US Open History

Do you think you know everything about the US Open Tennis Championships? The US Open has grown from an exclusive entertainment event for high society to a championship for more than 600 male and female professional players who, as of 2008, compete for total prize money of over US$19 million, with $1.5 million for each winner of the singles tournaments. In fact, the US Open Tennis Championships is one of the oldest tennis championships in the world, first contested in 1881. The tournament is chronologically the fourth and final Grand Slam tennis tournament each year. It is held annually in August and September over a two-week period (the weeks before and after Labor Day weekend). The main tournament consists of five different event championships: men's and women's singles, men's and women's doubles, and mixed doubles, with additional tournaments for senior, junior, and wheelchair players. Since 1978, the tournament has been played on acrylic hard court at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, New York City.

The US Open for men was originally a separate tournament from the US Open for women. The U.S. National Singles Championship (men only) was first held in August 1881 at the Newport Casino, Newport, Rhode Island. Only clubs that were members of the United States National Lawn Tennis Association were permitted to enter. From 1884 through 1911, the tournament used a challenge system whereby the defending champion automatically qualified for the next year's final. In 1915, the tournament moved to the West Side Tennis Club at Forest Hills, New York. From 1921 through 1923, it was played at the Germantown Cricket Club in Philadelphia and returned to Forest Hills in 1924.

Six years after the men's nationals were first held, the first official U.S. Women's National Singles Championship was held at the Philadelphia Cricket Club in 1887, followed by the U.S. Women's National Doubles Championship in 1889. The first U.S. Mixed Doubles Championship was held alongside the women's singles and doubles. The first U.S. National Men's Doubles Championship was held in 1900. Tournaments were held in the east and the west of the country to determine the best two teams, which competed in a play-off to see who would play the defending champions in the challenge round.

The open era began in 1968 when all five events were merged into the US Open, held at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, New York. The 1968 combined tournament was open to professionals for the first time. That year, 96 men and 63 women entered the event, and prize money totaled $100,000.

In 1970, the US Open became the first of the Grand Slam tournaments to use a tiebreak at the end of a set.

The US Open was originally played on grass until Forest Hills switched to Har-Tru clay courts in 1975. In 1978, the event moved from Forest Hills to its current home at Flushing Meadows, and the surface changed again, to the current DecoTurf. (Jimmy Connors is the only man to have won the US Open on more than one surface. He won it on all three surfaces. Female player Chris Evert won it on two surfaces.)