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Professional grass court tennis dies in North America
But former Wimbledon stars, Vijay Amritraj and Tim Mayotte, argue that’s less important than revitalising the sport in the global South, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
General view of the wear and tear to the grass on the baseline of court twelve on day eight of the Wimbledon Championships at The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon
IT WAS the birthplace of lawn tennis in the US but now it has become its graveyard. The historic and venerable Newport Casino, which opened its doors to tennis, not gambling, in August 1881 for the first US National Lawn Tennis Championship, will close them this summer when it hosts its last major men’s tennis tournament. That moment will mark the end of professional grass court tennis in North America.
The Hall of Fame Open in its current professional form has been held since 1976 in Newport, Rhode Island, a patrician summer resort town where the cliff-top mansions are referred to as “cottages.”
Also housed on the grounds is the International Tennis Hall of Fame, its gables, latticework and fading cedar shingles lending an air of nostalgia that has been lost from the rest of the tennis tour with Wimbledon a possible exception.
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Still the only black man to win the US Open tennis title, a statue of the legendary champion, Arthur Ashe, is now the only one remaining on Monument Avenue in his Richmond, Virginia hometown, where confederate leaders of the Civil War were also once displayed, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
