Why the French Open is named after Roland Garros, who didn't play tennis

French aviator Roland Garros pictured in the cockpit of an aircraft in 1911. Branger/Getty Images/Hulton Archive

Branger/Getty Images/Hulton Archive

The second tennis Grand Slam tournament of the year is underway in Paris: the French Open, as many English-speakers call it.

But the official name of the tournament — and the complex where it takes place — is Roland Garros. Many tennis tournaments are named after famous players, like the Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup.

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Roland Garros, however, was an aviation pioneer and World War I fighter pilot with no known connection to the racquet sport.

"He's an important figure in early aviation, both as a record-setter before the war and as a wartime pilot," says Christopher Moore, the curator for World War I aircraft at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. "He's considered the first person to shoot down another aircraft with a gun firing forward between the propeller."

So how did Garros become synonymous with tennis?

The short answer: In 1928, a decade after Garros was killed in action, Paris' new tennis stadium needed a name. Emile Lesueur, president of the Stade Français rugby club, suggested Garros — his former business school classmate.

"I guess he was a national hero, and that kind of tells you how people thought about him," Moore says.

Here's the (slightly) longer version.

Roland Garros is both the name of the tennis tournament and the Paris facility where it is held. Dan Istitene/Getty Images

Dan Istitene/Getty Images

Garros' high-flying career set records

Garros was born in 1885 on Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean. The island's main international airport now bears his name, too.

He grew up playing soccer, rugby and cycling — but "was not an avid tennis player," as the tennis tournament's website explains. Garros was not originally drawn to aviation either: He graduated from business school and founded a car dealership.

But everything changed when Garros, then in his early 20s, attended the first major international air show in the Champagne region of France, in August 1909.

"He decides that he wants to be a pilot, so he basically goes out and buys his own plane, teaches himself to fly … he earns his pilot's license," says Moore.

Roland Garros, in the dark suit, poses near the plane he flew across the Mediterranean in Tunisia in September 1913. STAFF/AFP via Getty Images/AFP via Getty Images

STAFF/AFP via Getty Images/AFP via Getty Images

In September 1911, Garros broke an altitude record, soaring to nearly 13,000 feet (without the extra oxygen that modern planes have above 10,000 feet, Moore points out). He then set another record, breaking 19,000 feet in 1912.

At this time, Moore says, aviation was considered a daredevil sport, and successful pilots, especially in France, became celebrities. Garros' dazzling performances in air shows and races earned him awards and notoriety.

"Aviation was made up of … people who liked to push the limits in sports and other ways, so they were using exhibitions, doing acrobatics, death-defying feats and races … and breaking records," Moore explains.

Garros' profile increased exponentially in 1913, when he became the first person to fly across the Mediterranean Sea.

He flew south from the French Riviera to Tunisia, landing after nearly eight hours with less than two gallons of gas left in his tank, according to a September 1913 edition of Foreign Aviation News.

"So confident was Garros in his Morane-Saulnier machine … that he did not deem it necessary to accept the Government's offer to be consorted by a cruiser, but the French naval authorities nevertheless took the precaution to have a number of torpedo boats cruising along the line of flight," the publication wrote.

Garros revolutionized aerial combat in multiple ways

When World War I broke out in 1914, Garros enlisted in the French army with an obvious skill set.

There were no independent air forces at the time, but pilots could join a designated air branch of the army. Even so, Moore says, the military viewed airplanes merely "as a way of being higher to look at things."

Pilots were there for observation, not offense — at least at first.

"They would be flying over and they would see airplanes from the other side, doing their thing, and sometimes they'd wave at each other early on," Moore says. "But as tends to happen, they decided that maybe they should try and stop the other guys from doing the same thing they're doing, and so they started firing at each other."

That was easier said than done, as early planes couldn't accommodate anything larger than a pistol or a rifle. There was also the problem of propeller blades in front, obstructing a clear shot at German enemy aircraft.

Another Frenchman, engineer Raymond Saulnier, had recently patented a mechanism that would allow a machine gun to shoot between the spinning blades. Moore says it wasn't adopted during the war because of significant flaws.

But Garros went to Saulnier — seemingly of his own accord — to inquire about using the technology in his own planes. Moore says there are varying claims about whether he tried it, but ultimately the two ended up with an alternative: screwing wedges onto Garros' propeller blades to deflect bullets.

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"And it works," Moore says. "Garros shoots down his first German airplane on the first of April 1915 … within the next two-plus weeks he shoots down two more."

Before the end of the month, however, Garros' plane crashed — he said due to engine trouble — and he was taken captive by German forces. He spent three years in a prisoner-of-war camp, with his health and eyesight deteriorating.

Meanwhile, the Germans studied his wedge-workaround and developed what Moore describes as "a synchronizer that will allow a machine gun to shoot between the propeller blades, and that sort of changes aerial warfare from then on."

Garros and another soldier eventually managed to escape, disguised as German officers. While the French government urged him to stay home as an advisor, he told The New York Times in March 1918 that he intended to get back to the front lines as soon as possible.

He said he was looking forward to confronting more enemy forces: "Remember, I have a big score against them to pay for the last three years."

Garros' legacy of persistence lives on

Crowds watch the action on Court Philippe-Chatrier at the Roland-Garros Complex in Paris over the weekend. Chatrier was a French tennis player and former president of the International Tennis Federation. Julien De Rosa/AFP via Getty Images

Julien De Rosa/AFP via Getty Images

Garros was killed in action in October 1918, the day before his 30th birthday and a month before the war ended.

By that point, he had shot down a fourth German aircraft, so he was not technically a flying "ace," which is defined as a pilot who shoots down five enemy aircraft or more. But the word, which caught on in French newspaper accounts of WWI, has come to have a much broader meaning.

Incidentally, "ace" is also used in tennis to describe a serve so good it goes untouched by its receiver.

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While Garros didn't have a direct connection to tennis, Moore says aviation was considered a sport — and he was one of its biggest faces at the time. That, plus historical context, may explain why his legacy is so closely tied to the clay-court tournament nearly a century later.

"WWI was very traumatic for the French. It was mostly on their soil that it was fought and a lot of Frenchmen died," he says. "I think that in the postwar memory he was considered a national hero, for the fact that he had died for France, plus his pre-war fame."

The tournament's website sees a fitting connection too, in a quote attributed to Napoleon I that Garros inscribed on his planes' propellers: "Victory belongs to the most persevering."

That phrase, it says, "could also be applied to the winners of the Roland Garros tournament." It runs through June 7.