25 YEARS! Dow Corning Tennis Hits Silver Anniversary, Play Starting Again
February 4, 2013
By: Dave Rogers
Midland's Meredith McGrath in California during her playing days.
The Dow Corning Classic women's tennis tournament serves up its 25th year this week, promising to be better than ever.
The tournament winds up Sunday, Feb. 10, with highlight matches each night and free daytime admission.
Thirty-two of the world's top singles players and 16 doubles teams will compete for $100,000 in prize money, according to Sharon Cleland, assistant tournament director.
Outreach of professionals to schools has been increased to 21 schools this year, a part of the tournament program lauded by Skip Gilbert, U.S. Tennis Association official and manager of the U.S. Open.
Vice President Dan Futter, of sponsoring Dow Corning, said the Midland tourney "has helped raise the bar for tennis in the community and the world."
Mike Woody, Midland Community Tennis Center executive director, said 33 of the world's top women pros have played at Midland over the quarter century of the tournament.
Mr. Woody said this year's tournament will feature live streaming on the Internet from the USTA and dowcorningtennisclassic.com, live scoring and a nightly parade of champions.
Nineteen students from Northwood and Central Michigan universities are interning at the tourney.
Onetime top pro Meredith McGrath, whose name graces stadium court at the Midland Tennis Center, came in from California to mark the occasion and share some stories with her home town. She has not been here for seven years, she said.
McGrath, 41, spoke to a Midland Chamber of Commerce meeting and then headlined the news conference kicking off the tourney.
She played in the first Dow Corning tournament in 1989 and now is the tournament spokesperson.
Pros on hand for the news conference included Brenda Schultz-McCarthy, former Dow Corning champion, last year's champ Jill Craybas, No. 1 seed Lauren Davis and world number one junion Taylor Townsend, who will be playing her first professional tourney here.
A three-time All-American at Herbert H. Dow High, McGrath won three Michigan High School Division A State Championships.
As the #1 ranked junior player in the world, McGrath won a total of 19 national and international junior titles.
She was college All American in 1990, her freshman year at Stanford, then turned pro.
In 1990, Meredith was awarded the Block S Award for the Most Outstanding Freshman Athlete at Stanford and with her doubles partner, Teri Whitlinger, was named the Volvo Tennis/Tennis Magazine Doubles Team of the Year.
A three-time national All-American in high school, Meredith won three Michigan High School Division A State Championships. She also received six USTA National Championship Sportsmanship Awards.
Meredith is also a 2012 inductee into the Stanford Hall of Fame and is also a member of the USTA Midwest Hall of Fame and the USTA NorCal Hall of Fame.
Sharing some stories from her career, McGrath told of playing on clay in Switzerland and facing an 11-year-old; she won the first set then was very disappointed when she lost the match.
The following year the same girl, now 12-years-old beat her; same story when the girl was 13. "You'll never beat me," said Martina Hingis, later Wimbledon champion. But McGrath did eventually beat Hingis, and lots of other top players, through hard work and perseverance.
The peak of her career came when she reached the singles semi-finals and doubles finals at the 1996 Wimbledon Championships. A leg injury shortly thereafter ended her playing days.
She has not played in seven years but now is a competitive cyclist.
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