From Red Letter Days to Uncle Tobys and Fever-Tree Championships

ATP Tour

Tennis tournaments have had some interesting title sponsors over the years.

The Queen’s Club Championships will be known as the Fever-Tree Championships from this year after Fever-Tree took over the title sponsorship.

The tournament went by Aegon Championships from 2009 until 2017 with Feliciano Lopez the last player to win it under that guise.

In case you were wondering “Fever-Tree Indian Tonic Water launched in the UK in early 2005, the brand name chosen due to fever tree being the colloquial name for the cinchona tree in which quinine, a key ingredient for tonic, is found”.

Now that that is out of the way, we have found a few other interesting title sponsors.

The Düsseldorf Open made its ATP debut in 2013 and was named Power Horse Cup and Juan Monaco ended up being the Power Horse Cup champion. It was a one-season wonder though as Power Horse didn’t sponsor the event the following year.

Meanwhile, the current Brisbane International used take place in Queensland and was known as Uncle Tobys Hardcourts because, you know, Uncle Tobys sponsored the event.

So what exactly does Uncle Tobys do? It’s a brand of breakfast cereals and other breakfast food products.

Back in 2006 the Nottingham Open was known as the Red Letter Days Open and Frenchman Richard Gasquet was crowned Red Letter Days Open champion that year. These days it is known as the Aegon Open Nottingham.

 

The WTA event in Carlsbad, California, goes by the name Southern California Open, but over three decades ago it was called the Ginny of San Diego and Debbie Spence won the 1984 event.

American comedian Alan King hosted a tournament at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas from 1972 to 1985 and of course he named it after himself as he went with Alan King Tennis Classic.

In the 80s, the ATP Bordeaux event was called the Nabisco Grand Prix Passing Shot.

The Indian Wells Masters currently goes by the name of BNP Paribas Open, but the men’s event has in the past been known as the Congoleum Classic (1979–1980, 1982–1984) and the Grand Marnier/ATP Tennis Games (1981).

And on the women’s side it started out as the Virginia Slims of Indian Wells (1989–1990) and by 1992 it was advertised as the Matrix Essentials Evert Cup while in 1995 we had the State Farm Evert Cup.

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