The US Open has played on grass, clay and hard courts, and never skipped a year
Tennis's fourth Grand Slam is the one that kept going: no cancellation for either world war, none for the pandemic. It has also been the sport's laboratory, first with tiebreaks, first with equal prize money, first with a shot clock, and it changed surface twice in four years.
It began in August 1881 as the U.S. National Championships, on grass at the Newport Casino in Rhode Island, now home to the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Richard Sears won that first men's singles and the next six as well. Women got their own championship in 1887 at the Philadelphia Cricket Club, where 17-year-old Ellen Hansell took the title. For decades the defending champion simply waited in the final under a challenge system.
Moving to New York was a fight. Players led by Karl Behr argued that most clubs and fans were around the city; a group including eight former champions objected. A USNLTA vote on February 5, 1915, went 128 to 119 for relocation, and the men's singles moved to the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills that August. The women stayed in Philadelphia until 1921. Official recognition as a major championship came only in 1924, and seeding arrived in 1922.
The Open Era began in 1968, when professionals were admitted and the prize fund totalled 100,000 dollars. Innovations followed quickly. In 1970 it became the first major to settle sets at six-all with a tiebreak, and in 1973 the first to pay men and women equally, 25,000 dollars each to John Newcombe and Margaret Court. Complaints about the bounce, plus a wish to look better on television, brought clay in 1975, and floodlights allowed night matches.
In 1978 the event moved about 3 miles north to a new national tennis centre in Flushing Meadows and switched to hard courts, which is why Jimmy Connors is the only player to win its singles on all three surfaces. The complex was renamed for Billie Jean King in 2006. More firsts came later: a visible shot clock in 2018 and, in 2023, video review that lets players challenge calls such as a double bounce.
Source: US Open (tennis)
