Fiend at Court Unplugged
Here is a great trivia question to spark conversation and, more importantly – potentially win a bar bet. If you ask a person what year the US Open tennis tournament was first held, they are likely to come up with a date in the 1880s. It is a trick question. The US Open wasn’t played until the start of the Open Era, which was 1968. Before that year, the US Open wasn’t “Open.” That may prompt the question of what came before.
The US Open was preceded by the U.S. National Championships. The men’s tournament was first held in 1881 and was hosted by the Newport Casino in Rhode Island. Both singles and doubles champions were crowned that year. The U.S. Women’s National Singles Championships was first held in 1887. That event was singles only and hosted by the Philadelphia Cricket Club. Women’s Doubles were added to the slate two years later in 1889.
The U.S. Mixed Doubles Championship officially began in 1892. That event was initially played in conjunction with the women’s singles and doubles tournament. In 1921, it was combined with the men’s doubles program at the U.S. National Championships.
It wasn’t until 1935 that the men’s and women’s singles National Championships was conducted at the same location. That unification occurred at Forest Hills. However, sometimes those events occurred on the same dates and at other times played separately at that site in the subsequent years.
In 1968, the five U.S. Championships were officially combined and collectively renamed the US Open. It was the dawn of the Open Era, after all. The previous year, a tennis fan who wanted to catch all five U.S. National Championship Finals would have been required to attend two separate events.
The 1967 U.S. National Championship tournament for men’s, women’s, and mixed doubles was August 21-29 at the Longwood Cricket Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. The men’s and women’s singles championships started the very next day at Forest Hills and ran from August 30 through September 10.
The 1967 women’s singles title was won by a 23 year old that you may have heard of: Billie Jean King. The men’s singles title was also won by a 23 year old competitor that year, John Newcombe. Both players won the doubles titles that year as well. Newcombe teamed with fellow Aussie Tony Roche. Billie Jean King won with Rosie Casals. Billie Jean King also pulled off the trifecta that year by winning the mixed doubles title with Owen Davidson.
The modern tennis vernacular is filled with frequent references to the start of the open era. As we continue to countdown to the US Open this year, it is interesting to take a look back and reflect on the end of what came before.
- History of the U.S. Championships and the US Open, USTA.com, Excerpts from 2014 US Open Program.
- Newcombe-Roche win U.S. Doubles, Allison Danzig, The New York Times, August 30, 1967.
- Graebner Bows by 6-4, 6-4, 8-6, Allison Danzig, The New York Times, September 11, 1967.
