Charles Sands

Charles Sands is one of only two American men to have competed in three different Olympic sports (The other is Frank Kugler in athletics, weightlifting, and wrestling – Sheila Taormina also accomplished this in swimming, triathlon, and modern pentathlon). In October 1900, Sands shot rounds of 81-84 to win the first Olympic golf championship. He probably didn’t care as golf was not his favorite, or best, sport, even though he had finished second in the first U.S. Amateur ever held – in 1895.

Charles Sands was primarily a court tennis player. He was the only American to win the Racquette d’Or, which he received at the Tuileries Gardens in Paris in 1899 and 1900. In 1905 he won his only American championship in court tennis, although by then he was a three-time winner of the Racquette d’Or. In 1908, court tennis was an Olympic sport, under the original French name of jeu de paume. Sands played, but lost in the first round. It was not his first appearance in Olympic tennis. In 1900, while he had been in Paris for the Racquette d’Or competition, he had played in the Olympic lawn tennis event, but lost in the early rounds. Sands only other lawn tennis result of note was making the quarter-finals of the men’s singles at the 1894 US Championships.

Sands was a US national in 1900 but entered the tennis events while representing Tennis Club de Puteaux of France. In golf he played out of the St. Andrews Golf Club in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.