- Ask Steven
Overseas influence
Who were the first overseas winners of the tennis Grand Slams? asked Brian Langley
For obvious reasons the early tournaments of what we now regard as the Grand Slams were won by local people, with overseas travel being something of an adventure. The US Championship was the first to fall to foreign invaders: Mabel Cahill, who was Irish, won in 1891 (and retained the title in 1892). It took the men a little longer: Britain's Laurie Doherty, in 1903, was the only winner from the inaugural event in 1881 to 1925 who wasn't American.
Wimbledon's first overseas winner was the American May Sutton (later Mrs Bundy), who defeated the defending champion Dorothea Douglass (later Mrs Lambert Chambers) in 1905. Two years later, the Australian Norman Brookes became the first overseas winner of the men's singles - and the first left-hander too. (This excludes Dr Joshua Pim, an Irishman who won in 1893 and 1894.)
The Australian Championship started in 1905, and was won in its second year by the New Zealander Tony Wilding. But that tournament was actually held in Christchurch, NZ - the correct title of the tournament at the time was the Australasian Championships - and the first truly overseas winner was the American Fred Alexander, who won in Sydney in 1908. The women's singles, which started in 1922, was won by Australians every year until 1935, when Britain's Dorothy Round took the title.
The French Championships cause a bit of a problem for historians, as until 1925 it was a "closed" competition, in which only members of French clubs could participate. Most lists therefore start in 1925, and show Kea Bouman of the Netherlands (1927) and Australia's Jack Crawford (1933) as the first overseas singles champions. But it should be noted that the first tournament styled as the French Championship was back in 1881, and was won by Mr H. Briggs, an Englishman who was a member of the Stade Francaise club.
