Analysis: It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time where the tennis calendar included an equally important stop in Ireland
The third Grand Slam of the year is underway on Wimbledon's meticulously kept green grass. The oldest of the four annual Grand Slams, tennis players from across the world have donned their crisp whites in SW19 for more than 140 years. It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time where the yearly tennis calendar also included an equally important stop in Ireland.
The late 19th century is boom time for tennis in Ireland. Historian Tom Hunt has documented how 45 clubs were established between 1875 and 1894, with a sudden and explosive expansion when another 55 clubs open their doors between 1890 and 1894 alone. At the beginning of this, in 1879, just two years after the establishment of the Wimbledon Championships, the Irish Championships were founded at the Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club in Dublin, and quickly became one of the major tournaments alongside Wimbledon and the Northern Championships (Manchester Open).
It was, in those days, a groundbreaking tournament, as it was the first to feature a Ladies' singles event. Wimbledon would only introduce a singles event for women five years later, in 1884. Tipperary woman Lena Rice took home the trophy in 1890, the first and only Irish woman to ever win at Wimbledon.
The first ever Irish tennis Championships was held on June 4, 1879 at Fitzwilliam Square, and included both Gentlemen’s and Ladies’ Singles, Men’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles. The men’s champion received a prize of £20, while the women’s champion won half of that at £10. Men's doubles pairs played for £7 10s each, while the mixed doubles pairs competed for £5 each. Even adjusted for inflation, that's a far cry from the prize money players receive today.
'The Irish Championships enjoyed the reputation of being about the best managed meeting of the year,' wrote Harry Scrivener, a late 19th century tennis player turned referee who helped found the British Lawn Tennis Association, in the 1903 book Lawn Tennis at Home and Abroad. 'The Fitzwilliam week in those days ran a good second to the Horse Show week in the affections of Dublin Society, which turned up in full strength and in all the glory of its female loveliness to watch the play.'
In those days, Irish tennis players seem to have enjoyed a brief but brilliant moment in the spotlight. '[T]here was no dearth, as there is now, of first-rate Irish players, so that there was always the added zest of International rivalry to keep the gallery interested,' Scrivener wrote. Names like Louise Martin, Florence Stanuell, sisters May and Beatrice Langrishe, Mabel Cahill, and Lena Rice on the women’s side, as well as Willoughby Hamilton, Joshua Pim and James Cecil Parke on the men’s side, were highly regarded and successful players.
Tennis journalist A Wallis Myers, also in Lawn Tennis, wrote of Louise Martin’s 'long and brilliant career’ that since she began playing in 1885, ‘she has has been unfailingly to the fore at the premier meetings, always a doughty warrior, armed at all points to meet any kind of attack. There is no better-known member of the Fitzwilliam Club, and among the roll of ladies who have given their best to promote the true interests of the game in Ireland, hers must inevitably go down to posterity.’
At the first Irish Championships in 1879, it was Vere Thomas St Leger Goold who took home the wining prize on the mens' side. Born into a wealthy Catholic family, he was a star of Irish tennis and on the committee that ran the Irish Championships in 1879 and 1880. But he ended up imprisoned in the French penitentiary colony Devil’s Island in 1908, a convicted murderer. May Langrishe, meanwhile, was the first woman to win the Irish trophy. According to Scrivener, "[s]he was an accomplished volleyer, and played with a grace that was simply charming, her backhand stroke being the most perfect I have ever seen."
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From RTÉ Doc On One, Vere Goold was Ireland's first tennis star, but thirty years after winning the Irish Championships he would commit a diabolical murder on the French Riviera
The tournament was only ever cancelled as a result of WWI (1914-1918, the Irish civil war (1922) and WWII (1944-1945). According to the Fitzwilliam’s history, Cecil Parke holds the most singles titles won by a man in the Irish Championships, with eight titles (1904, 1905, 1908 - 1913). While Louisa Martin is the most successful woman in the history of the tournament with nine titles (1889 - 1892, 1896, 1899, 1900, 1902 and 1903).
In 1913, however, with the establishment of the International Lawn Tennis Federation (now the ITF), the tennis landscape changed. Although the hey days of Irish tennis and the Irish Championships could be said to have reached their end by then, the tournament, which was later rebranded as the Irish Open, was won by several recognisable names in more modern times.
Australian tennis legend Margaret Court won the Women’s singles tournament three times (1966, 1971, 1973). Court still holds the record for most Grand Slam singles titles (24, tied with Novak Djokovic) and total Grand Slam titles (64: 24 singles, 19 doubles, 21 mixed doubles). In 1969, the Women’s singles title was won by none other than US tennis icon Billie Jean King, and the Men’s singles title was won by Australia’s ‘The Rocket’ Rod Laver in 1962. Brazil’s Maria Bueno, known as "The São Paulo Swallow" won the Women’s singles title in 1964 and 1965. Australia’s trailblazing Evonne Goolagong won in 1972. All world number 1 players and tennis Hall of Famers.
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