Cleveland hosts Nationals – the first time Nationals held outside of NY Metropolitan Area

The Cleveland Invitational directors in 1973 (from left to right): David S. Dickenson II, Richard Taylor, Willis M. McFarlane, Carrington Clark, Jr., and Robert Bartholemew. (Missing from photo: John J. Bernet and John F. Turben)
The Cleveland Invitational directors in 1973 (from left to right): David S. Dickenson II, Richard Taylor, Willis M. McFarlane, Carrington Clark, Jr., and Robert Bartholemew. (Missing from photo: John J. Bernet and John F. Turben)

Up until 1973, all National Championships had been held in or around New York City, primarily at Fox Meadow Tennis Club in Scarsdale, which had the most courts. The other two founding clubs of the APTA—The Field Club in Greenwich, CT, and Manursing Island Club in Rye, NY—also hosted, as did the Englewood Club, in Englewood, NJ.

In the fall of 1971, the Cleveland Committee, headed by Carrington Clark, submitted a comprehensive proposal to the APTA Board to host the Men’s National Championship. After some consideration, the Board approved the plan to move the Nationals. The 1973 Men’s Nationals in Cleveland were highly successful, and it signified the start of an era when the Nationals moved to a different location each year. It returned to Fox Meadow from 1974 to 1979; Montclair, New Jersey, from 1980 to 1982; New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1983; and Cleveland, Ohio, in 1984.

That same year, a group of Midwest men, including Carrington Clark, John Bernet, Dave Dickenson, and Will McFarlane founded Cleveland Tournaments Inc., a non-profit organization to support major platform tennis events in Northeast Ohio.

The logistics for the event required considerable discussion between the APTA and the Nationals organizers as reflected in the APTA Executive Committee Minutes of July 1972 and others