The Southern California Open currently known as The San Diego Open is an
ATP 250 and
WTA 500 WTA may refer to:
Organizations
*Washington Trails Association
*Whatcom Transportation Authority
*Waskahegan Trail Association, the management board for the Waskahegan Trail
*Water Transit Authority, former name of the San Francisco Bay Area Water ...
tournament held at the Barnes Tennis Centre in
San Diego, California
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
. The event originated as the
Southern California Championships that ran from 1887 until 1978.
In August 2021, after the cancellation of the Asia Swing due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, the Barnes Tennis Centre San Diego was allocated a two year 250 tournament license. Prior to that, it used to be a
WTA only event which was last held as a
WTA Challenger in 2015 at
Carlsbad.
In 2021, positioned one week before the 1000
Indian Wells Masters
The Indian Wells Masters, also known as the Indian Wells Open and BNP Paribas Open is an annual tennis tournament usually held in early- and mid-March at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in Indian Wells, California, United States. The owner is La ...
and only a 2 hour 30 min drive from
Indian Wells, the San Diego Open attracted a very strong line up of players including
Denis Shapovalov
Denis Viktorovich Shapovalov (born 15 April 1999) is a Canadian professional tennis player. He has been ranked as high as world No. 10 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) which he first achieved in September 2020. He is th ...
,
Andrey Rublev
Andrey Andreyevich Rublev (russian: Андрей Андреевич Рублёв; born 20 October 1997) is a Russian professional tennis player. He has been ranked as high as world No. 5 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (AT ...
,
Diego Schwartzman
Diego Sebastián Schwartzman (, ; born 16 August 1992) is an Argentine professional tennis player. He has won four ATP singles titles and reached his career-high singles ranking of world 8 in October 2020. As a clay court specialist, his be ...
,
Grigor Dimitrov
Grigor Dimitrov ( bg, Григор Димитров, ; born 16 May 1991) is a Bulgarian professional tennis player. He has been ranked as high as world No. 3 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), which he first achieved on ...
and
Andy Murray
Sir Andrew Barron Murray (born 15 May 1987) is a British professional tennis player from Scotland. He was ranked world No. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 41 weeks, and finished as the year-end No. 1 in 2016. Murray h ...
. With 8 of the top 20 players attending and the ranking cut off being 42 to get into the main draw it was the second most competitive ATP 250 all season since Doha.
Daniel Vallverdu
Daniel is a masculine given name and a surname of Hebrew origin. It means "God is my judge"Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 68. (cf. Gabriel—"God is my strength" ...
took on the position of managing director, Ryan Redondo was named the tournament director and
Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King (née Moffitt; born November 22, 1943) is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. King won 39 major titles: 12 in singles, 16 in women's doubles, and 11 in mixed doubles. King was a member of the victorious United States ...
accepted the role of honorary tournament chair.
After beating Murray in the second round and Dimitrov in the semifinal, the 22 year old Norwegian
Casper Ruud
Casper Ruud (born 22 December 1998) is a Norwegian professional tennis player. Ruud has a career-high singles ranking of world No. 2, achieved on 12 September 2022, making him the highest-ranked Norwegian tennis player in history. He has won nine ...
went on to win the final of the 2021 San Diego Open, beating
Cameron Norrie
Cameron Norrie (; born 23 August 1995) is a South African-born British professional tennis player, having previously represented New Zealand. He has reached career-high rankings of world No. 8 in singles (on 12 September 2022) and No. 117 in dou ...
6-0, 6-2, and was handed the trophy by
Rod Laver
Rodney George Laver (born 9 August 1938) is an Australian former tennis player. Laver was the world number 1 ranked professional in some sources in 1964, in all sources from 1965 to 1969 and in some sources in 1970, spanning four years befor ...
. It was Ruud’s fifth trophy of the season moving him up to world No. 8, having won already the titles
Geneva Open
The Geneva Open is an ATP Tour (formerly Grand Prix) affiliated tennis tournament that was held annually from 1980 to 1991 in Geneva, Switzerland on clay courts.
In November 2014 the ATP announced that the Düsseldorf tournament would be moved to ...
,
Swiss Open
The Omega European Masters is the Swiss stop on professional men's golf's European Tour, and in 2009 it became the first event in Europe to be co-sanctioned by the Asian Tour.
Founded as the Swiss Open in 1923, the tournament was prefixed with Eu ...
,
Kitzbühel
Kitzbühel (, also: ; ) is a medieval town situated in the Kitzbühel Alps along the river Kitzbüheler Ache in Tyrol, Austria, about east of the state capital Innsbruck and is the administrative centre of the Kitzbühel district (). Kitzbühel ...
and
Båstad
Båstad () is a Urban areas in Sweden, locality and the seat of Båstad Municipality, Scania County, Sweden, with approximately 5,000 permanent residents. It is however one of Sweden's most typical summer resorts. The population is presumably more ...
.
ATP tournament history
The San Diego Open is an
ATP 250 tournament held at the Barnes Tennis Centre in
San Diego, California
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
. In August 2021, after the cancellation of the Asia Swing due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, the Barnes Tennis Centre San Diego was allocated a one year 250 tournament license. Prior to that, it used to be a
WTA event which was last held as a
WTA Challenger in 2015 at
Carlsbad.
Positioned one week before the
Indian Wells Masters
The Indian Wells Masters, also known as the Indian Wells Open and BNP Paribas Open is an annual tennis tournament usually held in early- and mid-March at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in Indian Wells, California, United States. The owner is La ...
and only a 2 hour drive from Indian Wells, the San Diego Open attracted a very strong line up of players including
Denis Shapovalov
Denis Viktorovich Shapovalov (born 15 April 1999) is a Canadian professional tennis player. He has been ranked as high as world No. 10 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) which he first achieved in September 2020. He is th ...
,
Andrey Rublev
Andrey Andreyevich Rublev (russian: Андрей Андреевич Рублёв; born 20 October 1997) is a Russian professional tennis player. He has been ranked as high as world No. 5 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (AT ...
,
Kei Nishikori
is an inactive Japanese professional tennis player. He is the second male Japanese player to have been ranked in the top 5 in singles (after Jiro Sato), and the only one to do so in the Open Era. Nishikori first reached his career-high singles ...
,
Grigor Dimitrov
Grigor Dimitrov ( bg, Григор Димитров, ; born 16 May 1991) is a Bulgarian professional tennis player. He has been ranked as high as world No. 3 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), which he first achieved on ...
and
Andy Murray
Sir Andrew Barron Murray (born 15 May 1987) is a British professional tennis player from Scotland. He was ranked world No. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 41 weeks, and finished as the year-end No. 1 in 2016. Murray h ...
. With 8 of the top 20 players attending and the ranking cut off being 42 to get in the main draw it is the second most competitive ATP 250 all season since Doha.
Daniel Vallverdu
Daniel is a masculine given name and a surname of Hebrew origin. It means "God is my judge"Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 68. (cf. Gabriel—"God is my strength" ...
took on the position of managing director,
Ryan Redondo was named the tournament director and
Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King (née Moffitt; born November 22, 1943) is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. King won 39 major titles: 12 in singles, 16 in women's doubles, and 11 in mixed doubles. King was a member of the victorious United States ...
accepted the role of honorary tournament chairman.
WTA tournament history
The event was formed in 1984 by
Raquel Giscafré
Raquel Giscafré (born 15 May 1949) is a former professional tennis player from Argentina. She was Argentina's No. 1 female player from 1973 to 1976. She competed in the Fed Cup from 1966 to 1978. She was a tennis promoter and ran the WTA's Acura ...
as the Ginny of San Diego. Prior to this there had been two previous women's tennis tournaments in San Diego: a Virginia Slims event in 1971 and the Wells Fargo Open, which ran from 1979 to 1982. Giscafre's former doubles partner,
Jane Stratton, attained co-ownership of the tournament from 1986 until the event's cessation. The tournament has had various principal sponsors throughout its history, and has been played under the headings of the Great American Bank Classic, the
Mazda
, commonly referred to as simply Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Fuchū, Hiroshima, Japan.
In 2015, Mazda produced 1.5 million vehicles for global sales, the majority of which (nearly one m ...
Classic and the
Toshiba
, commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure system ...
Classic. The tournament was known for its strong player fields, location in the hills and atmosphere.
Although the tournament achieved Tier-I status only in 2004, it became a draw to the heavyweights in women's tennis since its inception in the 1980s, being a crucial warm-up tournament leading to the
US Open. Past champions of the tournament include former world No.-1s
Steffi Graf
Stefanie Maria Graf ( , ; born 14 June 1969) is a German former professional tennis player. Widely regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time, she was ranked world No. 1 for a record 377 weeks and won 22 major singles titles, ...
,
Jennifer Capriati
Jennifer Maria Capriati (born March 29, 1976) is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. A member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, she won three singles Grand Slam titles and was the gold medalist at the 1992 Summer Olympics.
C ...
,
Lindsay Davenport
Lindsay Ann Davenport Leach (born June 8, 1976) is an American former professional tennis player. Davenport was ranked singles world No. 1 for a total of 98 weeks, and was the year-end singles world No. 1 four times (1998, 2001, 2004, and 2005) ...
,
Venus Williams
Venus Ebony Starr Williams (born June 17, 1980) is an American professional tennis player. A former world No. 1 in both singles and doubles, Williams has won seven Grand Slam singles titles, five at Wimbledon and two at the US Open. She is ...
,
Martina Hingis
Martina Hingis (, sk, Martina Hingisová; 30 September 1980) is a Swiss former professional tennis player. Hingis is the first Swiss player, male or female, to win a major title and attain a world No. 1 ranking. She spent a total of 209 weeks a ...
,
Justine Henin
Justine Henin (; born 1 June 1982) is a Belgian former professional tennis player. She spent a total of 117 weeks as the world No. 1 and was the year-end No. 1 in 2003, 2006 and 2007. Henin, coming from a country with limited success in te ...
, and
Maria Sharapova
Maria Yuryevna Sharapova ( , ; rus, Мари́я Ю́рьевна Шара́пова, p=mɐˈrʲijə ʂɐˈrapəvə, a=Maria_sharapova.ogg; born 19 April 1987) is a Russian former List of WTA number 1 ranked singles tennis players, world No. 1 ...
. Six players won the tournament more than once, four of them consecutively. Graf holds the record for most wins (4); Venus Williams holds the record for most consecutive titles (3).
The tournament's purse doubled to $200,000 in 1989, when the sponsor changed to San Diego-based
Great American Bank
Great American Bank was an American savings and loan association based in San Diego. It was founded in 1885 as San Diego Building and Loan Association, the first S&L in Southern California. Until the 1980s, it operated for decades as San Diego Fe ...
from
Virginia Slims
Virginia Slims is an American brand of cigarettes owned by Altria. It is manufactured by Philip Morris USA (in the United States) and Philip Morris International (outside the United States).
Virginia Slims are narrower ( circumference) than st ...
, a cigarette brand owned by
Philip Morris. The tournament moved from the San Diego Tennis & Racquet Club to the
La Costa Resort and Spa
The Omni La Costa Resort & Spa is a luxury destination resort hotel opened in 1965, located in Carlsbad, California, and is owned by Omni Hotels & Resorts, based out of Dallas, Texas. The resort is located in the San Diego area hills and is known ...
in 1991, when the sponsor was changed to
Mazda
, commonly referred to as simply Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Fuchū, Hiroshima, Japan.
In 2015, Mazda produced 1.5 million vehicles for global sales, the majority of which (nearly one m ...
from Great American, which was in financial decline. On September 7, 2009, the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour announced the return of professional women's tennis to San Diego in 2010, under the sponsorship of Mercury Insurance. The Mercury Insurance Open was renamed the Southern California Open starting in 2013.
In 2014, the event was relocated to Tokyo, Japan.
The tournament became the Carlsbad Classic in 2015, hosted by the Park Hyatt Aviara Resort in Carlsbad, California, from November 23–29. As a WTA Challenger event, the Carlsbad Classic
featured a 32-player singles main draw, an 8-player qualifying draw, and an 8-team doubles draw with $125,000 in prize money. It was the first WTA tournament held during Thanksgiving week.
Sponsor history:
* ''Virginia Slims of San Diego'': 1971, 1985–1988
* ''Wells Fargo Open'': 1979–1982
* ''Ginny of San Diego'': 1984
* ''Great American Bank Classic'': 1989–1990
* ''Mazda Classic'': 1991–1993
* ''Toshiba Classic''; 1994–1998
* ''TIG Classic'': 1999
* ''Acura Classic'': 2000–2007
* ''Mercury Insurance Open'': 2010–2012
* ''Southern California Open'': 2013
* ''GoMacro'': 2015
Past finals
Men's singles
Women's singles
Prior tournaments in San Diego area
Subsequent and current organized event
Men's doubles
Women's doubles
Prior
Subsequent & current
See also
*
1990 Great American Bank Classic
*
List of tennis tournaments
List of current and past men's and women's tennis tournaments.
Criteria for inclusion:
*The tournament is notable enough to have its own article on Wikipedia
*Historic tournaments are included if notability can be established by reliable third par ...
References and footnotes
External links
*
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{{WTA 1000 tournaments
{{WTA Tier III tournaments
{{WTA Tier IV tournaments
{{WTA 125K series tournaments
{{Virginia Slims tennis tournaments
{{US Open Series Tournaments
Defunct tennis tournaments in the United States
Hard court tennis tournaments in the United States
WTA Tour
Virginia Slims tennis tournaments
Carlsbad, California
WTA 125 tournaments
Women's tennis tournaments in the United States
Women's sports in California