Eugène Adrien Roland Georges Garros (; 6 October 1888 – 5 October 1918) was a French aviation pioneer and fighter pilot. Garros began a career in aviation in 1909 and performed many early feats before joining the French army and becoming one of the earliest fighter pilots during World War I. In 1928, the Roland Garros tennis stadium was named in his memory; the French Open tennis tournament takes the name of Roland Garros, which is held in this stadium. Biography Eugène Adrien Roland Georges Garros was born in Saint-Denis, Réunion, and studied at the Lycée Janson de Sailly and HEC Paris. At the age of 12, he caught pneumonia, and was sent to Cannes to recover. He took up cycling to restore his health, and went on to win an inter-school championship in the sport. He was also keen on football, rugby and tennis. When he was 21 he started a car dealership in Paris. He was a close friend of Ettore Bugatti and in 1913 became the first owner of the Garros Bugatti Type 18, later named Black Bess by its second owner, British racing driver Ivy Cummings, which survives today at the Louwman Museum in the Netherlands. Aviation During his summer holiday in 1909, at Sapicourt near Reims, staying with a friend's uncle, he saw the Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne which ran from 22 to 29 August. After this, he knew he had to be an aviator. He started his aviation career in 1909 flying a Demoiselle (dragonfly) monoplane, an aircraft that flew well only if it had a small lightweight pilot. He gained Ae.C.F. licence no. 147 in July 1910. In 1911 Garros graduated to flying Blériot XI monoplanes and entered a number of European air races with this type of aircraft, including the 1911 Paris to Madrid air race and the Circuit of Europe (Paris–London–Paris), in which he came second. On 4 September 1911, he set an altitude record of . The following year, on 6 September 1912, after Austrian aviator Philipp von Blaschke had flown to , he regained the height record by flying to . By 1913 he was flying the faster Morane-Saulnier monoplanes, and on 23 September gained fame for making the first non-stop flight across the Mediterranean Sea from Fréjus-Saint Raphaël in the south of France to Bizerte in Tunisia in a Morane-Saulnier G. The flight commenced at 5:47