Tennis Grand Slams: Venues, Surfaces and Winners

The Grand Slams, also called the Majors, are the four most important tournaments in tennis. They are the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open, and they are worth more ranking points, more prize money and more prestige than any other event on the calendar. Each is run by the tennis association of its own country rather than by a world body, and each keeps its own surface, its own trophies and its own fixed slot in the year. Static GK papers ask a narrow set of questions about them: which tournament is played on which surface, where each is held, which is the oldest, what the trophies are called, and which Indian won what.

The four tournaments at a glance

Wimbledon, first played in 1877, is the oldest tennis tournament in the world and the only Major still played on grass. The French Open is the only one played on clay, and because a clay court slows the ball down and makes the rally longer, it rewards a very different game from the fast grass of Wimbledon. The Australian Open and the US Open are both played on hard courts, which sit between the two in speed. Wimbledon is also the only Major that still insists its players wear almost entirely white clothing.

Trophies and names

Each tournament hands over a differently named prize, and the names are asked directly. At Wimbledon the men's singles champion lifts the Gentlemen's Singles Trophy, a gilded silver cup, while the women's champion receives the Venus Rosewater Dish, a silver salver rather than a cup. At the French Open the men's trophy is the Coupe des Mousquetaires, the Musketeers' Cup, named after the four French players who dominated the 1920s, and the women's is the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen. At the Australian Open the men's trophy is the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup and the women's the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup. The French Open is also called Roland Garros after the French aviator for whom its stadium is named.

The Open Era, the calendar Slam and the Golden Slam

Until 1968 the Majors were open only to amateurs, and professionals were barred. From 1968 they were opened to everybody, and tennis since that year is called the Open Era; records are therefore often quoted separately for the Open Era and for all time. Winning all four Majors in the same calendar year is a calendar Grand Slam. Don Budge did it first among men in 1938, and Rod Laver is the only man to have done it twice, in 1962 and again in 1969. Among women Maureen Connolly managed it in 1953, Margaret Court in 1970 and Steffi Graf in 1988.

Graf's 1988 season went one step further: she added the Olympic singles gold at Seoul to the four Majors, which is called a Golden Slam, and she remains the only player to have completed it in a single year. Winning all four Majors at some point in a career, not necessarily in one year, is a career Grand Slam, and adding an Olympic singles gold to that makes a career Golden Slam. Margaret Court holds the all-time record of 24 women's singles Major titles, and Serena Williams, who retired in 2022, holds the Open Era women's record with 23.

India at the Grand Slams

India has never had a singles champion at a Major, but its doubles players have won several titles. Mahesh Bhupathi became the first Indian to win a Grand Slam title when he took the 1997 French Open mixed doubles crown with Rika Hiraki of Japan. Paired with Leander Paes he then won the men's doubles at the French Open and at Wimbledon in 1999, and the two together reached the final of all four Majors in that season. Sania Mirza became the first Indian woman to win a Grand Slam title, taking the 2009 Australian Open mixed doubles with Bhupathi, and she later won three women's doubles Majors with Martina Hingis of Switzerland: Wimbledon and the US Open in 2015 and the Australian Open in 2016. Leander Paes also won the men's singles bronze medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, India's only Olympic tennis medal. In the amateur era Ramanathan Krishnan reached the Wimbledon men's singles semi-final in 1960 and 1961, which is still the best singles run by an Indian at a Major.

Scoring, the court and the governing bodies

A game is scored 15, 30, 40 and then game, with zero called love. A score of 40 all is deuce, after which a player must win two points in a row, the first being the advantage. A set goes to the first player to win six games with a lead of two, and at six games each a tie-break is played. Men play the best of five sets at the Majors while women play the best of three, and this difference is itself a question.

A tennis court is 78 feet long. It is 27 feet wide for singles and 36 feet wide for doubles, the extra strip on each side being the tramlines. The net stands 3 feet high at the centre and 3 feet 6 inches at the posts. The International Tennis Federation, founded in 1913 and based in London, is the world governing body; the men's professional tour is run by the ATP and the women's by the WTA. The Davis Cup is the leading men's team competition and the Billie Jean King Cup, earlier called the Fed Cup, the women's. Tennis was part of the very first modern Olympics in 1896, was dropped after 1924, and returned as a full medal sport at Seoul in 1988.