Way back in the dizzle

It seems fitting today to take you back to August 31st, 1881, when the first U.S. national tennis championships began in Newport, Rhode Island.

A men's singles tournament with national aspirations had been held the year before in Boston, won with ease by eighteen-year-old Dick Sears (the dapper lad pictured above). But several disputes were contested during the tournament as to the proper way to play lawn tennis and no one was satisfied with the result. To the end of solving these disputes, a meeting was held in the Fifth Avenue Hotel in NYC on May 21st, 1881. Out of that meeting, the U.S. National Lawn Tennis Association was born.

The first U.S. Championships comprised only men's singles and men's doubles. As he had done the year before, Dick Sears breezed through the singles tournament without losing a set (three-set matches for the men back then). Sears is the first true U.S. tennis legend - he won the singles tournament a total of seven times and retired in 1887 with a career singles record of 18-0. He was also the first man to attack the net and volley, at least on these shores. Over in England, Willie and Ernest Renshaw were getting up to the same tricks at Wimbledon, but Sears knew nothing of their antics.