Tennis

Cornelia E. Harper, a homemaker and volunteer who played tennis until she was in her 80s, died Tuesday of coronary artery disease at Broadmead retirement community. She was 92. Born and raised in Bridgeport, Conn., Cornelia Esther Edwards earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Wellesley College in 1933. Mrs. Harper, who was known as Esther, took up tennis as a child. She played on the New England amateur tennis circuit and later competed in four matches on the grass courts of the U.S. National, now the U.S. Open, at Forest Hills, N.Y. -- including one in 1935 that she lost to famed tennis star Helen Hull Jacobs.

The pictures, trophies, plaques, medals and certificates that crowd three shelves in the living room of James Melville's Long Reach Village home boast his athletic achievements.The honors include a silver medal from the 1990 Maryland senior Olympics, a certificate for his role on the No. 3 U.S. senior doubles squash team in 1982, and numerous trophies from tennis tournaments he has won.Melville, a 65-year-old active senior tennis player who displays the enthusiasm and competitiveness of a person one-third his age, moved to Columbia two years ago from Pittsburgh, and has made a name for himself with the Maryland tennis community.

Walter Graham Brock, a retired steel worker who played and coached tennis, died Feb. 2 at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 72 and lived in West Baltimore. Dr. Derek Taylor, his physician, said the cause of death has not been determined. He worked at Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Sparrows Point plant, White Coffee Pot restaurants and drove a taxicab part-time. He retired nearly 10 years ago. A familiar figure for nearly 30 years on Druid Hill Park's tennis courts, where he played and coached, Mr. Brock won the Baltimore Tennis Club's men's over-55 title in 1985.

Carl Gustav Swensson was an optician whose philosophy to do everything "the very best you can" led him to numerous interests and a tennis career that began when he retired. He died Monday of heart failure at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center.Mr. Swensson, 84, of Timonium owned and operated the Contact Lens and Artificial Eye Service downtown on East Chase Street from 1965 until he retired in 1980. He had previously worked as an optician in Montgomery, Ala., for 20 years.In his retirement, tennis was his passion.

Warren Wright Weaver, a 1930s Baltimore tennis luminary who went from playing on Druid Hill Park's segregated tennis courts to membership in the Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame, was found dead Saturday in his West Baltimore home. He was 84 and had been under treatment for arrhythmia. Mr. Weaver, a former managing director of the Baltimore City Housing Authority who retired in 1984 after 42 years with the agency, learned to play tennis from his father while growing up in West Baltimore during the 1920s.

John Sertich maneuvered his blue Nissan Sentra into a parking space beside the row of tennis courts at Truxtun Park in Annapolis last week. The doors swung open, and a group of friends bounded out.The St. Mary's senior had 10 minutes to kill before warming up for his match against Matt Weinstein of Boys' Latin in No. 1 singles. With his baseball cap turned backward, he sat on the trunk of his car and devoured a couple of vanilla dessert cakes and a large orange soda.Sertich has regained the look of a healthy teen-ager.

Hall of Famer John McEnroe, who will be in town Monday for Pam Shriver's Mercantile Tennis Challenge, won seven Grand Slam singles titles and 10 Grand Slam doubles titles during his career and is the all-time winningest U.S. Davis Cup player. He plays on the over-35 Delta Tour of Champions and is a television tennis commentator for CBS, NBC, USA and ESPN. Once one of professional tennis' biggest bad boys, he is now the father of six and even counts a Father of the Year Award from the National Fathers' Day Council among his many awards.

NET RESULTS: Un-leased office space in the Candler Building downtown, all done up gloriously by p.r. whiz John Yuhanick, was the setting for Pam Shriver's black-tie dinner Monday night celebrating her sixth annual Charity Tennis Festival.And what a creative setting it was for such a prestigious affair! The five-year history of Pam's tennis festival reads like a "Who's Who" in tennis and this year was no exception with the top-ranked Martina Navratilova and Jennifer Capriati on hand. (The actual tennis exhibition was held last night and featured celebrity doubles, Shriver and Jim Palmer, and former Blast goalie, Scott Manning, teamed with Elise Burgin -- all of whom attended the gala.

Because it is necessary to cram 156 golfers around the course on opening day of the U.S. Open, the first tee time at Baltusrol Golf Club yesterday was 7 a.m. That prompted ABC and ESPN commentator Peter Alliss to sniff, "It's not the genteel game of tennis where you arrive to play after lunch."What made the remark thought-provoking, maybe even laughable, is, one, it is the first time in recorded history golf is indicated to be a grueling physical ordeal, and, two, about an hour later, John Lloyd was on the horn from London, where he will work as a match analyst at Wimbledon beginning Monday at 9 a.m. on HBO.Lloyd, formerly England's No. 1 tennis player, has the task of carrying on for the late Arthur Ashe, who for years was the mainstay of the premium cable's coverage at Wimbledon.

RIVER HILL High School's tennis courts were to be filled all day yesterday, threatened showers permitting, for a youth tournament that in its second year already stands distinctive. The tourney date, a day before Mother's Day this year, was not accidental. For the event was founded by a young girl to honor her mother, Shirley Lacy. On Sept. 3, 1999, at the age of 48, Shirley Lacy, coping with high blood pressure, died unexpectedly of an aneurysm. Searching in her grief for what to do next, Kim Lacy, then 13, embraced doing something tennis-related, an idea that evolved from her mother's funeral and several teachers, said Judie Cephas, a resource teacher for gifted and talented students at Patuxent Valley Middle School in Jessup.