| Queen's Club | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Formation | 1886 |
| Type | Private members' club |
| Purpose/focus | Sport |
| Location | Palliser Road, West Kensington, London |
| Coordinates | 51°29′15″N 0°12′42″W / 51.48750°N 0.21167°WCoordinates: 51°29′15″N 0°12′42″W / 51.48750°N 0.21167°W |
| Chief Executive | Andrew Stewart (as of 2012[update]) |
| Website | www.queensclub.co.uk |
The Queen's Club is a private sporting club in West Kensington, London, England. Founded in 1886, the Queen's Club was the world's first multipurpose sports complex and named after Queen Victoria, its first patron. The club hosts the prestigious annual Queen's Club Championships grass court men's lawn tennis tournament (currently known as the AEGON Championships for sponsorship reasons). It has 28 outdoor courts and eight indoor. With two courts, it is also the national headquarters of real tennis, hosting the British Open every year. The Queen's Club also has rackets, and squash courts, of which it now has become the headquarters for these sports due to the Prince's Club closure in 1940.
It was also the jeu de paume (real tennis) and rackets venue of the 1908 Summer Olympics.[1]
Until 1922, the club was the main ground for the football games of Corinthian F.C. One international was held, England drawing 1–1 with Wales on 18 March 1895.
On 13 September 2005, the Lawn Tennis Association, the governing body of British lawn tennis, which had owned Queen's since 1953, put the club up for sale. The terms required that the rackets club and the Queen's Club Championships remain unaffected (the site's value for residential or commercial redevelopment might greatly exceed its value as a sports club, in the event that planning permission could be obtained, and the LTA wished to preserve the club's role in British tennis). On 8 March 2006, the LTA announced that it would sell to club members for £45 million, ending seven months of uncertainty about the club's future.[2] However some members disputed the LTA's right to sell the club, which they contested it merely held in trust on their behalf, and began to raise funds to dispute the sale in court. In late 2006 the two sides reached an out of court settlement in which the sale price was reduced to £35 million.[3]
In February 2007, the LTA relocated its headquarters from Queen's Club to the new National Tennis Centre in Roehampton. The AEGON Championships still remains one of the six most prestigious grass competitions on the men's ATP tour along with the Gerry Weber Open in Halle, Germany, the AEGON International, the Hall of Fame Tennis Championships in Newport, Rhode Island, the UNICEF Open in the Netherlands and of course Wimbledon.
The ball girls are selected from year 8, 9 and 10 pupils at St Philomena's Catholic High School for Girls and Nonsuch High School.
See also [edit]
- All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club — London's other famous tennis club
- British Covered Court Championships
- Queens Club (band)
- The "Pioneer Exhibition Game" in London (1916)
- List of tennis stadiums by capacity
References [edit]
- ^ 1908 Summer Olympics official report. pp. 233 (rackets) & 314 (jeu de paume).
- ^ Bloomberg. "London's Queen's Club Sold to Members for 45 Million Pounds". Archived from the original on 7 May 2006. Retrieved 25 April 2006.
- ^ LTA sells Queen's Club for £35m, bbc.co.uk, 14 December 2006.
External links [edit]
| Preceded by First Edition |
Fed Cup Final Venue 1963 |
Succeeded by Germantown Cricket Club Philadelphia |
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