acre parcel off Route 97 in Glenwood.The regulations say he can build a tennis court for his own personal use on his lot even if his neighbors across the street may be annoyed.

LOS ANGELES -- Campaign Notebook:Nothing happens by accident on the Bill Clinton campaign.So when Clinton showed up in Watts to give a speech, I noted that he wore a gray suit, white shirt and maroon striped tie.At his next stop about a half-hour later in front of a Latino group celebrating Mexican Independence Day, I was surprised to see Clinton emerge from his limo now wearing a blue shirt and yellow striped tie.And at his last stop, at a posh Beverly Hills...

With the help of most of his neighbors, Robert Anderman should be able to bounce back to teaching tennis in the front yard of his Glenwood home -- but within strict limits.Mr. Anderman, whose front-yard tennis court was allowed by county zoning regulations but annoying to his neighbors across the street, was hit with a zoning violation when his neighbors determined that he was teaching tennis on the court.But earlier this week, Mr. Anderman won a unanimous Board of Appeals vote to grant him a special zoning exception for tennis instruction with 13 conditions.

Charles Martin Hughes, who taught math for 23 years at Essex Community College and was co-chairman of the Maryland State Tennis Tournament, died Monday of complications from colon cancer at Beverly Healthcare in Doylestown, Pa. He was 81. Mr. Hughes published books on mathematics and on his experience in World War II, but his passion was tennis, his family said. He played until a year before his death, often beating players decades younger. "He had a tremendous sense of humor, and as he was getting older, he would use that to his advantage on the tennis court," said daughter Molly Hughes of Charleston, S.C. "He would hobble out onto the court, and then beat players in their 20s and 30s."

Residents along Bomont Road in Timonium were never keen on sharing their street with tennis courts. But more than a decade ago, they agreed with the Baltimore Country Club to drop their opposition to the idea provided the club limited the number of new courts to nine. Yesterday, the county Board of Appeals ruled that the country club must abide by that agreement, overriding the club's latest plan for 12 courts. "It's a very important case for community associations," said J. Carroll Holzer, representing Bomont Road residents.

Now that the weather is cooperating, I've been jogging outside and playing a lot of tennis. Yesterday I was on the tennis court when the outside of my left knee, on the back of my leg, began really hurting. What happened? "Pain in the back of the knee reflects what's happening in the front of the knee," says Dr. Michael Mont, director of the Center for Joint Preservation & Reconstruction at the Rubin Institute for Orthopedics at Sinai Hospital. You may have injured your lateral collateral ligament - LCL - which provides stability to the outer part of the knee.

I'M NEVER GOING on vacation again. Every time I take time off, something happens that needs to be properly addressed in the Kickoff section, and God forbid Ray Frager try to do it. I'm referring, of course, to the attack of the tennis-playing bison. I was sitting at the breakfast table Wednesday morning and right there on the front page of The Sun was a photo of a small herd of bison - I prefer to call them buffalo, but apparently there is some subtle difference - congregating on a tennis court in Pikesville.

Pam Shriver has a pretty good record when it comes to judging future talent. Over the years, she has presented Jennifer Capriati, Monica Seles, Serena and Venus Williams and, just last year, Maria Sharapova - who is now ranked No. 4 in the world - as future stars of the game. "But we've never had future men," Shriver said. "That's a little bit harder to judge." Friday at the Mercantile Tennis Challenge, Shriver's annual exhibition that raises money for children's charities, Shriver will try her hand at introducing future stars of the men's game.

THE PROPOSAL that a sizable tennis complex be built in the still-being-planned Troy Park in Elkridge guarantees some different, interesting discussion in coming months. We're talking about the pitch the Howard County Tennis Association, in conjunction with the U.S. Tennis Association's Maryland Division, made to the county recreation and parks advisory board Sept. 22. The concept is for about 16 of 106 acres of undeveloped parkland the county owns in the northeast corner of Interstate 95 and Route 100 to become a tennis mecca within the next five or so years.

NEW YORK -- No. 15 seed Fernando Gonzalez looked around Arthur Ashe Stadium and sighed. It is hard enough to play and win a first-round match at the U.S. Open, let alone having to do in front of a crowd that is cheering wildly for Michael Chang, the sentimental favorite who, like Pete Sampras the night before, is retiring from the game. "It was tough when I was serving for the match," said Gonzalez, who stepped away from the service line once, waiting for the crowd to settle down. "I was feeling like he was trying to come back.

Michael Blackwell approaches the tennis ball with fierce determination, raises his racket and takes a mighty whack. The ball rises and smacks solidly against the tarpaulin that borders the tennis court."

NEW YORK -- No. 15 seed Fernando Gonzalez looked around Arthur Ashe Stadium and sighed. It is hard enough to play and win a first-round match at the U.S. Open, let alone having to do in front of a crowd that is cheering wildly for Michael Chang, the sentimental favorite who, like Pete Sampras the night before, is retiring from the game. "It was tough when I was serving for the match," said Gonzalez, who stepped away from the service line once, waiting for the crowd to settle down. "I was feeling like he was trying to come back.

For young or old, male or female, beginner, expert or experimenter, Howard County offers numerous opportunities to play team and individual sports. This is a list of county facilities and groups catering to amateur athletes. We apply a liberal definition to amateur sports -- broadening that term into just about anything that's competitive and has a score to be kept. Many groups maintain Web sites, but be careful. Run mainly by volunteers, some sites are more functional and up-to-date than others.

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.