From Newport to Queens

The US Open is America’s premier tennis event, the final Grand Slam of the tennis season, taking place in Flushing Meadows, N.Y. While it’s less stuffy than the lawns at Wimbledon, the tournament has its roots in Rhode Island social club the Newport Casino, created in 1880 after its creator was rebuffed by the Newport Reading Room, the city’s most exclusive men’s club. A year later it held the first US Open before it moved to the West Side Tennis Club in New York, where most players of the United States National Lawn Tennis Association lived. Today the Newport Casino serves as the International Tennis Hall of Fame, which most recently inducted Justine Henin and Marat Safin.

From 1921 to 1923, the tournament was played in Philadelphia’s Germantown Cricket Club before moving back to a newly constructed Forest Hills Stadium and becoming an official major (though it was considered one beforehand as well). The tournaments were separated by singles, doubles and gender until the beginning of the open era in 1968, merging them into a single US Open, a progressive time period for the tournament that morphed the game into its modern form, in addition to being the first Grand Slam that awarded equal prize money to men and women (1973). In 1978, the tournament moved to its current home at the newly founded USTA National Tennis Center in Queens.

The modern tournament switched from clay to its iconic hard court and witnessed a surge in popularity thanks to superstars like Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl and homegrown hero, John McEnroe. This year, Novak Djokovic and Flavia Pennetta will defend the championship, though Serena Williams, coming off a victory at Wimbledon, is looking to acquire her seventh title.