HISTORY OF FRENCH OPEN TENNIS

A bit of history
Until the legendary French Musketeers staged their legendary Davis Cup final in Paris in 1928, French tennis was a relatively low-key affair. That final heralded a new era, however, and in the ensuing years the French Championships began to resemble the global tennis jamboree we know today. Here we take a look back at the history of a tournament that uniquely bears the name of a famous aviator, Roland Garros.
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1925: everyone is welcome!
Roland Garros may be one of the four pillars of international tennis today, but when it was first held way back in 1891 it was a strictly domestic event. Even when Stade Français launched the paradoxically-named World Clay Court Championship in 1912 on their courts at la Faisanderie in Saint-Cloud park, it was only open to French players and foreign members of French clubs. But in the '20s, with the Musketeers flying the French flag so successfully at major tournaments around the world, particularly at Wimbledon, the French Championships had to move with the times.

Ironically, the last "French-only" French Championships in 1924 boasted a final quartet worthy of any major world event: Borotra took on Brugnon in one semi-final and Lacoste faced Cochet in the other on the Racing Club courts that year. But the French Tennis Federation knew they had to organise a tournament that befitted the status of their great international stars, and so in 1925 the French Championships were opened up to the best foreign players and renamed the French Internationals, with Stade Français and Racing Club de France taking turns to stage the event


1927: "the Philadelphia four"
When Jacques "Toto" Brugnon, Jean Borotra, Henri Cochet and René Lacoste shocked the US tennis establishment by winning the Davis Cup on American soil in 1927, a return match in Paris was de rigueur. Naturally, the event required a setting worthy of the occasion, so the Stade Français club offered to sell the tennis authorities a three hectare site close to Porte d'Auteuil, on the condition that the new stadium bore the name of one of its illustrious former members, the aviator Roland Garros. Garros had died ten years earlier and was famous for having been the first man to fly across the Mediterranean, on 23 September 1913.

So it was in the spring of 1928 that two young ladies by the name of Miss Bennett of Great Britain and Madame Lafaurie of France had the honour of playing the first match on the centre court of the new Roland Garros stadium. Two days later, the first ever doubles match was played on the same court in the French Internationals, and at the end of the summer the Musketeers would retain their Davis Cup title against the Americans- a trophy they would keep until 1933.


The post-war period: the French Open is born
Cancelled from 1940 to 1945, the tournament blossomed slowly in the post-war years. Roland Garros was the first Grand Slam tournament to join the "Open" era in 1968, and since then many tennis greats have graced the famous clay courts, including Björn Borg (six times winner in a golden age for men's tennis), Ivan Lendl, Mats Wilander and more recently Gustavo Kuerten. Home fans will never forget 1983, the year Yannick Noah became the first, and so far only Frenchman to win the men's singles title...