Rolling Back the Years

Back to list >

By Mark Staniforth (Press Association)

Twenty-five summers ago Bjorn Borg was limbering up to win his fourth consecutive Wimbledon title but tennis talk was of a new threat posed to the game's established order by a young man just five months out of his teenage years.

John McEnroe had an outrageous talent and a temper to match.

The young American had reached the fourth round of the US Open at only his second attempt and would strut into the Queen's Club's inaugural Stella Artois Championships and emerge one week later as its first champion.

McEnroe's tempestuous early loyalty to the fledgling tournament would serve both parties well.

He would reach the first six finals and ultimately confirm suspicions that he was a grass-court great to rival the legendary Borg and his compatriot Jimmy Connors.

Emergence

The Stella Artois Championships would feed off the McEnroe publicity storm and benefit immensely from the timely emergence of the game's new "Super-Brat".

McEnroe exorcised the ghost of the recently deceased London grass-court championships and did much to turn its successor into a Championships which 25 years later is regarded as one of the finest events on the ATP tennis calendar.

McEnroe is one of seven of its winners who can also lay claim to a Wimbledon crown.

Twenty of the last 24 Wimbledon champions have all played first at the Stella Artois Championships.

The Queen's Club is now one of the most modern and well-appointed sports clubs in London, and over 50,000 people successfully scramble for tickets to the sell-out event.

While McEnroe's spectacular emergence ensured the tournament was catapulted straight into the headlines it was the vision of three men which enabled him to make it happen.

Queen's Club member and advertising guru Sir Frank Lowe, the then club chairman Clive Bernstein and Ian Wight, the then managing director of the CDP Aspect agency, surveyed the grandstands which had lain empty since the capital's grass-court tournament had petered out in 1974 after 108 years.

Master-Stroke

Originally incepted as the Rawlings International, the new tournament was televised by ITV but was not considered a resounding success.

In 1979 Lowe pulled off a master-stroke by persuading brewers Whitbread to change their sponsorship from a soft-drinks brand into a new boutique beer which, like the tournament, was classy, ambitious and seeking a wider marketplace.

A quarter of a century later Stella Artois are the longest continual sponsors of an ATP Tour event, and both tournament and beer are recognised for their quality across the world.

The Stella Artois Championship's proximity in both calendar and geography to Wimbledon was always going to attract the interest of some of the world's biggest names and in the golden era of the late seventies and early eighties they did not come much bigger than McEnroe.

McEnroe won four of the first six tournaments, twice going on to capture the Wimbledon title in the same year.

His 1984 triumph over American qualifier Leif Shiras would be his last. McEnroe's three-set victory was made all the more famous by a spectacular howling, finger-jabbing attack on umpire Roger Smith in front of a prime-time television audience.

Just as the American had emerged brilliantly for the inauguration of the Stella Artois, so a flame-haired 17-year-old from Germany crashed through the Queen's Club gates in 1985.

Boris Becker had never previously won a senior tournament but he swept past Johan Kriek in the Stella Artois final that year. Three weeks later Becker was crowned the youngest ever Wimbledon champion and so started a rich new era for both the men's game and the Stella Artois tournament.

After Tim Mayotte had taken advantage of Becker's hand injury in 1986, Becker retained his crown and emphasised the emergence of the new generation with a 1987 final win over Jimmy Connors.

Becker shrugged off accusations of gamesmanship to retain his crown in 1988 in a match which helped elevate further his long-term rivalry with vanquished foe Stefan Edberg.

Edberg, who won the title in 1991, and Becker, who beat the Swede again in the 1996 final, will renew their rivalry in a single pro set on final day this year to mark the 25th anniversary of the Stella Artois Championships.

McEnroe returned in 1990 but suffered a straight-sets quarter-final defeat to taciturn Czech Ivan Lendl.

Ivan Lendl won consecutive titles over the turn of the decade and after Wayne Ferreira had ended Edberg's reign with a 1992 triumph, another German, Michael Stich, added himself to the roster of Stella Artois and Wimbledon double champions.

America reclaimed the crown after an eight-year gap in 1994 when Todd Martin clinched two tie-break sets to beat Pete Sampras.

Sampras returned the following year to win the title over Guy Forget and went straight on to conquer Wimbledon - the first time since Becker a decade previously that the same-year double had been done.

Becker's fourth title in 1996 was followed by victories for Mark Philippoussis and Scott Draper. The newly-emerging Britons - Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski - failed to make the immediate mark the public were hoping for.

Agony

Indeed, the abiding memory of the 1998 Championships is of Rusedski writhing in agony on the Court One floor after suffering a bad ankle injury midway through his match against eventual finalist and Club member Laurence Tieleman.

Henman began his persistent Stella Artois challenge in 1999 but unfortunately for the leading home nation star he timed his arrival with the grass-court peak of Sampras.

Henman lost his first final on a deciding set-tie break and the following year drew groans from the grandstands as he suffered an embarrassing first round exit to Bob Bryan.

Lleyton Hewitt became the latest new boy to upset the old order with his triumph over Sampras in the Millennium final.

He repeated the feat against Henman in 2001 and was installed as a big favourite for Wimbledon. Much longer odds were available on Goran Ivanisevic, who crashed out of the Stella Artois at the first stage to pocket Italian Cristiano Caratti, only to shock the world and win Wimbledon three weeks later.

Hewitt's victory over Henman last year made him the first man since McEnroe to win the title for three straight years, and his subsequent Wimbledon success gave him the seventh calendar double.

Through its first 25 years of epic tennis action the tournament has both endured and initiated changes which its founding fathers might not have believed possible.

But in its celebration season two things remain just as they were a quarter of a century ago: the sponsorship of Stella Artois, and the Stella Artois title in the hands of the game's latest brash young thing, ready to propel himself and his tournament forward into a future of even greater success.

All previous Stella Artois Draws: Click Here

Back to list >