International Tennis Contest Returning To The Forest Hills West Side Tennis Club This Fall

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — A Queens tennis stadium will be South Africa’s home turf at an upcoming international tennis event.
Forest Hills’ West Side Tennis Club, which hosted the U.S. Championships — now known as the U.S. Open — from 1923-1977, will host the Davis Cup from Sept. 18-19, a best-of-five match series between South Africa and Venezuela. The event was moved from Venezuela, as the relatively unvaccinated nation struggles against a delta-variant-fueled coronavirus surge.
The stadium last hosted the Davis Cup in 1959, but Jason Weir Smith, the stadium’s director of tennis — who himself is from South Africa — hopes that Queens won’t have to wait another 62 years to host another such tournament.
In recent decades, the historic tennis club has become somewhat overshadowed by the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows — the now home of the U.S. Open, where the Davis Cup was held in 1981.
That venue is hosting the national tennis championship the weekend before the Davis Cup, however, restoring the West Side Tennis Club as the go-to spot for the tournament.
“We could not be more excited to bring world class tennis back to the West Side Tennis Club, one of the most historic venues in American sports,” said West Side Tennis Club president Monika Jain in a news statement.
Tickets can be ordered by emailing RWalker@NewChapterMedia.com, according to the event site, but pricing information is not available online. Davis Cup representatives did not immediately respond to Patch’s inquiry about how much tickets cost.
The event will kick off at 11 a.m. on Sept. 18 with two best-of-three-set singles matches. The second day, also starting at 11 a.m., will feature the reverse two best-of-three-set singles matches and a best-of-three-set doubles match.
Courtesy Of Patch.com