Since Wei-Yu Su bought Brandywine Tennis and Fitness Club in the summer of 2014, he has made improvements to the courts and brought in players from outside the area to train at the facility.

“We’re trying to improve [Brandywine’s] exposure nationally and internationally,” Su told The Beacon in a recent interview. “We’ve trained very young players from 3 to 4 years old all the way up to the top levels, including the NCAA.”

The young players have come from a wide assortment of locales, he said.
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“We have trained and helped more than 40 players from Japan, Taiwan, China, and some other states,” Su said. “They have won many USTA Florida Junior and Open tournaments in Florida, as well as an International Tennis Federation Junior tournament in the Dominican Republic, and had a finalist in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Summer circuit tournament. So far, we have helped four kids receive full NCAA tennis scholarships.”

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​Xiao-Fei Wang, a 12-years-old member of the Chinese national tennis team, won 12-and-under boys' singles title at the Eddie Herr International Championship Dec. 6 at the IMG Academy in Bradenton.

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DELAND — Changes are coming to the Brandywine Tennis and Fitness Club.

The club, located just north of DeLand at 2930 Brandywine Road, came under the new ownership of Hawaii businessman Wei-Yu Su in August of last year.

Since then, the private tennis club has resurfaced its four hard courts and plans to add red clay courts, according to Su and director of operations Ryan Bauman. Su said he has probably spent $40,000 to $50,000 in renovations and new equipment since taking over.

“It’s definitely a little bit of a niche,” Bauman said of the red clay courts that aren’t common in the United States.

Su said he hopes to break ground on the new red clay courts by the end of the year, starting off with four.

In addition to its hard courts, the facility also currently has four “har-tru” green clay courts. Bauman said if the red clay courts are a success, the facility would seriously consider converting its green clay courts to red clay courts.

Bauman said the hard courts usually need resurfacing every two to four years and those at the club were slick and had uneven areas before being resurfaced.

Su, a native of Taiwan who lives in Hawaii, has also started bringing in international players to train at the facility. Su said he played tennis professionally and in college, and this is his first time owning a club. He said it was time to jump in, and noted he liked the layout of the club with the courts being spread out.

“Tennis is very international,” Su said.

He said when you play you know people from everywhere, and he wants the local community to get to know people from all over the world.

“That’s the whole thing: I want to bring that experience to here,” he said.

At a recent practice at the court, young players from Taiwan, Japan, and Hawaii were training on the green clay courts.

“It’s a totally different level of tennis compared to Hawaii. It’s cool to meet new players and make connections internationally,” said Marc Hayashi, a 17-year-old from Hawaii who Su has coached before.

The facility has two full-time and two part-time employees, Su said. One part-time employee was retained from the club's staff under the previous owner.

Bauman said the club's membership has doubled to roughly 60 since Su became owner.

DeLand retiree and club member Harold Reedy was at the club with his wife Wanda on Tuesday. He said the ground maintenance has been better under the new ownership.

“They’ve done a lot of repair work,” he said.

Reedy said they have never played on a red clay court before.

“It’s an oddity. We might give it a try,” he said.

He also liked seeing the young players training at the facility.

“Tennis has been on the downfall…one of the problems is we don’t see the youth playing that we used to have,” Reedy said.

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