LIKE many a young man in Glasgow I often attended the local tennis club. But not to play tennis.

In the early seventies city centre dance halls and discos were challenging places where a glance in the wrong direction could have you instantly swept up in a brawl. And that was just with the bouncers.

So on occasion when word spread that the local tennis club was having a disco, it would be the destination of choice that Friday night. Besides, if the tennis club was in the west end, chances are that any young woman you met was also west end domiciled, so no logistically difficult trek across town if the girl at the last dance announced she was from Clarkston or Baillieston.

Actual tennis, when we were young, was played in back gardens across hedges, or in the street. Everyone's cupboard had an old racket or two nestling in the back which was resurrected every summer when Wimbledon was on. But I heard someone reminiscing recently: "We lived on a main road and the white line in the middle of the road was our net. The game had to pause every time a bus or car went passed. Isn't it a shame how you never see kids doing that these days?"

Em, well could it be because the streets are just a tad busier? Street tennis would now be a lethal version of Frogger.

So behind some of the largest hedges in the city I can confirm that tennis is still bouncing in Glasgow. Newlands Lawn Tennis Club on the south side held an open day at the weekend where the excited chatter of young children hitting balloons, running races, and diving on the bouncy castle mingled with the smoke of the barbecue and the tentative hits across the net of adults trying tennis again for the first time in years.

Now some tennis clubs in Glasgow have closed, the remaining members seduced by the lucrative offer of selling the land for housing. But that genteel decline combined with avarice is absent from the Newlands set-up. You probably haven't seen the club. It is down a side street from the broad sandstone-mansion dotted Langside Drive on the south side. The hedges around the courts are not there for aesthetic reasons, but to dampen the occasional gusting winds of Glasgow which are not conducive to hitting tennis balls accurately.

And here is a figure that may surprise you - it has over 1000 members. Tennis players of course, but also squash players, gym members and social members. There are well-known football clubs in Scotland that would swoon to have as many season ticket holders. It is one of the most active venues on the city's south side. You just wouldn't know it due to its secluded geography.

Some other figures - Newlands has seven outdoor courts with a springy, rain absorbent surface called Tiger Turf, two miniature courts for little ones to try, five squash courts, and a gym. But you can't play much tennis in Scottish weather, the gainsayers will gleefully trumpet. But Newlands also has a quite splendid mini aircraft hanger with four indoor courts with an overhead viewing gallery. All this is run, as it has been through its century-plus history, by a volunteer committee, giving it a homely feel which is absent from the commercial sports centres owned by faceless corporations.

The bar area has a large telly showing sport, a pool table, and youngsters who can buy a packet of crisps and a can of Coke like sports clubs the world over.

The walls have photographs to remind you of the club's history. Sepia-toned pictures of gentlemen in the twenties and thirties in white tennis flannels and white club jerseys posing with the Scottish Cup that they have won for the club. Further along is a picture of the team that won the same Scottish Cup in 1998, who are all smiles and casual sports gear. One suspects that they take their tennis just as seriously - they just don't like to show it when the cameras flash.

Yes they are amateur members, but the set-up is not amateurish. The committee might be volunteers, but there are full-time tennis coaches, reception staff and bar staff. Booking tennis courts is done over the internet. The club has invested tens of thousands of pounds over the years on the courts both indoor and outdoor. It does not stand still.

But what is the appeal? Club president Calum McKnight, an accountant by day, and not too shabby a player judging by his gold-lettered name on the club champion board, argues: "It's a great sport. You can play from the age of five, and members still come down to play in their eighties. It keeps you fit, competitive, and you get many friends from it. I think it's got a bit of everything."

That competitive element means that friends can book a court every week, some well into their retirement, and still joke as they play about pals missing shots, putting on weight, or turning up with a hangover. It's a laugh - something which those stony-faced grimacing runners you see on the streets of Glasgow trying to get fit seem to have missed out on.

And unlike golf, which eats up three to four hours a round, you can stop off on your way home from work, play for an hour, and still get home at a reasonable time.

Ideally the club likes to encourage family memberships - mum and dad playing occasionally, the children coming to take part in summer schools and to hang out in a safe environment at the weekend. There are also social members who like the fact that there is a bar handy in the south side that they can walk to rather than risk the punitive drink/driving limits from going further afield.

They just don't have as many discos as in the past, says Calum. Suddenly I feel as old as the flannelled chaps in the sepia-prints on the wall.