The ATP Tour is losing some texture after this week, lumpy and patchy though it may be.

A casualty of the tour making its biggest events even bigger, this week marks the final edition of the Hall of Fame Open in Newport, R.I., as a tournament on the ATP Tour. Held on the grounds of the International Tennis Hall of Fame at the Newport Casino, which hosted the first U.S. National Lawn Tennis Championships in 1881, the tournament is the lone grass event in North America and the only one after Wimbledon. It’s annually a unique mix of tradition and chaos, producing strange bounces and unexpected champions since 1976.

“Littered with crazy bounces and kind of just a wacky tournament in the sense that anything can happen; that’s the mentality that the players took,” four-time champion John Isner said in an interview this week.

The bounces haven’t been quite so bad in Newport since a 2019 renovation of their grass courts, but the tournament’s reputation as an oddball full of crazy caroms and reliably random results has remained, with a patchy field by ATP standards that has led to many less-established players earning the best results of their careers.

Rajeev Ram, who earned the nickname “Rampras” for his throwback style of serve-and-volley play, won his only two ATP titles in Newport, in 2009 and 2015. Bryan Shelton, father of current top-20 pro Ben Shelton, also won his only two ATP titles in Newport, in 1991 and 1992.

Prakash Amritraj, a Tennis Channel host whom most viewers probably don’t realize was a tour player himself, made his lone ATP final in Newport in 2008; Prakash’s father, Vijay Amritraj, who will be inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame this weekend in Newport, won the tournament three times.  

Tim Smyczek, whom most fans would likely best remember for a match in the second round of the 2015 Australian Open where he led Rafael Nadal two sets to one, was a fixture at Newport in the 2010s. With a career-high ranking of 68th, Smyczek played in 85 ATP main draws over the course of his career and reached only one semifinal in those events, at Newport in 2018. Three of the eight wins Smyczek had over top-50 players in his career at ATP events came in Newport, including a win over top-seeded Sam Querrey in 2013.  

“Over the years I was going there, you did see a lot of upsets,” Smyczek said in an interview this week. “I had some of my better wins while I was there. And it probably had a little something to do with the court and the unsteady footing, surprise bounces, that sort of thing. But I kind of liked it, because I was often the underdog in those matches, and I felt like you had to be pretty mentally tough to deal with all that throughout the course of the match or tournament.”

The winningest champion in Newport’s 48 years as an ATP tournament is Isner, who won four times—2011, 2012, 2017, 2019—each time as the top seed in one of the weakest ATP fields of the season (though Isner did beat a stronger field in 2012 when the London Olympics’ tennis event was being held on grass weeks later).

Newport had been the first ATP tournament of Isner’s career in the summer of 2007, after receiving a wild card following a successful collegiate career at the University of Georgia. It was not love at first mishit. 

“I could not stand the courts,” Isner said. “I swore it off. I said I would never play Newport again because I couldn’t stand the courts. But lo and behold, I did not stay true to my conviction.”

Isner, whose serve was one of the toughest to return in ATP history, came to embrace that his game was even more unplayable with an unpredictable surface underfoot. 

“The shittier the court, the better for me,” Isner said. “I mean, when I beat Federer at Davis Cup in Switzerland, it was a temporary clay court, indoors, and it was just littered with bad bounces. And that was a big advantage for me. [Newport] didn’t play like a typical grass court. Towards the end of the week, a kick serve would bounce crazy high on the courts; it wouldn’t necessarily skid. It just did not play like a typical grass court. I’ve always played a lot of smaller guys. I mean, I played [5-foot-6 Olivier] Rochus one year in the Newport finals, and he’s tiny and he couldn’t touch my serve at all.”

Ten of Isner’s 16 career ATP titles came in this stretch of the dog days of July, with four in Newport and six in Atlanta (a hard-court event with slightly stronger fields, which is also set to hold its final edition next week). 

“The ‘Newport Challenger,’ for sure—I don’t take offense to that,” Isner said of the tournament’s common nickname among players. “But, you know, you look at it as an opportunity as well.”

Wins in Atlanta and Newport set Isner up for success when he’d encounter more of the game’s best once they came ashore for Washington, Cincinnati, and the US Open.

“I don’t care what surface you’re playing on,” Isner said. “On the ATP Tour, when you win four or five matches in a row to win the tournament, that’s going to give you a lot of confidence.”

Confidence can already be seen growing in this year’s field, including in Reilly Opelka, another enormous fellow with a huge serve, who is returning to the ATP Tour after two years away with injury and knocked off top seed and defending champion Adrian Mannarino in the second round.  

Blair Henley, an on-court host at tournaments of all sizes around America including Newport, is an enthusiastic ambassador for the event, where she is working this week.

“I often get asked, ‘Which tournament should I go to if I’m going to pick one on the calendar?’” Henley said. “And I always will recommend a 250. If you can make it to Newport, I’d probably recommend this tournament. You get to be up close and personal in a way that you don’t experience at a 500 or 1000 or a Grand Slam. That piece, I think, is pretty consistent throughout all 250s. But here in Newport, I think when you add in the historic location, the quaint Northeastern town, the fact that the Hall of Fame is right there, I think there’s maybe even more of a sense of closeness.”

As the Hall of Fame undergoes major renovations later this year to prepare for big crowds expected for fast-approaching induction ceremonies of recently retired megastars like Roger Federer and Serena Williams, so too is the tournament being reimagined. Next year the event will reincarnate as a combined ATP-WTA Challenger event at the 125 level held during the second week of the Wimbledon main draw. The announcement Wednesday that women’s tennis would be reintroduced in Newport drew loud cheers from the crowd in Newport.