In the five decades since the first US Open, these are the players, innovators and newsmakers whose contributions have helped make it one of our nation’s essential sporting events
Virtually all young tennis players dream of winning their national championships. For Ashe, who grew up in Richmond, VA, in the 1940s, the idea of playing them must have seemed fanciful enough. Like all African-American players before 1950—the year Althea Gibson broke tennis’ color barrier at Forest Hills—Ashe wouldn’t have been allowed to play the U.S. Nationals.
Ashe would make the most of Gibson’s breakthrough. In 1968, nine years after his debut at Forest Hills, Ashe became the first African-American man to win the title there.
Ashe’s win wasn’t just historic. His popularity with fans, his telegenic presence—he was the first player at a major event to wear non-white clothing—and the media attention he generated helped set off the early-’70s tennis boom in the United States, and bring so many fans to Forest Hills that the US Open would soon need to move to a larger facility in Flushing Meadows.
But it wasn’t just the color of Ashe’s skin that made him special; it was also, to quote his spiritual hero, Martin Luther King, the content of his character. A model sportsman on court and off, he was proud to be the first black player selected to the U.S. Davis Cup team, and he was committed to doing whatever he could, as an athlete and an activist, to end the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Ashe died from AIDS-related pneumonia in 1993, at the tragically young age of 49. Four years later, when the USTA had a new arena to name at Flushing Meadows, his was the logical (and emotional) choice.
Arthur Ashe Stadium doesn’t just call to mind a past champion; it calls to mind the best—the most dignified, the most intelligent, the most consequential—of what tennis has had to offer.
