Tennis Grand Slams: Venues, Surfaces and Winners

The correct answer is B, Wimbledon. The Championships were first played at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in London in 1877, which makes Wimbledon the oldest tennis tournament in the world. That first edition had only a gentlemen's singles event; the ladies' singles was added in 1884.

Option A, the US Open, began in 1881 as the US National Championship, four years after Wimbledon, and is the second oldest of the four. Option C, the French Open, dates from 1891 but stayed a national event, open only to members of French clubs, until 1925, so it is often shown as the youngest in international terms while still older than the Australian event. Option D, the Australian Open, was first held in 1905 as the Australasian Championships and is the newest of the four. Fixing the order 1877, 1881, 1891, 1905 in memory settles every question of this kind.

The correct answer is C, French Open. Played at the Stade Roland Garros in Paris in May and June, it is the only Major contested on clay, and its red crushed brick surface slows the ball and makes it bounce high, so rallies are long and a patient baseline player is favoured.

Option A, Wimbledon, is the only Major played on grass, the fastest of the surfaces, where the ball skids low and the serve counts for far more. Option B, the Australian Open, and option D, the US Open, are both played on hard courts, an acrylic layer over concrete or asphalt whose speed sits between grass and clay. Because the French Open falls immediately before Wimbledon in the calendar, candidates often swap the two surfaces in a hurry, so it helps to remember the single sentence: only Wimbledon is grass and only the French Open is clay.

The correct answer is B, Venus Rosewater Dish. The ladies' singles champion at Wimbledon receives a sterling silver salver, a flat dish rather than a cup, decorated with figures from classical mythology, and it has been awarded since 1886. The men's champion, by contrast, lifts the Gentlemen's Singles Trophy, a gilded silver cup.

Option A, the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup, goes to the women's singles champion at the Australian Open and is named after a five time Australian champion of the 1920s. Option C, the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen, is the French Open women's trophy, named after the great French player of the 1920s. Option D, the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup, is the Australian Open men's trophy. Since each Major has a separate name for its men's and its women's prize, the safest way to learn them is as four pairs rather than as eight separate names.

The correct answer is B, French Open. The Coupe des Mousquetaires, or Musketeers' Cup, is handed to the men's singles winner at Roland Garros. It is named after the four French players, Jean Borotra, Jacques Brugnon, Henri Cochet and Rene Lacoste, who were nicknamed the Four Musketeers and who carried French tennis through the 1920s.

Option A, the US Open, gives its champions a trophy known simply as the US Open trophy and has no separate historical name of this kind. Option C, Wimbledon, awards the Gentlemen's Singles Trophy, a gilded silver cup, and the Venus Rosewater Dish to the women. Option D, the Australian Open, awards the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup to the men. The French names in the options are the giveaway: both French Open trophies carry French names, the Coupe des Mousquetaires and the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen.

The correct answer is C, Mahesh Bhupathi. He won the mixed doubles title at the 1997 French Open partnering Rika Hiraki of Japan, and that was the first Grand Slam title of any kind won by an Indian. Two years later, with Leander Paes, he won the men's doubles at both the French Open and Wimbledon in 1999.

Option A, Leander Paes, went on to win many more Major titles than Bhupathi in men's and mixed doubles and is the better known name, which is exactly why the question is set; his first Major came after Bhupathi's. Option B, Vijay Amritraj, reached the quarter-finals at Wimbledon and the US Open in the 1970s and was a Davis Cup mainstay, but never won a Major. Option D, Ramanathan Krishnan, reached the Wimbledon singles semi-final in 1960 and 1961, the best singles run by an Indian at a Major, but again without a title. No Indian has yet won a Grand Slam singles title.

The correct answer is D, Australian Open 2009. Sania Mirza and Mahesh Bhupathi won the mixed doubles title at Melbourne Park in 2009, and that made Mirza the first Indian woman to win any Grand Slam title. She had already been the first Indian woman to reach the fourth round of a Major, at the US Open in 2005.

Options A and B, Wimbledon 2015 and the US Open 2015, are both real Mirza titles but in women's doubles, won with Martina Hingis of Switzerland, and they came six years after the first. Option C, the French Open in 2012, is also a genuine Mirza title in mixed doubles, won with Mahesh Bhupathi, but it was her second mixed doubles Major and not her first of all. The pair added the Australian Open women's doubles in 2016, so Mirza's Major titles run across mixed and women's doubles; the one the exam wants as her first is Melbourne in 2009.

The correct answer is B, 1968. Until that year the Majors were reserved for amateurs, and the best players of the day, once they turned professional, could no longer enter them. In 1968 the tournaments were opened to all players, and every season from then on is called the Open Era, which is why the Australian Championships became the Australian Open and the French Championships the French Open.

Option A, 1958, is a decade too early and belongs to the period when the amateur rule was still being argued over. Option C, 1977, is the year of the Wimbledon centenary, a hundred years after 1877, which makes it a plausible looking but wrong choice. Option D, 1988, is the year Steffi Graf completed the Golden Slam and also the year tennis returned to the Olympic Games as a full medal sport at Seoul, so it appears in several tennis questions, just not in this one.

The correct answer is B, Rod Laver. The Australian won all four Majors in the same calendar year in 1962 as an amateur and did it again in 1969, in the second year of the Open Era, which no other man has matched. The main arena of the Australian Open in Melbourne is named the Rod Laver Arena in his honour.

Option A, Don Budge of the United States, was the first man ever to complete a calendar Grand Slam, in 1938, but he did it only once. Option C, Roger Federer, won twenty Major singles titles and held three of the four at once more than once, but never all four inside a single calendar year. Option D, Bjorn Borg, won the French Open and Wimbledon repeatedly but never played the Australian Open in his prime years and never won the US Open, so a calendar Slam was out of reach. Among women, Maureen Connolly in 1953, Margaret Court in 1970 and Steffi Graf in 1988 completed the feat once each.

The correct answer is B, Steffi Graf. In 1988 the German won the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open, and then took the Olympic singles gold medal at Seoul, the first Games at which tennis was again a full medal sport. No other player, man or woman, has completed all five in a single year.

Option A, Martina Navratilova, won eighteen Major singles titles including nine at Wimbledon, and held all four at once across two seasons, but never inside one calendar year and never with an Olympic gold. Option C, Margaret Court, completed the calendar Grand Slam in 1970 and holds the all-time record of twenty-four women's singles Majors, but tennis was not then an Olympic medal sport. Option D, Serena Williams, holds the Open Era women's record of twenty-three Major singles titles and has Olympic gold medals, but her four in a row, the so-called Serena Slam, ran across 2014 and 2015 rather than one year.

The correct answer is C, deuce. Points in a game are called fifteen, thirty and forty, and when both players reach forty the score is deuce. From there a player must win two points in a row to take the game, and the game can return to deuce any number of times.

Option A, love, means a score of zero, so a game opening with a point to the server is fifteen love and a set won without dropping a game is six love. Option B, advantage, is the score after a player wins the point immediately following deuce; winning the next point as well gives that player the game, while losing it takes the score back to deuce. Option D, a let, is not a score at all but an order to replay the point, most often called when a serve clips the top of the net and still lands in the correct service box. Knowing all four terms together makes this family of questions straightforward.

The correct answer is C, 78 feet. Under the Rules of Tennis a court is 78 feet, about 23.77 metres, from baseline to baseline, and the length is the same whether singles or doubles is being played. Only the width changes: 27 feet for singles and 36 feet for doubles, the extra strip on each side being the tramlines.

Option A, 68 feet, and option B, 74 feet, are simply short of the true figure and have no standing in the rules. Option D, 84 feet, is longer than any tennis court, though the total playing area including the run back behind each baseline does extend well past 78 feet, which is what makes the option look reasonable. The other measurement worth carrying into the hall is the height of the net, 3 feet at the centre and 3 feet 6 inches at the posts.

The correct answer is B, Flushing Meadows, New York. The US Open is played at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in the Flushing Meadows park of the New York borough of Queens, on hard courts, in the last week of August and the first of September. Its main court, Arthur Ashe Stadium, is the largest tennis stadium in the world.

Option A, Melbourne Park, is the home of the Australian Open, the first Major of the year, whose centre court is the Rod Laver Arena. Option C, the Stade Roland Garros in Paris, hosts the French Open on clay, and its main court is the Philippe Chatrier court. Option D, the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club at Wimbledon in London, hosts the grass court Championships. Learning the four venues as a set of pairs, tournament and city, answers both the venue questions and the surface questions at once.