A Tale of Two Bethesda Sport Revolutionaries

As a boy growing up in Bethesda, Maryland it felt more than coincidental that two extraordinary athletes—trailblazers in their sport—emerged almost simultaneously.

I first met Donald Dell at the Edgemoor Club, where his electric presence lit up every conversation about tennis. At the time, he had just been named captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team—a title that seemed to glow with prestige. But Dell was never just a standout player; he was a visionary. Years later, he co-founded the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and launched ProServ, one of the earliest and most influential sports marketing firms. His legal training at Yale and the University of Virginia paired with his passion for tennis, making him a formidable force both in the courtroom and on the court. Representing legends like Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, and Michael Jordan, he fundamentally changed how athletes navigated business, fame, and legacy.

In the 1970s, another name—Deane Beman—buzzed through Bethesda’s golf circles. Unlike Dell, Beman’s battlefield was the links, and he mastered it with surgical precision. Before becoming the PGA TOUR’s second commissioner, he notched two U.S. Amateur wins, The Amateur Championship, four Walker Cups, and four PGA TOUR titles. Yet his greatest transformation unfolded off the fairway. When he took the reins of the PGA TOUR in 1974, its financial assets hovered around half a million dollars. By his retirement in 1994, that figure had swelled into the hundreds of millions, thanks largely to his vision of leveraging television to catapult golf into the mainstream. Beman didn’t just enrich players—he redefined the sport’s identity.

Dell and Beman—two Bethesda leaders—redefined what it meant to lead not just in athletics, but in the broader arena of professional influence. I feel privileged to live in the same town as them. They were more than icons in their games; they were architects of opportunity and revolutionaries in two major sports.

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