The LA Women's Tennis Championships was a
Premier-level women's
tennis
Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...
tournament on the
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 ...
held in
Carson, California
Carson is a city in the South Bay (Los Angeles County), South Bay and the Los Angeles Harbor Region, Harbor regions of Los Angeles County, California, located south of downtown Los Angeles and approximately away from Los Angeles International ...
, a suburb of
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
. The tournament was played on outdoor
hard court
A hardcourt (or hard court) is a type of surface or floor on which a sport is played, most usually in reference to tennis courts. It is typically made of rigid materials such as Asphalt concrete, asphalt or concrete, and covered with acrylic resin ...
s and a part of the
US Open Series
The US Open Series was the name given by the United States Tennis Association (USTA) to a series of North American professional tennis tournaments leading up to and including the US Open. It was part of the "North American hard-court season".
...
.
The tournament was founded in 1971 as the Billie Jean King Invitational as part of the inaugural
Virginia Slims Circuit in
Long Beach, California
Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...
in 1971 by Jerry Diamond, one of the tour's organizers. In 1973, it moved to Los Angeles. The event was off the tour calendar for three years (1974–1976) when the
season-ending championships were played in Los Angeles. The tournament was an indoor event until 1983, when it switched to outdoor
hard court
A hardcourt (or hard court) is a type of surface or floor on which a sport is played, most usually in reference to tennis courts. It is typically made of rigid materials such as Asphalt concrete, asphalt or concrete, and covered with acrylic resin ...
s in
Manhattan Beach where it stayed for 20 years.
IMG img or IMG is an abbreviation for image.
img or IMG may also refer to:
Science, technology, and mathematics
*IMG (file format), file that stores a complete and uncompressed copy of the contents of a storage device
* IMG, a prefix for camera ima ...
bought the event from Diamond in 1996. The event was moved to its final location in
Carson in 2003. It was acquired by its new landlord,
AEG The initials AEG are used for or may refer to:
Common meanings
* AEG (German company)
; AEG) was a German producer of electrical equipment. It was established in 1883 by Emil Rathenau as the ''Deutsche Edison-Gesellschaft für angewandte El ...
, in 2004.
In 2009 AEG and
USTA
The United States Tennis Association (USTA) is the national Sport governing body, governing body for tennis in the United States. A not-for-profit organization with more than 700,000 members, it invests 100% of its proceeds to promote and devel ...
sold the tournament to
Octagon
In geometry, an octagon () is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon.
A '' regular octagon'' has Schläfli symbol and can also be constructed as a quasiregular truncated square, t, which alternates two types of edges. A truncated octagon, t is a ...
, who moved the event to
Carlsbad, California
Carlsbad is a beach city in the North County area of San Diego County, California, United States. The city is north of downtown San Diego and south of downtown Los Angeles. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of ...
. It was renamed the
Mercury Insurance Open.
Past finals

*Martina Navratilova was the most successful player winning 8 singles titles.
Singles
Doubles
See also
*
Los Angeles Open
The Genesis Invitational is a professional golf tournament on the PGA Tour in Southern California, first played in 1926 as the Los Angeles Open. Other previous names include Genesis Open, Northern Trust Open and Nissan Open. Played annually in ...
References
{{US Open Series Tournaments
Defunct tennis tournaments in the United States
Hard court tennis tournaments
WTA Tour
US Open Series
Recurring sporting events established in 1971
Sports competitions in Carson, California
Recurring sporting events disestablished in 2009
Tennis tournaments in California