British Open (real tennis)
tennis tournament
The British Open is a real tennis tournament, with the men's draw held annually at Queen's Club in London, England, and the women's draw held at the Seacourt Tennis Club on Hayling Island. The men's event is a national Open carrying ranking points for the Real Tennis World Championship. The women's event does not carry any ranking points.
History
Challenge era
The men's event was established in 1931 as the Prince's Club shield, and was originally a challenge format with Edgar Baerlein defeating Marylebone Cricket Club professional William Groom in the inaugural edition 3 sets to 2. A second challenge was held later the same year, with E Ratcliff defeating Moreton Morrell professional Ted Johnson in the same year. The event changed to a best of 13 format in 1932 with Groom defeating Ratcliff, but losing to amateur champion Lowther Lees in 1934. Lees would hold the title until 1938 where he was defeated by Queen's Club professional Jim Dear. No challenges would be held during World War II, with Dear resigning his title in 1952. The title was picked up by rackets professional Ronald Hughes, who held it until 1967, when he retired during the challenge against Frank Willis.
Willis would battle the title against amateur Howard Angus five times during the 1970s, with Angus becoming champion in 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “British Open (real tennis)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.