What North America adds
North America has one Grand Slam: the US Open, held in New York. The early American champions are covered separately in this cluster, so this article looks at the rest of the continent, chiefly Canada, with a note on Mexico. The clearest milestone is Bianca Andreescu’s win at the 2019 US Open, which made her the first Canadian to win a Grand Slam singles title, in either the women’s or men’s game.
Nothing like that happened in 1967. The Grand Slam singles champions that year were Billie Jean King of the United States at Wimbledon and the US Championships, with the other two majors going to players from the United States and France. Canada’s centennial year, marked by Expo 67 in Montreal, brought no tennis milestone of comparable weight.
The Canadian Open
The nearest thing Canada has to a major event is the national championship, known to most fans as the Canadian Open. Its history stretches back to the late nineteenth century, and over the years it has been known by a series of sponsor names.
In its modern form the women’s event is a top-tier professional tournament that alternates cities with the men’s tournament, in Toronto in some years and in Montreal in others. The Montreal venue sits in Jarry Park, the same park that was once home to the Montreal Expos baseball team. The event is not a Grand Slam, but it is one of the most important events on the calendar outside the four majors.
Bianca Andreescu
Bianca Andreescu was born in Mississauga, Ontario, in 2000, the child of Romanian parents. She rose very quickly in 2019, winning the tournament at Indian Wells in March and then the Canadian Open in Toronto in August, where her opponent, Serena Williams, retired early in the final with a back injury.
A few weeks later, at the US Open, she beat Williams again, this time in a completed final in New York, to take the title. Williams was then chasing a record-equalling major, and Andreescu was only nineteen. The result made her the first Canadian to win a Grand Slam singles title.
Her career after that was interrupted by injuries, and she has not matched the 2019 season. Her title nevertheless stands as the high point of Canadian women’s tennis so far.
Other Canadians
Andreescu’s win was not the only recent success by Canadian women. Eugenie Bouchard reached the Wimbledon final in 2014, losing to Petra Kvitova, and Leylah Fernandez reached the US Open final in 2021, losing to Britain’s Emma Raducanu. Both of those runs came before or after Andreescu’s, and neither produced a title. Together the three results show a country that now sends players deep into major draws, which was not true in the 1960s.
Mexico and the rest of the continent
Mexico has hosted professional events, including a long-running tournament at Acapulco, and has a tennis tradition, but it is documented more on the men’s side. The women’s story of the continent, so far as the Grand Slams are concerned, has been mostly American and Canadian. No Grand Slam is held in Mexico or Canada.
Why the 2019 result mattered
The US Open is a tournament in the United States, and it has been won by Americans many times. Serena Williams alone won twenty-three Grand Slam singles titles. For a Canadian to win the title was a break from that pattern, and it came in a country that had produced very few top women’s players before. The Wimbledon championships and the other two majors had never been won by a Canadian woman either.