The Charleston Open, currently sponsored by Credit One, is a

WTA Tour The WTA Tour (also known as the Hologic WTA Tour for sponsorship reasons) is a worldwide top-tier tennis tour for women and organized by the Women's Tennis Association. The second-tier tour is the WTA 125 series, and third-tier is the ITF Wome ...

-affiliated professional tennis tournament for women, held every year since 1973. It is the oldest professional all-women's tournament in America with a $1,064,510 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 courts at LTP-Daniel Island (which contains the 10,200-seat Credit One Stadium) on Daniel Island in

Charleston, South Carolina Charleston is the List of municipalities in South Carolina, most populous city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint of South Carolina's coastline on Charleston Harbor, an inlet of the Atla ...

, US. From its inception in 1973 to 2000, the tournament was held at the Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head Island 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 Atlant ...

off the coast of Florida. 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 women's magazine that covered topics such 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 grou ...

'' magazine, which had made it the longest-running title sponsor in professional tennis. Chinese automaker

Geely Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., Ltd. (ZGH), commonly known as Geely Holding ( ; ), is a Chinese multinational automotive conglomerate headquartered in Hangzhou, China. The company was founded by, and is privately owned by Chinese entrepre ...

, which has a factory in nearby Berkeley County for their Volvo brand, took over sponsorship from 2016 to 2021. Credit One Bank, which had sponsored the 2020 tournament, became the title sponsor of both the tournament and stadium in July 2021. Also in 2021, two tournaments were organised in consecutive weeks as a makeup tournament for those cancelled by pandemic restrictions. The

Medical University of South Carolina The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) is a public medical school in Charleston, South Carolina. It opened in 1824 as a small private college aimed at training physicians and has since established hospitals and medical facilities acros ...

sponsored the event. From 1990 to 2008, the tournament was classified as a

WTA Tier I The WTA Tier I tournaments were Women's Tennis Association tennis elite tournaments held from 1990 until the end of the 2008 season. From 1988 to 1990, the different levels of WTA tournaments were referred to by the term 'Category', and there ...

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), also known as BJK, is an American former World number 1 ranked female tennis players, world No. 1 tennis player. King won 39 Grand Slam (tennis), Grand Slam titles: 12 in singles, 16 in w ...

. With the reorganization of the WTA's schedule in 2021, the tournament became a WTA 500 tournament. The 2021 second tournament held the week afterwards was part of the

WTA 250 tournaments WTA 250 is a category of tennis tournaments in the Women's Tennis Association tour, implemented since the reorganization of the schedule in 2021. Earlier these events were classified as WTA International tournaments, WTA International Tournaments ...

list.

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 site

WTA tournament profile
{{coord, 32, 51, 41, N, 79, 54, 13, W, type:landmark, display=title Charleston Open Women's tennis tournaments in the United States Clay court tennis tournaments WTA 500 tournaments Sports competitions in Charleston, South Carolina Recurring sporting events established in 1973 Tennis tournaments in South Carolina 1973 establishments in South Carolina Upper class culture in South Carolina