French Open or Roland Garros is one of the biggest tennis tournaments and is the only one to be played on clay court. Roland Garros is the name given to the stadium after Roland Garros, who was the aviation pioneer and was the first to fly the Mediterranean.
Some of the interesting facts related to Roland Garros or French Open tennis tournament are:
1) The French Open tennis tournament is 110 years old. The first Roland Garros tournament took place in 1891 as a national championship and got international status in the year 1925.
2) Born Borg has won the French Open tennis tournament championship for men’s single a record six times.
3) Suzanne Lenglen in 1926 won the women’s French Open title in 27 minutes.
4) Althea Gibson, an American player was the first black tennis player to win the French Open in the year 1956.
5) In the final match of 1966, Istvan agreed to delay the match for 24 hours so that Tony Roche would get over his ankle injury. This agreement on Istvan’s part however allowed Tony to win the title.
6) As of 2006, the last six men’s Roland Garros tournaments were won by the tennis players who won no other grand slams.
7) Michael Chang became the youngest French Open tennis champion when he defeated Stefan Edberg 6-1, 3-6, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 at the age of 17 years, 3 months in 1989.
8) Monica Seles is the youngest woman to have won the French Open tennis championship when she defeated Steffi Graf 7-6, 6-4 at the age of 16 years 6 months.
Monica Seles also holds the record. She tied with Henin to win the French Open consecutively for three years.
One of the major tennis tournaments which are played in the beautiful city of Paris, France, is the French Open. It is one of the tournaments which is covered under the Grand Slam tourney and is played over two weeks from mid-May until the beginning of June. The French Open is the second Grand Slam in tthe calendar year and it comes after the Australian Open which is played in January.
The French Open is the most popular of all the Grand Slam events and enjoys a huge viewership among all the other Grand Slams. A reason for this might be the fact that it considered by many as the most grueling and taxing of the tennis tournaments.
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