Golden Summers at Beckenham: International Tournament History

Seven years after the establishment of the tennis section at Beckenham Cricket Club, the committee set about organising the first Kent All-Comers' Championships in June 1886. For the next 110 years, until the tournament's demise in 1996, major champions, world champions and players of every nationality thumped the grass.

The ambidextrous Herbert Chipp captured the inaugural singles title over Beckenham committee member Edward J. Avory and two years later 21-year-old Fulham resident May Jacks beat Edith Gurney of Staines to win the first official women's trophy.

Regular appearances by William and Ernest Renshaw, Bromley residents Wilfred and Herbert Baddeley and Reggie and Laurie Doherty, which were chronicled by the influential The Field Magazine, ensured Foxgrove Road quickly became an essential stop on the international tennis circuit.

"We can imagine no prettier lawn tennis rendezvous than at Beckenham," reported The Daily News on 5 June 1886. The Beckenham cricketers are in ordinary possession of this enclosure, surrounded by fine old trees. Big, shapely, rounded by fine old oaks, glossy beeches, picturesque elms and hawthorns covered at present with red and white blossoms diffusing their sweet fragrance afar cut off the players off from the world.

"The prospect beyond the further fence is of park-like country, where sleek cattle graze over the luscious grass or camp during the noonday heat under clumps of tress. This is just the kind of place for the business of a tournament, and is the converse of the unlovely paddocks in which many associations meet."

Beckenham welcomed its first foreign competitors from the United States in 1898 and by 1905, when Australian Norman Brookes made his grass-court debut in England the Kent All-Comers' Championships had already established an excellent reputation. From the 1920s the club was staging women's international matches as practice for Great Britain's Wightman Cup teams.

The tournament contested two or three weeks before The Championships at Wimbledon, was highly regarded by players as a dress rehearsal due to the quality and speed of the club's grass courts, which were cut on the cricket outfield. It had a garden party atmosphere as a result of spectators being allowed to watch matches only a few yards from the court.

Dozens of legendary players in the history of tennis competed at Beckenham Cricket Club from the tournament's infancy, including early champions Dorothea Douglass Lambert Chambers, Anthony Wilding, Bill Tilden, Bill Johnston, Elizabeth Ryan, Molla Mallory, Senorita Elia de Alvarez, Helen Wills Moody, Fred Perry and Bunny Austin.

Appearances by Maureen Connolly, Althea Gibson, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall, Rod Laver, Roy Emerson, John Newcombe, Maria Bueno, Ann Jones, Margaret Smith-Court and Billie Jean Moffitt-King helped further develop Beckenham's rich tradition.

The Kent All-Comers' Championships was the world's first tournament to have a sponsor, Rothmans, in 1963, after a special dispensation from the Lawn Tennis Association, the governing body of British tennis.

Almost five years later in March 1968 at a Special General Meeting in Paris, Beckenham was awarded the status of an Open event. The club welcomed amateur and professional players to compete in the world's first Open grass-court tournament in June 1968. It was the third 'Open' field after the British Hard Court Open in Bournemouth and the French Open at Roland Garros.

In the professional era sponsorship agreements were signed with Rothmans, Green Shield, Kentish Times and Direct Line Insurance, which ensured a new generation of champions competed at the Foxgrove Road ground for prize money.

Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, Arthur Ashe, John McEnroe, Pat Cash, Stefan Edberg, Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker, Pete Sampras, Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova all visited in an attempt to win Beckenham titles and gain grass-court experience.

When a sponsor couldn't be found for the tournament in 1996, 33 double winners (those who have won the singles title at Beckenham and Wimbledon) had etched their names in Beckenham folklore. Now, all we have is memories of marvellous summers and the knowledge that Beckenham played a pivotal part in the development of Lawn Tennis.

A complete list of every singles final at the All-Comers' Championship can be found here: Gentlemen (1886-1996) and Ladies' (1888-1996).

by James Buddell

Copies of the programmes for Saturday 15th June 1901, and 1975, as well as the 1886 - 1986 Souvenir Programme can be seen by clicking on the appropriate link.

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