Arthur F. Driscoll elected FMTC President (1923-1924). A period of fun and tennis in the roaring ’20s

While there were behind-the-scenes difficulties in raising enough cash to build a clubhouse and new courts, for most members the 1920s were a time of good fun and good tennis. Pressure for court time in 1923 produced a rule that members could not bring as playing guests any nonmembers who lived in Scarsdale.

Though life-styles were changing, reminders of times past were very much in evidence on the Club grounds. Near the tennis courts there still were sheds for carriages, and when members played tennis, they still wore the costumes of a more genteel era: long sleeves, long skirts, long trousers.

“I always wore at least two of my prettiest lace-trimmed petticoats,” says Blanche Mason Starkweather of the costume a fashion-wise young lady wore for tennis at the Club circa 1921. “They came to the ankles, and of course when I ran for the ball, the lace showed.”

Two notices about women players appeared in 1923. The Scarsdale Inquirer ran a piece refuting a rumor that women could not use the courts on weekends. The paper said Fox Meadow was perhaps the only tennis club in the metropolitan district that did not limit use of the courts by women on holidays and weekends. Another item noted that an increased number of women playing tennis that year” has caused the appointment of a committee consisting of Mrs. Alfred Haywood, Mrs. Leland Stowell, and Miss Muriel Bray to arrange for Women’s Singles tournaments.”

In a burst of early environmental awareness, when a proposal was made in 1924 to cut down trees, Alfred Haywood rose to defend one particular elm. Such was his standing in the Club that the elm was left untouched, and it was duly noted that “this tree hereafter be known as the Haywood Preservation.”

Active recruiting added many new members, some of whom were still part of the Club at the time of the Centennial celebration in 1983.

Among them were James and Leila Hynson, who joined in 1924. A former Princeton tennis star, Jim quickly established himself as the Club’s strongest player, but Leila remembers the laughter at the Club as well as the tennis. She tells of a time when she was asked at the last minute to pinch-hit as her husband’s partner in a tournament: “At one point I was moved to say to him when a few successful returns of the ball had evidently turned my head, ‘I can’t carry you any longer.’ With the other players weakened with laughter, we won.”

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