Newport to host two World Championships in 2025
The real tennis world converges on Rhode Island for a big summer in 2025
The International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island has recently been anounced as the host of two separate World Championships in 2025.
The International Real Tennis Professionals Association announced Newport as the venue for the Men’s World Challenge on Tuesday, with the dates set as the 23rd, 25th and 27th of September, 2025. It will be Newport’s third time hosting the Challenge. Tennis fans will be hoping for a longer match than the first time the Challenge went to Newport in 2004, when Rob Fahey beat Tim Chisholm inside two days. Chisholm had set points on the second day but succumbed to Fahey’s caterpillar serve. More recently, Newport was the venue that marked the beginning of the end of the Fahey era, when Camden Riviere won his first World Championship title whilst working at the club.
Riviere, as the incumbent, is expected to defend his World Title. He will face a challenger yet to be determined following the Eliminator Series. With one tournament to go, two players have already locked in their place in the Eliminators — John Lumley and Nick Howell — both of whom played in the Final Eliminator two years ago. Steve Virgona and Ben Taylor-Matthews look very likely to join them — Leon Smart needs to win the British Open and see Virgona and Taylor-Matthews lose in the first round in order to qualify. It remains to be seen if each of the four players will elect to enter the Eliminator process.
Separately, the Ladies Real Tennis Association (LRTA) has announced that the 2025 Ladies Real Tennis World Championship will also be held at Newport between May 23rd and May 31st, 2025. They have also announced welcome changes to the format of the event following a large number of lopsided matches at the last Championships at the Oratory School in 2023.
Notably, the singles format is now a challenge, meaning defending champion Claire Fahey will automatically qualify to the final, awaiting a challenger. The next three best players by handicap qualify directly to the main draw, with up to eight further players in qualifying. Two qualifiers will play against the third and fourth seeds in the first round. The winners of those matches will play each other, and the winner of that match will play the second seed for the right to be the challenger. In the doubles, the draw will be limited to the top four pairs.
The LRTA have not announced whether the format will be best of 3 or best of 5 sets.
It will be a busy summer at Newport, with the US Professional Singles also expected in June and the Pell Cup expected in August. Newport have recently announced that Josh Smith will be joining the professional team, as they look to bolser their court tennis program following the recent downgrading of the lawn tennis Hall of Fame Open from an ATP 250 to an ATP Challenger 125 event.