Garrison serves up the love in Baltimore

LUTHERVILLE, Md. — On midday Friday, the news throughout the Northeast was zeroed in on Hurricane Earl. But a flat-screen TV turned on in the lobby of the Green Spring Racquet Club in suburban Baltimore, was not showing any weather reports. A hurricane might be roughing up the East Coast, but in this club in Baltimore, the only channel worth watching is one showing the U.S. Open.

Moments later, in walks Zina Garrison, a woman who 20 years earlier would have been on national TV herself playing in the finals of that Grand Slam event in Flushing Meadows, N.Y.

These days, Garrison is adjusting to her new role as the director of programming at the Baltimore club. A Houston native, Garrison has been somewhat quietly making a home in the Mid-Atlantic region for about five years. She has worked in northern Virginia, where her godparents live, made a home in Bowie, Md., and for about the past year has lived in Annapolis. Occasionally, people would notice her in the grocery store aisles or in a local gym.

“They’d give me this second look,” Garrison said with a chuckle. “People would say, ‘Zina?’ and then they’d ask, ‘Why are you here?’”

At first, it was simply to be somewhere other than Houston, a place to start over after her divorce.

Now she has a better answer.

Garrison, an Olympic gold medalist in doubles tennis, an Olympic bronze medalist as a singles player and an Olympic team coach, recently started working at the Green Spring Racquet Club to help generate interest in tennis among as many young children and adults as she can. One of her plans to achieve that is through a program called Quick Start, which gets kids as young as 5 picking up a racquet, but has them playing a T-ball version of the game. There are also parent classes to encourage parents to keep their kids in the game.

The club, with its 14 indoor courts, is the largest indoor facility in the Mid-Atlantic region and it hopes that being affiliated with a player of Garrison’s stature only will boost the club’s programs.

Janet Paulsen, the club’s general manager, has a daughter who is a runner at Duke and has a passion for tennis but also for getting women involved in sports. When she heard Garrison was in the area, she did everything she could to bring her in to the club. Some of the young kids might not know about Garrison’s achievements on the court, but the pros who work at the club do, and Garrison’s star power isn’t lost on Paulsen.

“It’s just an honor to have Zina here,” Paulsen said.  

When people in Baltimore think of tennis, the name that usually crops up first is Pam Shriver. A lifelong supporter of the sport in this area, Shriver just happened to be Garrison’s doubles partner at the Seoul 1988 Olympic Games. Together, Garrison and Shriver beat Jana Novotna and Helena Sukova, 4-6, 6-2, 10-8, for the gold medal. And it was none other than Shriver, who Garrison defeated in the singles competition for the bronze medal at those Games. In fact, you could call the two Seoul mates: They roomed together in the Olympic Village.

But it wasn’t Shriver who brought Garrison to this part of the country. In fact, it was a member of the Green Spring Racquet Club who won a clinic with Garrison at an auction that helped bring the Olympic star to the club. After Garrison visited, she met with Paulsen and the two women clicked.

“I think it was destiny,” Paulsen said.

Garrison has been checking scores from the U.S. Open daily and knew all about Andy Roddick’s protests of line calls at the Grand Slam. She also knew about Beatrice Capra, who hails from Ellicott City, Md., and has gone from being a unknown wildcard ranked 371st to a player who is going to face Maria Sharapova in the third round.

Garrison wasn’t too familiar about Capra but said, “I played against her mom. I think (Beatrice) was like 12 at the time.”

But Garrison is paying closer attention to tennis in this area, and she was even at the club for a tournament this Labor Day weekend. On Sept. 11-12, she will be attending an open house at the club, offering free tennis evaluations.

Garrison, 46, has plenty of tennis wisdom to share. A winner of 37 titles in her career — 14 singles, 20 doubles and three in mixed doubles — Garrison reached as high as No. 4 in the world rankings. Although she never won a singles Grand Slam final, she held a spot in the top 10 for years and did not go unnoticed by the most prominent players of her era. In 1989, she reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open by beating Chris Evert, marking the end of Evert’s pro career.

“You know what?” Evert would later say. “I can't think of anyone else I would have wanted standing across the net at that moment.”

The following year at Wimbledon, Garrison became a one-woman wrecking crew. She defeated French Open champion Monica Seles in the quarterfinals and went on to beat the world’s No. 1-ranked player at the time, Steffi Graf to reach the final. Garrison’s magical run ended with a loss to Martina Navratilova.

Garrison also broke down racial barriers in the sport. Years before Venus and Serena Williams became household names, Garrison became one of the sport’s biggest African-American stars. In fact, when she reached the Wimbledon final in 1990, she was the first African-American woman to do so since Althea Gibson achieved that feat 32 years earlier. Years later, Garrison became a mentor to the Williams sisters and helped coach them at the Olympic Games.     

But of all of her achievements, Garrison said she is most proud of her Olympic accomplishments.

“Being in the Olympics was just totally different for me,” she said. “People in my neighborhood in Houston knew I was a tennis player but once I won at the Olympics, it was like, wow, bam! Even the wino on the street knew.

“I remember coming home (from Seoul) at 1 in the morning and the flight attendant whispered to me, ‘There are a lot of people out there waiting for you. You might want to comb your hair.’ I walked off the plane and couldn’t believe how many people were there.”

All over Houston, restaurants posted signs saying, “Way to go, Zina!” and she said for all of her success as a top-ranked tennis player, she never received the same kind of attention in her career.

Being in Seoul was special in so many ways. For a woman who never had the opportunity to go to college because of her tennis obligations (in fact, she skipped her high school graduation to make her pro debut), Garrison loved the camaraderie she felt in the athlete village at the Games.

While at the Games, she got to befriend track stars Carl Lewis and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who continues to be a close friend today. Another close friend is Clyde Drexler, who was two years her senior in high school.

“He used to tease me in high school because I slept in Spanish class,” she said of Drexler, who went on to star in the NBA and was a member of the Dream Team in 1992. “Then we got to Barcelona and he could barely say anything. And he made fun of me for sleeping!”

They were such close friends that he wanted to come to some of her matches in Barcelona. She told him not to bother because security was so tight around all of the NBA players, but he didn’t take any heed to her advice and came anyway.
She also recalled that her brother, Rodney, whom she credits for getting her started in tennis, was able to experience the Olympic Games as well. She was in Seoul for three days before she could track down her brother. But once she did, she discovered he was the big man on campus, already figuring out how to snag tickets to various events and hanging out with the father of boxer Roy Jones Jr.

“The Olympics is just special,” Garrison said. “It really is about people coming together.”

The impact of winning Olympic medals didn’t really hit Garrison until she was standing on top of the medal podium with Shriver, who was overcome with emotion.

“I looked at her and said, ‘Oh my God. We really did something here,’ “ Garrison said.

What really hit home with Garrison was when she heard a television broadcast listing the medal tally for the United States.

“I realized that I was one of the golds and one of the bronzes, that I was part of something bigger,” she said.

Garrison went to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games working with the likes of the Williams sisters and having Billie Jean King as a coaching mentor. Four years later, Garrison returned to the Olympic Games in Athens as a coach for the U.S. women’s team and again served as the coach in Beijing.

Garrison is excited about mixed doubles being a part of the Olympic Games in London in 2012, noting “how cool” it would be to see Andy Roddick and Venus Williams playing together.

In addition to her coaching at the Olympic Games, Garrison also became the first African-American to serve as the Fed Cup captain. In 2009, she sued the United States Tennis Association, citing racial reasons and said she was paid less than male counterpart, Patrick McEnroe. The case was later settled out of court.

There was a part of Garrison that wasn’t sure she wanted to come back to the tennis world, but now that she is with Green Spring, her passion for the courts has returned. She is excited about working with the USTA Competitive Training Program, which will offer everything from high-performance drills to health education for players between the ages of 7 and 14.

Garrison and Paulsen are approaching the youth development programs from a holistic standpoint, working on education and fitness. Garrison, who suffered from bulimia throughout her career, can also impart some of the lessons she learned from that struggle to young players.

The club has scholarship funding to help those in need, and that is something Garrison is also excited about, especially since she herself grew up in a financially strapped home. Her father died when she was an infant, and her mother suffered from diabetes and died when Zina was just coming into her own as a pro player.

Garrison has spent much of her career working with her foundation in Houston and with other charitable organizations to help encourage minorities to get involved in tennis and said she hopes to do the same in Baltimore, but, she added, “First, I want to get as many kids involved as I can. I know everybody’s in need now.”

“I was part of an outreach program,” she said. “I know it works.”

She hopes it will in Baltimore.

“People here have been so excited about learning things that I have that enthusiasm again,” Garrison said. “I’m excited to work with the junior program, and I just want kids to learn and improve. I’m not saying Johnny’s going to be the No. 1 player in the world or win an Olympic gold medal but maybe Johnny can hit a forehand a little better and see improvement and enjoy a team atmosphere.”

And maybe a kid from this club will be on that TV screen someday, too.

Amy Rosewater is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of any National Governing Bodies.