Of course, it is at the Olympic Games in Tokyo that the greatest tennis champions face each other these days, but only two months ago, they shone on the Parisian clay, at the French Open at Roland-Garros. How did this Grand Slam competition come about? We take stock in the third part of “Sport in the retro” with our partner RetroNews, the BNF press site.
1891, it was 130 years ago, began the first “French Championships on clay” (men). They were then “reserved for players registered in French clubs and played alternately at the Stade Français, Parc de Saint-Cloud, and at the Racing Club de France, at La Croix-Catelan”, can we read on the Roland-Garros website. 1897, the women’s competition was born.
Already in 1914, the weather was a spoiler. “The rain interrupts the Tennis World Championships, the finals will take place tomorrow”, headline the daily L’Excelsior, Monday June 8, 1914, live from the Stade Français.
In 1925, the Championships were opened to foreigners: the “French Open” were born, and it was still at the Stade Français (Saint-Cloud park) that it was happening. On the last page of L’Excelsior, we recognize the great Suzanne Lenglen, who triumphed six times between 1920 and 1926. We will note in passing the inconvenient long dresses worn by the players.
On the men’s side, Henri Cochet, René Lacoste, Jean Borotra and Jacques Brugnon (the so-called “Musketeers”), together won 10 singles titles between 1922 and 1932. Their victory in the Davis Cup (international team competition), in 1927, led to the construction of a building dedicated to the defense of their title. “Parisian tennis players will have a special model stadium, it will be called Roland-Garros”, writing The Work, November 1, 1927.
Why Roland-Garros? In homage to this exceptional aviator from Réunion, a great friend of the former president of the Stade Français (Emile Lesieur) and shot down by the Germans in 1918 aboard the machine-gun plane he was piloting at the time. He distinguished himself in 1913 by making the first crossing of the Mediterranean in an airplane, celebrated in “triumphant” on the front page of Small Journal, October 5.
May 20, 1928, the daily The Uncompromising welcomes the inauguration of a “beautiful tennis stadium” :
The Stade Français and the Racing Club de France have built in Auteuil on the site of the former CASG football and athletics field, a tennis stadium that they presented yesterday to the Parisian and foreign press. It is a magnificent installation, in a fresh and tender setting of a French garden. Pretty lawns, pretty pavilions, beautiful little pebbles dotting the alleys. The central court is flanked by around 10,000 seats.
Goguenard, Le Figaro laughs for his part in the atmosphere “elegant privacy” during this first edition of Roland-Garros: “This is how we never hear people say:
– Lacoste and Mlle Bourgeois are currently playing on the central.
But good :
– Yvonne and René play on the central.
[…] So it looks like we’re in company. “
Even more biting, The Daily (very anchored to the left), pay the “snobbery” players and spectators: “It’s charming! There are socks, silk stockings, printed dresses and very academic chatting. We see pouts in circumflex accent, disheveled little fingers, well turned calves, ears in the middle. fresh air and flirtations very like this and like that… ” And again, that was before the Panama boom.
Read also :
⋙ The little history of the Tour de France, this legendary race born in 1903
⋙ How a Frenchman revived the Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens
⋙ VIDEOGRAPHY – Tennis, a question of surface
