Racquet Museum Opens Inside Forest Hills Tennis Club

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS -- The West Side Tennis Club is allowing the public a glimpse at tennis history at a museum that opened inside the private Forest Hills club, but you'll have to make an appointment to see it.

The tennis club, most famous for hosting the U.S. Open Tennis Championships a whopping 60 times, recently transformed part of its second-floor tennis library into a tennis racquet museum in honor of the club's 125th anniversary, said Beatrice Hunt, cochair of the West Side Tennis Club Foundation's history and archive committee.

"As part of the archives, we've been growing our library and decided to show more of the things that we've collected so members and visitors can see them," Hunt told Patch.

The club gathered racquets from the last decade and put them on display alongside a collection of books magazines and other memorabilia relating to the U.S. Open, she said.

"We have around 20 racquets through the ages, starting in the 1890s and kind of showing the evolution of tennis racquets up through the 1990s," Hunt said.

The racquet display is the first of what she hopes will be a long lineup of rotating exhibits to come inside West Side's mini museum. The content will come from what seems to Hunt like an ever-growing collection of tennis memorabilia the club has collected over the years.

"We have a lot of stuff in storage that we'll use depending on the exhibit," Hunt said.

The next exhibit could feature some of the club's most recent memorabilia - A collection of racquets emblazoned with names and faces of tennis legends the club recently inherited from a member who donated them after his brother - the racquets' owner - passed away, Hunt said. Among the famed tennis players gracing the collection are Stan Smith and Maureen Connolly.

"We just picked them up about two weeks ago," she said. "I haven't even gotten to go through them all yet."

Speaking of Maureen Connolly, Hunt said an exhibit dedicated the tennis player - who became the first woman to win a Grand Slam singles title - is also on the table. It's one of a handful of themes she has planned for the club's museum.

But while the museum is open to the public, that doesn't mean anyone can just walk in as they please. Non-members must make an appointment with West Side to tour the exhibit, though Hunt said if it gets enough inquiries she may organize an open house viewing. She wants everyone to enjoy the tennis history the museum has to offer.

"It gets people excited about tennis," Hunt said. "It pulls people together and they learn something."

Lead photo by Seth Wenig/Associated Press