50 Years of Influence, US Open: Bob Kelleher

WATCH—Stories of the Open Era - Cultural Icons:

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

Open tennis, and the US Open, weren’t historical inevitabilities. The amateur era lasted for 90 years, and it might still be going if the sport hadn’t had the right people to topple it in 1968.

Kelleher, a graduate of Harvard law school and a federal judge, was among the most important of those people. A tennis lifer raised in Queens, he was a member of the West Side Tennis Club as a child, and a ball boy for Bill Tilden. As a player, Kelleher twice reached the second round of the U.S. Nationals. In 1962 and 1963, he served as captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team, leading the squad to the title in ’63.

But Kelleher’s most lasting contribution came in 1968, when he was president of the USLTA. That winter, the question of whether to open the game’s major tournaments to professionals came to a momentous vote at a meeting in Coronado, CA. The previous fall, Wimbledon chief Herman David had declared amateurism a “living lie,” and welcomed professionals onto Centre Court.

Many in the USLTA didn’t want to follow that radical path, but Kelleher wasn’t one of them. It was his tactical persuasion at Coronado that convinced the “old goats”—his phrase—of the amateur game to throw the gates open.

Kelleher was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2000, and he died in 2012 at age 99, after a century happily spent in the sport.