From Venue to Contenders, USTA SoCal Cast
Its Long Shadow on the US Open

Before you even see a ball hit at the US Open, the engaging and enduring impact of the USTA Southern California section is present. Start even as you enter the gates of what in 2006 was renamed the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center—a public tennis facility that reflects King’s lifelong mission of bringing the game to everyone. Continue as you stroll across the venue’s 46.5 acres and immerse into all the hustle and bustle of its 22 tennis courts and the lively mix of commerce, commotion, and competition that shape a quintessentially American cultural and sporting event.    

To a great degree, what the US Open has become is inspired by so much of what Billie Jean King envisioned as a child, cutting her teeth in the Southern California tennis community’s dynamic mix of public parks, community tennis centers, and highly active clubs. “I love this sport so much that I wanted to bring it to as many people as possible,” King recently told me.   

Born and raised in Long Beach—2,814 miles west of the National Tennis Center that now bears her name—King lived in Southern California right up until the moment in 1966 when won her first of six Wimbledon singles titles and became number one in the world. She has frequently credited Southern California as a source of inspiration for everything she set out to achieve. “Southern California was where it all started for me,” said King. “From the parks in Long Beach, to places like the LA Tennis Club, the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club, Libbey Park in Ojai, Cal State LA where I went to school, and so many others, this was the place for great competition. It was a fantastic tennis education.”  

SoCal Champions Go Back to Early 20th Century 

King, of course, fits into a long tradition of Southern Californians who have won the singles at America’s major championship, beginning with Pasadena resident May Sutton’s 1904 run to the women’s title. There followed many others, including King, Pauline Betz (Los Angeles), Maureen “Little Mo” Connolly (San Diego), Louise Brough (Beverly Hills), Ellsworth Vines (Pasadena), Bobby Riggs (Los Angeles), Ted Schroeder (Glendale), Jack Kramer (Montebello), Pancho Gonzalez (Los Angeles), Stan Smith (Pasadena), and Pete Sampras (Palos Verdes).

Sampras’ five title runs came in his teens, 20s, and 30s—a feat no man has ever done at the US Open. In 1990, as he went about the business of winning the title for the first time as a 19-year-old, Sampras’ parents, Soterios and Georgia, were too nervous to watch and instead killed time wandering through a South Bay shopping center. As the two walked past an electronics store, Georgia paused to look at a TV set and asked someone if the match had ended. “Yeah,” he said. “The Sampras kid killed [Andre] Agassi.” Said Georgia: “Oh my God. That’s my son! My son just won the US Open!”

More recently, the most notable US Open winners who have built their games in Southern California are the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus (Compton), who between them raised the singles trophy in New York a remarkable eight times. Just last year, Rancho Santa Fe-raised Taylor Fritz’s run to the US Open finals made him the first American male to reach a major singles final since 2009.  

“I would say being in Southern California helped because it’s just a really strong section,” said Fritz after winning his second round match against Lloyd Harris. “A lot of good players. I feel like I didn’t leave to play, like, outside of Southern California that much when I was younger until maybe when I got a little bit older, I started to play all the really big ones. Yeah, I never had to really travel too much to play against a lot of really good players.”  

Others from Southern California echo Fritz’s thoughts. Recently retired pros Coco Vandeweghe (Rancho Santa Fe) and Sam Querrey (Thousand Oaks) remain active in the game as broadcasters for ESPN and Tennis Channel. Recalling many days spent competing at tournaments in Whittier, Fullerton, and myriad parks, clubs, and Cal State campuses, Querrey said that, “Southern California is a great place to play the game year-round.” Another man just off the tour, Steve Johnson (Orange), who’s also lately been working for Tennis Channel, was busy broadcasting during the US Open, including his four-way collaboration with Querrey, John Isner, and Jack Sock on their humorous and insightful podcast, “Nothing Major.”   

Several International Tennis Hall of Fame inductees from Southern California were deeply involved at the US Open. Just before the US Open, Bob and Mike Bryan (Camarillo) celebrated the past during their August 23 induction ceremony. From there, the twins headed to New York to take in the present and, soon enough, their roles leading America’s Davis Cup team – the next tie set to take place September 12-14 versus Croatia in Delray Beach, Florida versus the Czech Republic.    

Two other Hall of Famers always present at the US Open are Lindsay Davenport (’98 US Open winner) and Tracy Austin (’79 and ’81 US Open champion). Among her many obligations, Davenport was an analyst on Tennis Channel’s pre-game show. Austin worked as a host and interviewer at dozens of corporate suites. Both of these two greats were coached on the Palos Verdes Peninsula by the prominent instructor, Robert Lansdorp.  

Austin’s title run in ’79 made her the youngest player to ever win the US Open singles title.  The run culminated with back-to-back straight set wins over Martina Navratilova and Chrissie Evert.  Shortly after her win in the finals, Austin and her mother, Jeanne, headed to JFK Airport to get their father, George, and brother, Jeff, on a plane back to Los Angeles. Once that was done, Tracy and Jeanne headed off to eat—and, with Tracy still in the dress she’d worn versus Evert, the two pulled into a Long Island-based McDonald’s.  “I just saw you on TV,” someone in the restaurant said to Austin. “What are you doing at McDonald’s?” Her reply: “I’m hungry.”    

Davenport is also the captain of the sport’s preeminent women’s team event—fittingly named the Billie Jean King Cup (its next tie is September 18, in Shenzhen, China versus Kazakhstan). The last time the United States won this event came in 2017. The star player of that effort was Vandeweghe. Speaking about how Southern California shaped her, Vandeweghe said, “There are lots of venues for lots of different players to practice, from public parks like Morley Field to private clubs.” While cutting her teeth primarily in San Diego with such coaches as Guy Fritz (Taylor’s father), Vandeweghe often headed north to Orange County to work at the Palisades Tennis Club with the likes of former USC stars and ex-ATP pros Robert Van’t Hof and Rick Leach. “All of that was invaluable,” she said.   

This Year’s Singles Contenders 

Rising pro Iva Jovic (Torrance) also hopes to one day play the Billie Jean King Cup. Thirteen months ago, at the Barnes Center in San Diego, Jovic won the USTA Billie Jean King 18s Nationals. Since then, she’s soared, reaching a career-high world ranking of 73 prior to the start of the US Open. In New York, following a first-round win over Aliaksandra Sasnovich, Jovic explained how playing in Southern California has greatly aided her ambitions. “SoCal tennis is definitely on the top of the hierarchy for the nation,” she said. “So we have a lot of great players and just a lot of access. I mean, it’s sunny all year round. Lots of players. So it’s, it’s helped me. I think it’s just a good community, and we all push each other.”

Former U.S. Davis Cup captain Tom Gullikson, who also briefly coached Sampras, competed in the ‘70s and ‘80s versus such Southern California notables as 1980 champion Brian Teacher (La Jolla), consistent top tenner Eliot Teltscher (Palos Verdes), and two-time Roland-Garros doubles winner Hank Pfister (Bakersfield). The way Gullikson sees it, “There have always been great coaches there, back to the days of George Toley at USC, Glenn Bassett at UCLA and also people like Wayne Bryan, Robert Lansdorp … There were also a lot of good players out there, and a lot of good players are playing against each other all the time. You know, they all get better. So the depth of the section is pretty good. The depth of the section is good, and a rising tide lifts all the boats in the harbor.”

Per Gullikson’s point, many Southern Californian men fought hard in the singles at this year’s US Open. Emilio Nava (Woodland Hills), Brandon Holt (Rolling Hills), Stefan Dostanic (Irvine), Learner Tien (Irvine), and Alex Michelsen (Aliso Viejo) all lost their openers.  

Others advanced further. San Diego’s Zach Svadja made it out of the qualifying, won his opener, and in the second round took the opening set versus Novak Djokovic before losing. Former UCLA star Marcos Giron (Thousand Oaks) also advanced to the second round, where he took on Benjamin Bonzi, the man who had beaten ’21 US Open champion Daniil Medvedev. After winning the first two sets versus Bonzi, Giron ended up losing, 6-4 in the fifth. Tristan Boyer (Altadena) was given a wild card, won a match and then came agonizingly close to going five sets versus 15th-seeded Andrey Rublev, only to lose the fourth set in a tiebreaker.  

Then there was San Diegan Brandon Nakashima’s New York epic—ten sets that began with a fifth-set tiebreaker win over Jesper de Jong and concluded by the same score versus Swiss qualifier Jerome Kym. Seeded 30th here in New York, Nakashima credits Southern California for much of success. “Obviously the weather is great year-round,” Nakashima said following the Kym match. “There are also a lot of nice clubs, facilities, and also academies … the competition was very strong, even at that young age.”  

Taylor Fritz Reaches Second Week 

As the 2025 US Open made its way into the second week, Fritz remained the lone Southern Californian still in contention in the singles draw. Seeded fourth, he played excellent tennis to reach the quarterfinals. Then, on a crisp Tuesday evening, Fritz came up against a man he’d lost to in all ten previous meetings: Novak Djokovic. On this occasion, over the course of three hours and 24 minutes, Fritz fought hard, the two engaging in many highly physical baseline rallies. But at 11:35 p.m. local time, facing match point for the third time, Fritz served a double-fault and lost, 6-3, 7-5, 3-6, 6-4.   

Though Fritz remains America’s preeminent male player, he surely had hoped for more at this year’s US Open. A few minutes past midnight, he entered the media interview room, his manner understandably subdued. Within minutes, though, Fritz’s tone picked up, as his relentless joy for tennis—the work, the practices, the competition most of all—surfaced with each passing sentence. Said Fritz with a big smile, “I was really excited at the fact that kind of like that’s what I was looking at in the draw, oh, I will have the opportunity to do the coolest thing ever, play Novak, potentially try to go through Novak, Carlos, and Sinner. I thought that was kind of cool. I like the challenge.”  

The US Open’s main stadium is named after another tennis legend with a significant connection to Southern California, Arthur Ashe. In September 1961, two months after he turned 18, Ashe enrolled at UCLA and eventually led the Bruins to the 1965 NCAA championship. Three years later, Ashe won the US Open. For Fritz and all the other Southern Californians who competed in the men’s and women’s singles at this year’s US Open, such a glorious outcome is now at least 12 months away. But as Ashe once said, “Success is a journey, not a destination.”