Southern Championships | |
---|---|
Defunct tennis tournament | |
Tour | ILTF Circuit (1913-1978) |
Founded | 1885 |
Abolished | 1978 |
Location | Various |
Surface | Clay/Grass |
The Southern Championships [1] also known as the Southern Sectional Championships was a men's and women's grass court then later clay tournament staged annually at various locations from 1885 until 1978. [2] The tournament is still being held today as the USTA Southern Championships. [3]
In 1882 the Delaware Field Club in Willmington, Delaware, United States was founded, and officially incorporated in 1885. [4] On 1 October 1885 the first Southern Championships were inaugurated at the venue, and the first men's champion was Charles Belmont Davis who later became an author.
A women's championship event was added to the schedule in 1901 and was held at the Bachelors Lawn Tennis Club, Washington D.C. which was won by Marion Jones In 1978 the final championships were played at Greenville, South Carolina that were then part of the official USTA southern circuit. [5] The final men's champion was won by the Paraguayan player Francisco Gonzalez, [6] the final ladies champion was Zenda Liess. [7] The tournament was still being held in 1999 where it was known as the Southern Adult Clay Court Open. [8]
The championships have been played in the following cities; Atlanta, Georgia, Birmingham, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi, Louisville, Kentucky, Memphis, Tennessee, New Orleans, Louisiana. Raleigh, North Carolina and Washington D.C., Wilmington, Delaware
The US Open Tennis Championships, commonly called the US Open, is a hardcourt tennis tournament held annually in Queens, New York. Since 1987, the US Open has been chronologically the fourth and final Grand Slam tournament of the year, except for 2020. The other three, in chronological order, are the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon. The US Open starts on the last Monday of August and continues for two weeks, with the middle weekend coinciding with the US Labor Day holiday. The tournament is one of the oldest tennis championships in the world, originally known as the U.S. National Championship, for which men's singles and men's doubles were first played in August 1881. It is the only Grand Slam that was not affected by cancellation of World War I and World War II or interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
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