June 26, 1922: Centre Court Opens at Wimbledon

June 26, 1922: Centre Court opens at Wimbledon, South London. Gerald Patterson of Australia goes on to win Gentlemen's Singles, while Ladies' Singles are won by Suzanne Lenglen of France.

There are certain places that are the place for that phenomenon. Classical music has Der 

Grosser Musikvereinssaal (the Great Music Club Hall) in Vienna, Austria. Opera has La Scala in Milan, Italy. Paris is home to the place for art, the Louvre; and for ballet, the Palais Garnier. The movies have the Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, television has 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York, jazz has Preservation Hall in New Orleans, and country music has the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.

("The place" for rock and roll is debatable, but, if we're serious, the choice is narrowed down to 3: The Sun Records studio in Memphis, the Motown studio in Detroit, and the Chess Records studio in Chicago.)

Baseball has, or at least had, the original Yankee Stadium in New York. Hockey has, or at least had, the Montreal Forum. American football has the Rose bowl in Pasadena, California. Canadian football has Varsity Stadium in Toronto. Gaelic football has Croke Park in Dublin, Ireland. Australian rules football has, ironically, a stadium designed and named for a different sport: The Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Golf, if you consider that a sport, has The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in Scotland. Auto racing, if you want to call that a sport, has the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indiana.

In London, theater has The Old Vic, and archaeology has the British Museum. In London sport, soccer has Wembley Stadium, rugby has Twickenham, and cricket has Lord's. Tennis has Centre Court.

The sites of tennis' other 3 "majors"? Stade Roland Garros in Paris, Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing Meadow? None of them can compare. There is more tennis history at Centre Court than any other structure in the world.

For the first Wimbledon Championship, in 1877, a total of 12 courts were available which were laid out in a 3-by-4 grid and there was no actual centre court. This changed in 1881, when the middle 2 courts of the middle row were combined to form a Centre Court. The name was kept when the club relocated to its present site at Church Road in 1922. It was not until a further four courts were added in 1980 that Centre Court's location in the grounds again matched its name.

The court suffered from bomb damage during World War II, when 5 500-pound bombs hit the Centre Court during an air attack in October 1940. About 1,200 seats in the stadium were destroyed. Although play resumed on time after the war in 1946, the court wasn't fully repaired until 1949.

The original centre court roof from 1922, which partly covers the stands, has been modified several times. In 1979, it was raised by one meter, to allow the capacity to be increased by 1,088. Further building work came in 1992 with a replacement of the roof and a modified structure which allowed 3,601 seats to have a clearer view of the court which had previously been restricted by the number of roof supports.

A full retractable roof (see below) was completed in 2009, and capacity increased to its current 14,979 by adding 6 rows of seats to the upper tier on the east, north, and west sides. New media facilities, scoreboards including video, and commentary boxes were built to replace those currently in the upper tier. New wider seats were installed and new additional stairs and lifts were added.

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June 26, 1922 was a Monday. The only sport active in North America at that point was baseball, and these 5 games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 6-4 at Fenway Park in Boston. To no one's surprise, Babe Ruth hit a home run. To everyone's surprise, the Yankees' pitcher, a former Red Sock, Bob Shawkey, also hit a home run.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Boston Braves, 9-5 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the St. Louis Browns, 6-0 at League Park in Cleveland. Stan Coveleski pitched a 6-hit shoutout. Tris Speaker, the Indians' center fielder and manager, went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. George Sisler went 1-for-4.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-4 at Cubs Park (later renamed Wrigley Field) in Chicago.

* And the Cincinnati Reds beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-4 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.