Tennis Open Era

Categories: Tennis stubs | Tennis

The Open Era in tennis began in 1968, when the Grand Slam events such as the Wimbledon Championships abandoned the longstanding rules of amateurism and allowed professionals to compete.

Professionals, hitherto a rather small part of the tennis scene, swiftly achieved overwhelming dominance.

Open Era Facts/Records

Men

• Roger Federer of Switzerland holds several Open Era records:
  • Longest winning streak on hard court: 40 (running).
  • Longest winning streak against Top-10 players: 26 (2003-2005).
  • Most finals won in succession: 24 (running).
  • Highest number of ranking points at any time of the year: 6,980 (2005).
  • Highest number of Race points (since 2000): 1,267 (2004).
  • Earliest to seal Year-end No. 1 spot: September (2004).
  • Winner of his first 6 Grand Slam finals.
  • First man to win 4 ATP Masters Series titles in one season.
  • Winner of Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in back-to-back years.
  • Has held a record-tying (with Pete Sampras) 4 winning streaks of 20 consecutive matches or more:
    • 23 (Jun 2004-Aug 2004: W Halle, Wimbledon, Gstaad, Toronto, 1st round Cincinnati)
    • 26 (Aug 2004-Jan 2005: W U.S. Open, Bangkok, Tennis Masters Cup, Doha, SF Australian Open)
    • 25 (Feb 2005-Apr 2005: W Rotterdam, Dubai, Indian Wells AMS, Miami AMS, QF Monte Carlo )
    • 31 (Jun 2005-Sep 2005: W Halle, Wimbledon, Cincinnati, U.S. Open, Davis Cup match, Bangkok).
  • First man to win at least 10 titles in a season without losing in a final.
  • Has won three consecutive tournaments on three different surfaces in 2004: Wimbledon (grass), Gstaad (clay) and Toronto (hard).
• Ivan Lendl
  • Longest match winning streak indoors: 66 (between October 1981 and January 1983).
  • Shares Grand Prix record with Jimmy Connors (1974) and Guillermo Vilas (1977) for most tournaments won in a single year: 15 (1982).
  • Only player to have won three tournaments in consectutive weeks on three different surfaces.
• 2005
  • Rafael Nadal of Spain became the first male teenager to reach the second place in the ATP Entry Rankings since Boris Becker.
  • Nadal has won 8 titles on clay in 2005, most since Thomas Muster (7) in 1995.
  • Nadal's 24 match winning streak is the longest streak of any teenager in the Open Era.
  • For the first time since 1990 two men have won 10 singles titles each in one season: Roger Federer (11) and Rafael Nadal (11).
  • Nadal is the first player to make Federer feel ill.

Women

• 2003
  • Jennifer Capriati (U.S.) became the first woman in the Open Era to lose in the first round as a defending champion. (Anastasia Myskina (Russia) would follow her example at the 2005 French Open).
• 2005
  • Justine Henin-Hardenne (Belgium) lost in the first round at Wimbledon and became the first reigning French Open champion to do that.
  • Svetlana Kuznetsova (Russia) became the fourth woman to lose in her opening match as a defending Grand Slam champion at the 2005 US Open.