The first tennis courts in Slovakia were built in the 1880s – in Grassalkovich (today’s President's) palace in Bratislava, and on Kúpeľný ostrov (Spa Island) in Piešťany. More tennis courts were built and tennis clubs founded (Bratislava, Banská Bystrica, Žilina, Piešťany, Trenčianske Teplice) after the formation of the First Czechoslovak Republic. In 1931, the No. 1 in the national list of tennis players was held by Ladislav Hecht from Žilina, who had played 36 Davis Cup matches by 1938. After the decline followed by the accession to power of the communists whose ideologists considered tennis a "gentry sport", tennis in Czechoslovakia gradually regained popularity at the end of the 1950s. Slovak juniors (including Jozef Golonka) won the traditional tournament in Pardubice, and Milan Tajcnár was a member of the winning Czechoslovak team in the King’s Cup (1969). In 1988, tennis was again included in the Olympic Games after 64 years and Miroslav Mečíř, the most renowned player in Slovak tennis history, won the gold medal in singles. He was one of the top world tennis players for years. Together with Helena Suková he won the Hopman Cup, and with Tomáš Šmíd they became doubles world champions. As coach of Karol Kučera and the non-playing captain of the team that played the 2005 Davis Cup final, he contributed to the greatest recent achievement of Slovak men’s tennis. The victory in the 2005 Federation Cup represented the strength of Slovak women’s tennis. Dominik Hrbatý and Martin Kližan, Daniela Hantuchová and Dominika Cibulková are the present and past of the "white" sport, which due to marketing dictate stopped being “pure white” long ago, but which has not stopped enthralling millions of fans.

Peter Osuský