August 10, 1900: The 1st Davis Cup tournament is won, by the hosts, the United States, at the Longwood Cricket Club, outside Boston in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.
There were only two teams: The U.S., and Great Britain. It was then known as the International Lawn Tennis Challenge. Although the LCC was, and remains, about a mile south of the campus of Boston College, a Boston-area location was chosen because the challenge was an idea of four tennis players at nearby Harvard University.
Five matches were scheduled, with the winners of three to be declared the winners. Four were to be singles, and one was to be doubles.
The first singles match saw Britain's Ernest Black defeat America's Dwight Davis, the leader of the Harvard team, 6-4 in the 1st set. But Davis, who paid for the entire tournament out of his own pocket, took the next 3, 6-2, 6-4, 6-4, to win. Malcolm Whitman swept the second singles match with Arthur Gore, 6-1, 6-3, 6-2.
The doubles match saw Davis and Holcombe Ward sweep the British pairing of Black and Herbert Roper, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4. The third singles match, between Davis and Gore, was a bit tighter. Davis won the 1st set, 9-7. The 2nd set also turned out to be need tiebreakers, and was at 9-9 when it was declared to be too dark to play further. With the U.S. having won 3 matches already, this match was never completed; and the fourth singles match, between Whitman and Black, was never played.
There was no match in 1901, but the United States retained the trophy in 1902. Britain won the next 4 years. In 1904, Belgium and France accepted invitations. In 1905, "Australasia," a combined team of Australia and New Zealand, competed for the first time. They won it for the first time in 1907, winning 3 straight. There was no challenge to them in 1910, and they won it again in 1911. In 1922, the 2 countries competed as separate teams for the first time.
The tournament was put on hold for World War I, and not held in 1915, '16, '17 or '18. In 1927, France won for the 1st time, and went on to win 6 straight, led by "The Four Musketeers": René Lacoste, Henri Cochet, Jean Borotra and Jacques Brugnon.
Given the distance from Australia to either America or Europe, few non-Oceania performers competed in the Australian Open in the pre-jet era. Lacoste won the French Open 3 times, and Wimbledon and the U.S. Open twice each. He was known as "The Crocodile," and, in 1933, became one of the earliest celebrities to start his own clothing line, with a crocodile as his logo.
Cochet won the French Open 4 times, Wimbledon twice, and the U.S. once. Borotra did compete in the Australian Open, and won it in 1928, and won Wimbledon twice, but only won the French Open once, and lost his only U.S. Open Final. Brugnon never won a major singles title, although he won 10 in doubles, which was his specialty, including in Australia with Borotra.
Dwight Filley Davis was born in St. Louis on July 5, 1879, and his grandfather, Oliver Dwight Filley, and a cousin, Chauncey Ives Filley, both served as that city's Mayor. Only once, at the 1898 U.S. Open, did he reach the Final of what would now be called a Grand Slam event, and he lost it to the aforementioned Malcolm Whitman, one of his Harvard teammates.
In 1899, 1900 and 1901, he and Whitman won doubles at the U.S. Open. In 1900, he received his highest world singles ranking: Number 5. In 1904, when the Olympics were held in his native St. Louis, he only advanced to the 2nd round of singles, and to the quarterfinals of doubles.
From 1911 to 1915, he was St. Louis' Public Parks Commissioner, creating the 1st municipal tennis courts in America. He reached the rank of Colonel in the U.S. Army in World War I, and received the Distinguished Service Cross.
In 1920, he lost the Republican Party's Primary for U.S. Senator from Missouri. President Calvin Coolidge appointed him Assistant Secretary of War in 1923, and he served as full Secretary of War in Coolidge's full term, 1925 to 1929. The next President, Herbert Hoover, appointed him Governor General of the Philippines, serving from 1929 to 1932. He died on November 28, 1945, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
World War II put the tournament on hold, and it wasn't held in 1940, '41, '42, '43, '44 or '45. When the tournament was resumed in 1946, it was renamed for Dwight Davis: The Davis Cup. It has periodically been expanded, and by 2016, 135 countries competed, making it almost a year-long competition. World Tennis, the common name for the International Tennis Federation (ITF), describe it as "the World Cup of Tennis," but hold it every year, not every 4 years like soccer's World Cup.
Through the 2021 tournament, it has been won by the U.S. 32 times (but none since 2007), Australia 28 (the 1st 6 as "Australasia"), France 10, Great Britain 10 (the 1st 5 as "British Isles"), Sweden 7, Spain 6; 3 each for Russia, Germany (the 1st 2 as "West Germany") and Czechia (the 1st as "Czechoslovakia"); 2 for Croatia; and 1 each for South Africa, Italy, Argentina, Serbia and Switzerland. Reaching the Final, but not winning, have been Romania, India and Belgium 3 times; and once each for Japan, Mexico, Chile and Slovakia (separate from Czechia).
(UPDATE: Canada won their 1st in 2022. Italy won in 2023, '24 and '25. The Netherlands reached their 1st Final in 2024, but lost to Italy.)
The 1st time the U.S. team won with an official Captain was in 1958: Perry Jones. Other winning U.S. Captains have been Bob Kelleher in 1963, Donald Dell in 1968 and '69, Ed Turville in 1970 and '71, Dennis Ralston in 1972, Tony Trabert in 1978 and '79, Arthur Ashe in 1981 and '82, Tom Gorman in 1990 and '92, Tom Gullikson in 1995, and Patrick McEnroe (John's brother) in 2007.
Two players have played on the team winning the Davis Cup 8 times: Roy Emerson of Australia, in 1959, '60, '61, '62, '64, '65, '66 and '67; and Stan Smith of the U.S., in 1968, '69, '70, '71, '72, '78, '79 and '81.
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August 10, 1900 was a Friday. The only professional sports league active at the moment was baseball's National League, but no games were scheduled. So the tournament that would become the Davis Cup was the only sporting event of consequence on the day.
