Before the advent of the Open era of tennis competitions in April 1968, only amateurs were allowed to compete in established tournaments, including the four majors. There was no prize money and players were compensated for travel expenses only. However many top tennis players turned professional to play legally for prize money in the years before the open era. They played in separate professional events, mostly on tours involving head-to-head competition, but also in professional tournaments as the biggest events on the pro tour. [1] Professional tournaments, in particular the professional majors, usually only had a men's draw.
In addition to the head-to-head tours, there were also major pro events, where the world's top professional male players often played. These tournaments held with a certain tradition and longevity. According to Ellsworth Vines, "the Wembley tournament in London..., the U.S. professional championship, and to some extent the tournament in Paris were the major professional tournaments prior to 1968." [2]
The oldest of these three tournaments was the U.S. Pro Tennis Championships, played at a variety of different venues and on a variety of different surfaces, between 1927 and 1999. The Wembley Championship, played between 1934 and 1990 at the Wembley Arena in the United Kingdom, was played on a wood surface through 1967. The third professional major was the French Pro Championship, where between 1930 and 1968 it was played on both clay and wood courts. A player who won all three in a calendar year was considered in retrospect by later tennis writers to achieve a "Professional Grand Slam", or "Pro Slam". [3] [4]
In some years, professional tournaments other than the pro majors had stronger fields and offered more prize money. Jack Kramer designated the four major professional tournaments for the 1958/1959 seasons as follows; Forest Hills, Kooyong, L.A. Masters, Sydney. [5]
The U.S. Pro Tennis Championship, also known as the US Pro, and officially known as the Cleveland International Pro or Cleveland World Pro Tennis Championships between 1951 and 1962, [6] was an annual tournament, later known as MFS Pro Championships. It was first organized by player Vincent Richards when promoter C. C. Pyle withdrew interest in the project. It was first played on the Notlek courts located at 119th Street and Riverside Drive, Manhattan. The tournament was held at various locations in several states until 1964, when it moved to the Longwood Cricket Club in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. [1] In both 1951 and 1954 there are two U.S. Pro tournaments listed here for each year.
The French Pro Championship was first held in 1930, held by the "Association Française des Professeurs de Tennis (AFPT)", entitled "Championnat International de France Professionnel" (French Pro Championships) on June 18–22, 1930. [7] From 1930 the French Pro Championship was always played at Paris, on outdoor clay at Roland Garros except from 1963 to 1967 where it was held at Stade Pierre de Coubertin on indoor wood.
The Wembley Championship, also known as the Wembley Pro, was held at the Wembley Arena, in London. This professional event ran from 1934 to 1967 and was originally played on a wood surface placed over the top of a drained pool. It was officially known as the "London Indoor Professional Championships" from 1951 through 1967. [8]
Source: [35]
The Championships at Wimbledon, the U.S. Championships, the French Championships, and the Australian Championships were typically the top events, where amateur players could compete for the title, albeit without prize money. Since the professional circuit was less organized and somewhat less popular than the amateur circuit, the professional events hierarchy changed each year. In 1934 the U.S. Pro was a high-class tournament with all top ranked pro players whereas in 1936 it was a meeting between pro teachers without any leading pro players. A tournament could even be canceled at any time due to poor attendance.
Consequently, for a given year a pro tournament was important when it attracted the best pro players and then another year this same tournament could be a second-rank tournament because few or no leading players came. Before the open era in addition to numerous small tournaments and head-to-head tours between the leading professionals, there were some major tournaments which stood out at different periods. Some survived sporadically because of financial collapses while others temporarily rose to the highest levels of competition when other tournaments weren't held. These include:
Sometimes labelled "Professional Championships of France" this tournament was held on the French Riviera at Menton, at Cannes. [36]
This event was held in October on clay courts, at the Queen's Club in London. In 1928 Myers of the Daily Telegraph wrote that "this was the best pro tournament ever held in England." [36]
List of Queen's Club Pro winners:
Year | Champion | Runner-up | Score |
---|---|---|---|
1927 | ![]() | ![]() | 6–3, 6–3, 6–4 |
1928 | ![]() | ![]() | 6–1, 6–3, 5–7, 6–4 |
The World Pro Championship were held in 1932 and 1933 in Berlin at the Rot-Weiss club, on clay. It had a very large participation (over 80 players). According to Ray Bowers, the tournament at the time was regarded as the most prestigious professional tournament in the world. [37]
List of World Pro winners:
Year | Champion | Runner-up |
---|---|---|
1932 | ![]() | ![]() |
1933 | ![]() | ![]() |
This was a team tournament created by Bill Tilden and modeled on the Davis Cup format. In 1935, early rounds in France were hoped to be played at Roland Garros, [38] but the French Tennis Association would not allow the event to be played at the stadium. [39] [40]
Year | Champions |
---|---|
1935 | ![]() |
1936 | ![]() |
1937 | ![]() |
The International Pro Championship of Britain (also known as the Southport Pro, as well as the Southport Dunlop Cup for sponsorship purposes) was a professional tennis tournament held at Victoria Park in Southport between 1935 and 1939. It was open to professional players only, amateurs were not allowed to compete. The tournament was held on outdoor En-tout-cas, "all-weather" artificial clay. [39]
List of International Pro Championship of Britain winners:
Year | Champion | Runner-up | Score |
---|---|---|---|
1935 | ![]() | ![]() | 6–1, 6–8, 4–6, 6–2, 6–2 [41] |
1936 | ![]() | ![]() | (Round Robin) [42] |
1937 | ![]() | ![]() | 6–4, 6–3, 2–6, 6–4 [43] |
1938 | ![]() | ![]() | (Round Robin) [44] |
1939 | ![]() | ![]() | 6–2, 7–5, 6–4 [45] |
Doubles Champions | Runners-up | Score | |
---|---|---|---|
1935 | ![]() ![]() | ![]() ![]() | 7–5, 6–8, 5–7, 6–1, 6–3 |
1936 | ![]() ![]() | ![]() ![]() | (Round Robin) |
1937 | ![]() ![]() | ![]() ![]() | 8–6, 17–15, 8–6 |
1939 | ![]() ![]() | ![]() ![]() | 6–2, 7–9, 7–5, 8–6 |
In LA; the only significant pro tournament of the last year of World War II, although missing Frank Kovacs and Welby Van Horn.[ citation needed ]
Year | Champion |
---|---|
1945 | ![]() |
1946 | ![]() |
Year | Champion[ citation needed ] |
---|---|
1950 | ![]() |
1951 | ![]() |
1952 | ![]() |
The Australian Pro was a men's professional tournament held in 1954 and it was billed as the Australian Professional Championships. [46]
The Tournament of Champions was a prominent professional tennis tournament series between 1957 and 1959. The tournament was held on the grass-courts of Forest Hills, New York, between 1957 and 1959, and an Australian version of the Tournament of Champions was held on grass at White City, Sydney in 1957 and 1959, and at Kooyong Stadium in Melbourne in 1958. The 1957 and 1958 Forest Hills tournaments had a round robin format, while the 1959 Forest Hills was an elimination tournament with 10 players. The Sydney version was an elimination event, while the 1958 Kooyong event was a round robin format.
The 1957 Forest Hills Tournament of Champions was broadcast live nationally in the U.S.A. on the CBS television network in its entirety, the only known professional tennis tournament in the U.S.A. to achieve this status before the Open Era. (The CBS Dallas pro tennis tournament in 1965 was filmed and broadcast one match at a time in a weekly series.) The 1959 Forest Hills Tournament of Champions offered the largest winners' cheques of the year. The current designation by the West Side Tennis Club of the 1957–59 Forest Hills TOC is "WCT Tournament of Champions". [47] Kramer's contemporary brochures described the Ampol series, of which the 1959 Forest Hills TOC was a part, with the term "World Championship Tennis". [48]
The 1958 Kooyong Tournament of Champions was the richest tournament of the series, with a prize money of 10,000 Australian pounds (US$24,000).
List of Tournament of Champions winners:
Forest Hills (New York)
Year | Champion | Runner-up | Score |
---|---|---|---|
1957 | ![]() | ![]() | (Round Robin) |
1958 | ![]() | ![]() | (Round Robin) |
1959 | ![]() | ![]() | 6–1, 5–7, 6–2, 6–1 |
White City (Sydney) and Kooyong (Melbourne)
Year | Champion | Runner-up | Score |
---|---|---|---|
1957 | ![]() | ![]() | 7–5, 6–0, 6–4 |
1958 | ![]() | ![]() | (Round Robin) |
1959 | ![]() | ![]() | 11–9, 6–1, 6–1 |
Round Robin in Los Angeles, held from 1956 to 1960, and again in 1964, 1965, and 1967. The Ampol Masters Pro was held at White City in Sydney in 1958.
Masters Pro winners:
Year | Champion | Runner-up | Score |
---|---|---|---|
1956 | ![]() | ![]() | (Round Robin) |
1957 | ![]() | ![]() | (Round Robin) |
1958 | ![]() (L.A. Tennis Club) | ![]() | (Round Robin) |
![]() (Sydney White City) | ![]() | 3–6, 4–6, 7–5, 6–3, 6–4 | |
1959 | ![]() | ![]() | (Round Robin) |
1960 | ![]() | ||
1964 | ![]() | ![]() | 6–2, 6–4 |
1965 | ![]() | ![]() | 3–6, 6–3, 7–5 |
A team format tournament. [53]
Year | Champions |
---|---|
1961 | ![]() |
1962 | ![]() |
1963 | ![]() |
Madison Square Garden Pro winners:
Year | Champion | Runner-up | Score |
---|---|---|---|
1954 | ![]() | ![]() | 7–9, 6–4, 6–4 |
1966 | ![]() | ![]() | 6–3, 6–3 |
1967 | ![]() | ![]() | 6–4, 6–4 |
1968 | ![]() | ![]() | 6–3, 6–4 |
1969 | ![]() | ![]() | 6–2, 4–6, 6–1 |
The Forest Hills Pro was held in June 1966 on the grass courts of the West Side Tennis Club using the VASSS Scoring System.[ citation needed ]
Forest Hills Pro winner:
Year | Champion |
---|---|
1966 | ![]() |
The Wimbledon World Professional Championship, also known as the Wimbledon Pro, was held in August 1967. It was first time that professional tennis players played on Centre Court at Wimbledon. [54] The tournament was sponsored and broadcast by the BBC to mark the invention of colour television. [55]
Wimbledon Pro winner:
Year | Champion | Runner-up | Score |
---|---|---|---|
1967 | ![]() | ![]() | 6–2, 6–2, 12–10 |
John Donald Budge was an American tennis player. He is most famous as the first tennis player — male or female, and still the only American male — to win the Grand Slam, and to win all four Grand Slam events consecutively overall. Budge was the second man to complete the career Grand Slam after Fred Perry, and remains the youngest to achieve the feat. He won ten majors, of which six were Grand Slam events and four Pro Slams, the latter achieved on three different surfaces. Budge is considered to have one of the best backhands in the history of tennis, with most observers rating it better than that of later player Ken Rosewall.
Frederick John Perry was a British tennis and table tennis player and former world No. 1 from England who won 10 Majors including eight Grand Slam tournaments and two Pro Slams single titles, as well as six Major doubles titles. Perry won three consecutive Wimbledon Championships from 1934 to 1936 and was World Amateur number one tennis player during those three years. Prior to Andy Murray in 2013, Perry was the last British player to win the men's Wimbledon championship, in 1936, and the last British player to win a men's singles Grand Slam title, until Andy Murray won the 2012 US Open.
Lewis Alan Hoad was an Australian tennis player whose career ran from 1950 to 1973. Hoad won four Major singles tournaments as an amateur. He was a member of the Australian team that won the Davis Cup four times between 1952 and 1956. Hoad turned professional in July 1957. He won the Kooyong Tournament of Champions in 1958 and the Forest Hills Tournament of Champions in 1959. He won the Ampol Open Trophy world series of tournaments in 1959, which included the Kooyong tournament that concluded in early January 1960. Hoad's men's singles tournament victories spanned from 1951 to 1971.
Kenneth Robert Rosewall is an Australian former world top-ranking professional tennis player. Rosewall won 147 singles titles, including a record 15 Pro Majors and 8 Grand Slam titles for a total 23 titles at pro and amateur majors. He also won 15 Pro Majors in doubles and 9 Grand Slam doubles titles. Rosewall achieved a Pro Slam in singles in 1963 by winning the three Pro Majors in one year and he completed the Career Grand Slam in doubles.
Ricardo Alonso "Pancho" González, known sometimes as Richard Gonzales, was an American tennis player. He won 15 major singles titles, including two U.S. National Singles Championships in 1948 and 1949, and 13 Professional Grand Slam titles. He also won three Tournament of Champions professional events in 1957, 1958, and 1959. He was ranked world amateur No. 1 in 1948 by Ned Potter and in 1949 by Potter and John Olliff.
Francisco Olegario Segura Cano, better known as Pancho "Segoo" Segura, was a leading tennis player of the 1940s and 1950s, both as an amateur and as a professional. He was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, but moved to the United States in 1940. Throughout his amateur career he was listed by the USTA as a "foreign" player resident in the U.S. As a professional player, he was referred to as the "Ecuadorian champ who now lives in New York City". After acquiring U.S. citizenship in 1991 at the age of seventy, Segura was a citizen of both countries, although he never represented the U.S. in tennis competition.
Francis "Frank" Arthur Sedgman is an Australian former world No. 1 tennis player. Over the course of a three-decade career, Sedgman won five Grand Slam singles tournaments as an amateur as well as 22 Grand Slam doubles tournaments. He is one of only five tennis players all-time to win multiple career Grand Slams in two disciplines, alongside Margaret Court, Roy Emerson, Martina Navratilova and Serena Williams. In 1951, he and Ken McGregor won the Grand Slam in men's doubles. Sedgman turned professional in 1953, and won the Wembley World Professional Indoor singles title in 1953 and 1958. He also won the Sydney Masters tournament in 1958, and the Melbourne Professional singles title in 1959. He won the Grand Prix de Europe Professional Tour in 1959.
John Albert Kramer was an American tennis player of the 1940s and 1950s, and a pioneer promoter who helped drive the sport towards professionalism at the elite level. Kramer also ushered in the serve-and-volley era in tennis, a playing style with which he won three Grand Slam tournaments. He also led the U.S. Davis Cup tennis team to victory in the 1946 and 1947 Davis Cup finals.
Henry Ellsworth Vines Jr. was an American tennis champion of the 1930s, the World No. 1 player or the co-No. 1 in 1932 as an amateur, and in 1934, 1935, 1936 and 1937 as a professional. He won three Grand Slam titles, the U.S. National Championships in 1931 and 1932 and the Wimbledon Championships in 1932. Vines also was able to win Pro Slam titles on three different surfaces. He later became a professional golfer and reached the semifinals of the PGA Championship in 1951.
William Tatem Tilden II, nicknamed "Big Bill", was an American tennis player. Tilden was the world No. 1 amateur for six consecutive years, from 1920 to 1925, and was ranked as the world No. 1 professional by Ray Bowers in 1931 and 1932 and Ellsworth Vines in 1933. He won 14 Major singles titles, including 10 Grand Slam events, one World Hard Court Championships and three professional majors. He was the first American man to win Wimbledon, taking the title in 1920. He also won a joint-record seven U.S. Championships titles.
Karel Koželuh was a Czech tennis, association football, and ice hockey player of the 1920s and 1930s. Koželuh became a European ice hockey champion in 1925 and was one of the top-ranked players on the professional tennis circuit in the 1930s.
Vincent Richards was an American tennis player. He was active in the early decades of the 20th century, particularly known as being a superlative volleyer. He was ranked World No. 2 as an amateur in 1924 by A. Wallis Myers, and was ranked joint World No. 1 pro by Ray Bowers in 1927 and World No. 1 pro by Bowers in 1930.
Frank Kovacs was an American amateur and professional tennis player in the mid-20th century. He won the U.S. National Indoor Tennis Championships singles title in 1941. He won the World Professional Championships tournament in 1945 in San Francisco. Kovacs was successful on clay and won the Great Lakes Professional Clay Court Championships near Chicago in 1946, defeating Riggs in the final, and five U.S. Professional Clay Court Championships from 1948 to 1953. Kovacs won U.S. Professional Championships or International Professional Championships at Cleveland in 1951. He also won the U.S. Professional Challenge Tour in 1947 against Bobby Riggs.
World number 1 ranked male tennis players is a year-by-year listing of the male tennis players who were ranked as world No. 1 by various contemporary and modern sources. The annual source rankings from which the No. 1 players are drawn are cited for each player's name, with a summary of the most important tennis events of each year also included. If world rankings are not available, recent rankings by tennis writers for historical years are accessed, with the dates of the recent rankings identified. In the period 1948–1953, when contemporary professional world rankings were not created, the U.S. professional rankings are cited.
The U.S. Pro Tennis Championships was the oldest professional tennis tournament played until its final year of 1999 and is considered to have been a professional major from 1927–1967 until the advent of Open Era. In 1953, 1955, 1956, and 1960, the Cleveland World Pro had a women's draw, with Pauline Betz winning the first three of these, and defeating the reigning U.S. women's champion Doris Hart in the 1956 final. Althea Gibson defeated Pauline Betz in the 1960 women's final.
Since 1990, the biggest events in men's tennis have been the four Grand Slam tournaments, the ATP Finals and the ATP Masters tournaments, in addition to the Grand Slam Cup between 1990–99. From 1983 to 1990, men's tennis had a very strong tradition and clear hierarchy of tournaments: the Grand Slam tournaments, including Wimbledon, the US Open, the French Open, and the Australian Open; the season-ending Masters Grand Prix; and the Davis Cup. Before 1983, however, and in particular before the start of the Open Era in 1968, the hierarchy of professional tournaments changed virtually every year. For example, in 1934, the U.S. Pro was a high-class tournament with all the best players, but just two years later, the same tournament was ordinary because only professional teachers entered the event.
The Wembley Championships was a men's professional tennis tournament held from 1934–1990 with some periods of inactivity in between and is often considered to be one of the three Major professional tennis tournaments before the Open Era from 1927–1967 until the advent of the open era. Ken Rosewall's and Rod Laver's six singles titles are the record for this event. The tournament only had a men's draw.
The French Pro Championship was major tennis tournament founded in 1930 by the "Association Française des Professeurs de Tennis (AFPT)" and ran annually until 1968 when it was discontinued.
The Tournament of Champions was a prominent professional tennis tournament series held at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, N.Y. and at Kooyong Stadium, Melbourne and White City Stadium, Sydney in Australia in 1957, 1958, and 1959.
For many years before the Open Era of tennis in 1968, the usual format for the handful of touring tennis professionals was a series of two-man one-night stands across the United States and often in other countries as well. The most notable of these tours were the "World Series" or "World Professional Championships", in which the reigning world champion went head-to-head against a challenger, most often the leading amateur of the previous year who had just turned pro. Promoters would attempt to sign the leading amateur to a contract with a minimum guarantee against a percentage of gate receipts, making a similar type of deal with the reigning professional champion and sometimes giving smaller percentages to undercard players. The winners of the tours were described as being the "world champion".
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