The Credit One Charleston Open, formerly known as the Volvo Car Open and the Family Circle Cup,
is a
WTA Tour
The WTA Tour is a worldwide top-tier tennis tour for women organized by the Women's Tennis Association. The second-tier tour is the WTA 125K series, and third-tier is the ITF Women's Circuit. The men's equivalent is the ATP Tour.
WTA Tour tou ...
-affiliated professional
tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball c ...
tournament for women, held every year since 1973.
It is the oldest professional all-women's tournament in America with a $888,636 purse. The tournament celebrated 50 years in 2022 at the newly renovated Credit One Stadium located in Charleston, South Carolina.
The tournament is played on the green
clay court
A clay court is one of the types of tennis court on which the sport of tennis, originally known as "lawn tennis", is played. Clay courts are made of crushed stone, brick, shale, or other unbound mineral aggregate depending on the tournament.
T ...
s at
LTP-Daniel Island (which contains the 10,200-seat Credit One Stadium) on
Daniel Island in
Charleston, South Carolina, USA. From its inception in 1973 to 2000, the tournament was held at the
Sea Pines Plantation
The Sea Pines Resort or Sea Pines is located in Sea Pines Plantation, a 5,200-acre private residential gated community located on the southern tip of the island which comprises the town of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Sea Pines is home to f ...
on
Hilton Head Island
Hilton Head Island, sometimes referred to as simply Hilton Head, is a South Carolina Lowcountry, Lowcountry resort town and barrier island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, United States. It is northeast of Savannah, Georgia, and southwest of C ...
with the exception of 1975 and 1976 when it was played on
Amelia Island
Amelia Island is a part of the Sea Islands chain that stretches along the East Coast of the United States from South Carolina to Florida; it is the southernmost of the Sea Islands, and the northernmost of the barrier islands on Florida's Atlanti ...
off the coast of
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, a ...
. The event moved to Charleston, and specifically Daniel Island, in 2001.
From 1973 to 2015, the title sponsor was ''
Family Circle
''Family Circle'' was an American magazine that covered such topics as homemaking, recipes, and health. It was published from 1932 until the end of 2019. Originally distributed at supermarkets, it was one of the " Seven Sisters," a group of se ...
'' magazine, which had made it the longest-running title sponsor in professional tennis.
Volvo Cars took over sponsorship from 2016 to 2021.
Credit One Bank became the title sponsor of both the tournament and stadium in July 2021.
From 1990 to 2008, the tournament was classified as a
WTA Tier I event. In 2009, it was downgraded to a
WTA Premier tournament. It celebrated its 40th year in 2012 by naming its main stadium court in honor of
Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King (née Moffitt; born November 22, 1943) is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. King won 39 major titles: 12 in singles, 16 in women's doubles, and 11 in mixed doubles. King was a member of the victorious United State ...
.
With the reorganization of the WTA's schedule in 2021, the tournament became a
WTA 500 tournament.
The current champion is
Belinda Bencic
Belinda Bencic ( sk, Belinda Benčičová, ; born 10 March 1997) is a Swiss professional tennis player. She has a career-high ranking of No. 4 by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) which she achieved in February 2020. Bencic has won six singl ...
, who won the singles tournament in April 2022.
Past finals
Singles
Doubles
Exhibition team tournament
Because of an ongoing pandemic, the tournament in 2020 was reformatted into a
Laver Cup style team tournament. Each team captain's name in BOLD and listed first.
References
External links
Official siteWTA tournament profile
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Women's tennis tournaments in the United States
Clay court tennis tournaments
WTA Tour
Sports in Charleston, South Carolina
Recurring sporting events established in 1973
Tennis in South Carolina
Tennis tournaments in South Carolina