The Philadelphia Sisters helped bring professional women’s tennis back to Philly — and it’s ‘a dream come true’ for Alex Sykes
Professional women's tennis will return to Philadelphia this summer for the first time in 21 years.
Philly might not be getting its first professional women’s tennis tournament in over 20 years if not for Unrivaled.
Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 women’s basketball league featuring several top WNBA stars, stopped in Philadelphia back in January, and Renee Bridges, who is the diversity, equity, and inclusion director for the United States Tennis Associate Middle States, ended up at a kickoff event hosted by the Philadelphia Sisters, one of the key groups behind landing a WNBA team in Philly.
Alex Sykes, cofounder and president of the Philly Sisters, hooked Bridges and her coworkers up with a block of tickets, and Bridges had so much fun that she immediately reached back out to the group to get them involved with a potential women’s tennis tournament in the city.
Just a few weeks later, they were putting pen to paper on a WTA 125 tournament to be hosted by the University of Pennsylvania in August.
“To be honest, I don’t think we ever thought of tennis,” Sykes said. “It’s so big, to actually bring it in? For us to think of the WTA, it’s like, we never even dreamed of it.”
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The Philly Sisters are dedicated to establishing Philadelphia as a strong women’s sports town, ideally through the establishment of permanent teams and events.
The Ennoble Care Philly Open event is the second level of women’s professional tennis, also known as challenger tournaments.
An event will be held in Philadelphia for at least two years; the tournament will return to Penn in 2027 and maybe in 2028, too. Sykes said they are working on building a center court at the Penn facility and hope that the tournament could become a precursor to hosting a WTA 250- or 500-level tournament, which would bring higher-ranked players and a larger field.
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The group has secured a title sponsor and has over 2,500 email sign-ups for more information after the initial announcement. Sykes hopes that local fans can have greater access to the event than at a larger tournament — for instance, tickets for the tournament, Aug. 23-29, will start at just $20.
On Wednesday, the Philly Sisters hosted a launch party at Love Park to celebrate the return of professional women’s tennis to Philadelphia after 21 years, featuring 11-time Grand Slam doubles champion and Norristown native Lisa Raymond.
Penn tennis was on-site helping passersby learn Red Ball tennis, and Stoop Pigeon, the women’s sports hub set to open later this year, gave out tennis-themed ‘Philly is a women’s sports town’ T-shirts.
It’s a full-circle moment for Sykes, who was born in France and started her career with the WTA. She was told that she didn’t speak English well enough to travel on the tour, so instead she moved to Philadelphia and started learning English, and her career ended up going in a completely different direction.
“It’s like a dream come true,” Sykes said. “For me, it’s my big American dream, for sure. Thinking about coming to the U.S., to learn English better, to go back to the WTA, and then coming and organizing a whole event in the city I love around women’s sports and women tennis? It’s just a dream come true.”
