Essex County Club Tennis History by Gary Larrabee

As host venue for the 36th Curtis Cup Match, Essex County Club is all about golf in June 2012, and its illustrious place in American golf history. But no less impressive is the venerable Club’s tennis heritage, which too, dates back to the 1890s and includes a leadership role in the game’s development in the United States.

Upon it being organized, the Club wasted no time getting into the tennis tournament swing of things. It hosted on its two new clay courts in 1894 a five-day round robin, according to the Wright and Ditson Tennis Guide of the same year, featuring six of the country’s leading players. Fifteen years later it held a mixed doubles event called the Silver Cup whose participants included the ambassadors from Germany, Italy and Russia who were summering on Boston’s North Shore. The Club initiated a national round-robin tournament in 1912.

The Essex women pursued tennis with a passion, just as they did golf. Heading the list of accomplished players was one Margaret Curtis. She became so accomplished with the racquet that in 1908 she partnered with Evelyn Sears to victory in the National Doubles championship in Philadelphia.

The game caught on locally and nationally. By the early 1920s Essex sported both dirt and grass courts and was anxious to bring high-level competitive tennis to Manchester. Enter the 1924 Tennis Committee which initiated a ladies’ tennis tournament in conjunction with the United States Lawn Tennis Association that ran for more than four decades.

The inaugural event’s success inspired the committee to declare its 1925 version the Ladies’ Invitation Tennis Tournament (LITT). For the next 43 years the Essex Invitation attracted virtually every top woman player in the world to what became a featured stop on the ladies’ summer tournament circuit.

Helen Wills won her first of four Essex Invitations in 1925. From that point on the champions roll call included future Hall of Famers at most every turn, among them Alice Marble, Margaret Osborne DuPont, Maureen Connolly, Althea Gibson, Darlene Hard, Margaret Smith Court, Billie Jean Moffitt, Ann Hayden and Maria Bueno.

When the major tennis tournaments were opened to professionals in 1968, the Essex Tennis Committee tried keeping in step. It offered headliners Court and Bueno low three-figure incentives, as related by George Caner in his epic “History of Essex County Club.” They accepted and Bueno beat Court in a stirring final, the last LITT. Essex had no interest getting involved any further with the commercialization of the game. But its 44-year run will remain in the USTA record books. The accompanying clambake and songfests on Singing Beach will continue to fade from memory.

The LITT was replaced in 1969 with the “Rough and Smooth,” an invitation mixed memberguest doubles tournament in which players team up with anyone but his/her spouse. The event attracts 80 to ninety teams.

More than 40 years later, Essex County Club’s tennis program still thrives, thanks to 14 grass courts and 10 clay courts. The tennis membership has never been stronger. The Club occasionally hosts a national age-group championship and in 2009 served as a venue for a USTA Junior regional tournament that drew more than 173 entrants. While some of the long-established three -and four-day tournament have been shortened to two days, some things will never change with Essex County Club tennis. Mandatory court apparel remains all white. Tennis hats are not worn backward. And as one girl found out 30 years ago, as member John Shane recalled with a smile, bikinis and bare feet are not allowed.