Search for permanent home begins (1916-1922).

By 1916 a joint committee with members from both Fox Meadow Tennis Club and the Town Club had been formed to “prepare a financial plan for procuring a site for the Club.”

Within a year the Fox Meadow Board of Governors noted that the Butlers seemed willing to sell the Club three or four acres at Fox Meadow for approximately $4,000 an acre.

World War I interrupted efforts to buy a permanent home and reorganize the Club. Eleven members’ names were shifted to an Inactive Military List at no dues for the duration of the war.

In 1917 the Club held a tournament to benefit the Scarsdale Red Cross and sent off a check for $300 from the proceeds.

There do not seem to have been regular tournaments during this period for, in 1919, Rollin Kirby suggested that preparations be made for holding tournaments. Club President Frank Ayres favored junior tournaments and advocated allowing high school students to have limited use of the Club’s courts.

Before there was a clubhouse in which to store records, FMTC apparently did not keep a running list of tournament winners. Efforts to assemble a list have produced some discrepancies. Certain names, however, recur in newspaper accounts.

On July 8, 1922, the Scarsdale Inquirer, reporting on the Fox Meadow Men’s Singles, said that “the most noteworthy event…was the defeat of Rev. Alan R. Chalmers, who was on his way to being the Club’s perpetual and universal champion.” Chalmers was rector of St. James the Less and father of member Ruth Chalmers.

The year the reverend lost his title, Fox Meadow Tennis Club at last was able to buy itself a permanent home.

Source: Diana Reische, Fox Meadow Tennis Club – The First Hundred Years, 1983