Tennis
Tennis is Chile's most successful sport. Its national team won the World Team Cup clay tournament two times (2003 & 2004), and played the Davis Cup final against Italy in 1976. At the 2004 Summer Olympics, the country captured gold and bronze in men's singles and gold in men's doubles. Marcelo Ríos became the first Latin American man to reach the number 1 spot in the ATP singles rankings in 1998. Anita Lizana won the US Open in 1937, becoming the first woman from Latin America to win a Grand Slam tournament. Luis Ayala was twice a runner-up at the French Open, and both Ríos and Fernando González reached the Australian Open men's singles finals.
Chilean players held in the highest regard are retired Marcelo Ríos, who was Number 1 in the World in the ranking of the Association of Tennis Professionals in 1998; and Luis Ayala, winner of two Grand Slams in doubles (with Roland Garros, 1958 and 1960) and two finals in singles, also ranked number five in the world. Prominent Chilean tennis player Anita Lizana was the first Latin American to win the Grand Slam (Forest Hills predecessor of the current US Open), and Hans Gildemeister was fifth in doubles in 1987 (with Andrés Gómez). Olympic medalists in tennis are Nicolás Massú and Fernando González.
Chile was the champion of the Tennis World Cup for teams in Düsseldorf (2003 and 2004) and was finalist in the Davis Cup in 1976. In 2004, tennis players Fernando González and Nicolás Massú won the first Olympic gold medals in the Athens Games, after strenuous games receiving the gold medal in doubles (Massú-González), bronze (González) and gold in singles (Massú). In the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Fernando González won the silver medal in singles.
With regard to the number 1 obtained by Marcelo Ríos, the gold medals in the Olympics, the bichampionship in Düsseldorf and the end of the Davis Cup, note that Chile was the first South American country to achieve these accomplishments.
Chile was a finalist in the Davis Cup in 1976, but was defeated by 4-1 by Italy at the National Stadium in Santiago.
In 1973, playing in the Davis Cup against the United States, Patricio Cornejo and Jaime Fillol won the longest set in the history of the Cup: 39-37 against the team of Stan Smith and Erik van Dillen.
Read more about this topic: Sport In Chile
Famous quotes containing the word tennis:
“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The boneless quality of English conversation, which, so far as I have heard it, is all form and no content. Listening to Britons dining out is like watching people play first-class tennis with imaginary balls.”
—Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)
“[My one tennis book] was very, very old. It had a picture of Bill Tilden. I looked at the picture and that was how I learned to hold the racket.”
—Maria Bueno (b. 1939)