Mary Ewing Outerbridge

Mary Ewing Outerbridge ( born March 9, 1852 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, † May 3, 1886 in New York) was a pioneer of modern tennis in the United States. It is also known as the "mother " of American tennis.

Biography

Outerbridge was born in 1852 in Philadelphia, the daughter of Alexander Ewing Outerbridge and his wife Layura Catherine Harvey. Later she moved to the New York City borough of Staten Iceland. During a visit with relatives in Bermuda around the year 1874, she became acquainted with Walter Clopton Wingfield invented in the same year modern tennis by English soldiers. Later, they built on the grounds of Staten Iceland Cricket Club on a tennis court. The president of the club, August Emilius Outerbridge, was her brother. On the grounds of the club, the first American tennis championship was held in 1880.

Outerbridge died in 1886 at the age of 34 years. In 1981, she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

In the 1930s, Malcolm Whitman represented, and later William Henderson, the view Outerbridge was introduced in early 1874 Set to North America and thus played the first tennis on American soil. This is now regarded as doubtful, as Wingfield his rule book that was sold along with the sets, published only on 25 February 1874. It is more likely that they of another stay in Bermuda brought the Tennisset only in May 1875. 1874 was also of James Dwight, the "father" of American tennis, played at Boston Tennis, next probably on a farm in Arizona.

Sources and links

• Collins, B.: History of tennis. 2nd edition. New Chapter Press, New York, 2010. ISBN 978-0-942257-70-0, pp. 624
• Mary Outerbridge in the " International Tennis Hall of Fame" (English, with picture)