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. 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 due to World War I and World War II, nor interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The Grand Slam in tennis is the achievement of winning all four major championships in one discipline in a calendar year. In doubles, a team may accomplish the Grand Slam playing together or a player may achieve it with different partners. Winning all four major championships consecutively but not within the same calendar year is referred to as a "non-calendar-year Grand Slam", while winning the four majors at any point during the course of a career is known as a "Career Grand Slam".
Rodney George Laver is an Australian former tennis player. Laver was ranked the world number 1 professional player indisputably for five years from 1965 to 1969 and by some sources also in 1964 and 1970. He was also ranked as the number 1 amateur in 1961 and 1962. Laver won 198 singles titles which is the most won by a player in history.
Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. was an American professional tennis player. He won three Grand Slam titles in singles and two in doubles. Ashe was the first black player selected to the United States Davis Cup team, and the only black man ever to win the singles titles at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open. He retired in 1980.
Kenneth Robert Rosewall is an Australian former world top-ranking professional tennis player. Rosewall won 147 singles titles, including a record 15 Pro Majors and 8 Grand Slam titles for a total 23 titles at pro and amateur majors. He also won 15 Pro Majors in doubles and 9 Grand Slam doubles titles. Rosewall achieved a Pro Slam in singles in 1963 by winning the three Pro Majors in one year and he completed the Career Grand Slam in doubles.
Roy Stanley Emerson is an Australian former tennis player who won 12 Grand Slam singles titles and 16 Grand Slam doubles titles, for a total of 28 Grand Slam titles. All of his singles Grand Slam victories and 14 of his Grand Slam doubles victories were achieved before the open era began in 1968. He is the only male player to have completed a career Grand Slam in both singles and doubles, and the first of four male players to complete a double career Grand Slam in singles. His 28 major titles are the all-time record for a male player. He was ranked world No. 1 amateur in 1961 by Ned Potter, 1964 by Potter, Lance Tingay and an Ulrich Kaiser panel of 14 experts and 1965 by Tingay, Joseph McCauley, Sport za Rubezhom and an Ulrich Kaiser panel of 16 experts.
Marion Anthony Trabert was an American amateur world No. 1 tennis champion and long-time tennis author, TV commentator, instructor, and motivational speaker.
Clark Graebner is a retired American professional tennis player.
Earl Henry "Butch" Buchholz, Jr. is a former professional tennis player from the United States who was one of the game's top players in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Thomas Samuel Okker is a Dutch former tennis player who was active from the mid-1960s until 1980. He won the 1973 French Open Doubles, the 1976 US Open Doubles, and two gold medals at the 1965 Maccabiah Games in Israel. He was ranked among the world's top-ten singles players for seven consecutive years, 1968–74, reaching a career high of world No. 3 in 1974. He also was ranked world No. 1 in doubles in 1969.
MaliVai "Mal" Washington is an American former professional tennis player. He reached the men's singles final at Wimbledon in 1996, won four ATP titles and achieved a career-high singles ranking of world No. 11 in October 1992.
William Bowrey is a former Australian tennis player. He was ranked world No. 8 in 1967.
Richard Savitt was an American tennis player.
Marty Riessen is an American former amateur and professional tennis player active from the 1960s to the 1980s. He was ranked as high as No. 11 in the world in singles on the ATP rankings in September 1974, though was ranked as high as world No. 8 by Lance Tingay of The Daily Telegraph in 1971 before the computer rankings. Renowned for his doubles play, Riessen was also a regular doubles partner of Australian tennis great Margaret Court, winning six of his seven major mixed titles and a career Grand Slam alongside her. Additionally a winner of two men's doubles Grand Slams, his highest doubles ranking was No. 3 in March 1980.
George Clifford Richey Jr. is an American former amateur and professional tennis player who was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Richey achieved a highest singles ranking of World No. 6 and reached at least the quarterfinal stage of the singles event at all four Grand Slam tournaments.
Charles Manuel Pasarell Jr. is a Puerto Rican former tennis player, tennis administrator and founder of the current Indian Wells tournament. He has also commented for the Tennis Channel and with Arthur Ashe and Sheridan Snyder formed the National Junior Tennis League. He was ten times ranked in the top ten of the U.S. and No. 1 in 1967 and world No. 11 in 1966. Representing the United States as a player, he has been heavily engaged in the administration of the professional game from the inception of the ATP in 1972 and has been Vice President when he was still playing and until recently on the Board of Directors representing the Americas tournaments. In 2013, Pasarell was elected into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
The 1968 US Open was a tennis tournament that took place on the outdoor grass courts at the West Side Tennis Club, Forest Hills in New York City, United States. The tournament ran from 29 August until 8 September. It was the 88th staging of the tournament and the fourth Grand Slam event of 1968. It was the first edition of the tournament in the Open Era of tennis and as such for the first time offered prize money, totaling $100,000. Arthur Ashe and Virginia Wade won the singles titles. Ashe was still registered as an amateur and therefore not entitled to the $14,000 first-prize money, which instead went to runner-up Tom Okker, while Wade earned $6,000. Frank Parker, at the age of 52, lost to eventual champion Arthur Ashe in the second round, and still holds the record for the oldest man to compete in a Grand Slam singles tournament.
The 1971 ILTF Women's Tennis Circuit was the 58th season since the formation of the International Lawn Tennis Federation in 1913, it consisted of a number of tennis tournaments for female tennis players.