When the US Open Lost Its Lawn and Found Its Noise

To those of us who remember the sport when it was played by gentlemen in long trousers and ladies in pleated skirts, the year 1978 represents a tectonic shift. It was the year the United States Lawn Tennis Association—as it was then so quaintly styled—abandoned the Tudor-style clubhouse of the West Side Tennis Club at Forest Hills for the municipal asphalt of Flushing Meadows. In doing so, the US Open traded its soul for a subway token.

The Gentility of Forest Hills

Forest Hills, nestled in a quiet residential enclave of Queens, was the very epicenter of American tennis aristocracy. It was a place where one could hear the gentle pock of a Dunlop Maxply striking a white ball, punctuated only by the polite applause of spectators sipping gin and tonics. It was an era of strict adherence to tennis etiquette, a subject we explored in our reflection on The Wimbledon White: Tradition or a Stuffy Absurdity?.

For decades, the tournament was played on pristine grass, a surface that demanded elegance and touch. Yet, as the sport entered the Open Era, the demands of television and a growing, less refined public began to strain the seams of the West Side Tennis Club. The grass was replaced by Har-Tru clay in 1975, a desperate three-year experiment that did little to soothe the growing pains of a booming sport. Indeed, as we noted in our treatise on The Brutal Truth: Why We Sacrifice Ourselves on Clay Courts, the dirt requires a certain stoicism that the American public simply lacked the patience to endure.

"We didn't just change venues; we changed species. We went from a garden party to a subway platform."

Flushing Meadows: The Birth of the Modern Circus

Enter W.E. "Slew" Hester, the flamboyant president of the USTA who looked at a swamp in northern Queens and saw the future of American tennis. In a matter of months, the National Tennis Center was erected. The grass and clay were replaced by DecoTurf II, a hard court surface that offered no apologies and no bad bounces. It was fast, loud, and thoroughly democratic.

The transition was jarring. Players who had thrived on the slick lawns of Wimbledon suddenly found themselves battling screeching Boeing 727s departing from nearby LaGuardia Airport. The polite murmurs of Forest Hills were replaced by the roar of 20,000 fans, many of whom seemed to have wandered over from a Shea Stadium baseball game across the boardwalk.

It was here that Jimmy Connors—whom the press affectionately dubbed "Jimbo"—became the ultimate transition figure, winning the US Open on three different surfaces: grass, clay, and finally, the hard courts of Flushing Meadows. Connors fed on the raw, unwashed energy of the new venue, transforming the sport from a country club pastime into a gladiatorial spectacle.

A Legacy of Decibels and Decorum

While one must begrudgingly admit that the move to Flushing Meadows democratized the sport and turned the US Open into a financial juggernaut, a certain romanticism was lost forever in that late-summer migration of 1978. The modern tournament, with its night sessions, neon lights, and blaring pop music, owes its entire existence to that fateful decision to leave Forest Hills behind. Yet, for those of us of a certain vintage, we still look back at the Tudor clubhouse with a quiet, wistful sigh.