Who's been the most important male player in regard to bringing tennis to the masses and for a time transcending tennis itself!I've never heard that question about tennis players before.
Important in what way? I don't know if there are any important people in tennis right now among current pro players.
Ever?
I guess Billie Jean King would be the best and only answer. Some might say Arthur Ashe. Maybe any of the several who have started charities/foundations such as Agassi and his school.
Maybe Ilie Nastase for having sex with 2500 women (he said so in his book). Maybe he was important to all of them. Maybe he gave them something to remember for the rest of their lives? Is that important?
Wingfield? Howard Head? Walter Clopton Wingfield?
With the exception of Billie Jean King, I don't know if the world would be any different today if any certain player had never been born.
Edited later:
Oh! opps! You said "male" player.
Ashe I guess.
Kramer was very influential, and possibly tennis greatest ever politician.
Tilden gave tennis a big boost and was considered the first tennis intelectual.
Other guys that were responsible for the growth of tennis were promotors Lamar Hunt and George Mc Call.
major Clopton Wingfield.He invented tennis...
It's hard to pin down one name, but I have a few names. From what I read, Kramer and Tilden seem to be important figures. Laver did the Grand Slam twice. Connors and Borg did much to give tennis a boost in the 70's media and television boom. Arthur Ashe, rest his soul. Overall, I have a lot of time for Billie Jean King too, fair play to the women. Wasn't Suzanne Langlen a massive star in her day?
He patented a game that was already being played.
Where's Lendl? Seriously, we wouldn't have the slow surface grindfests we have today without him. If this period of slow surfaces and hard-hitting baseliners obsessed with fitness continues for another decade, the father of that kind of tennis should certainly be considered the most important ever.
None of the guys on your list are repeatable. They're all one of a kind. How does that make them important? What did the contribute to the sport but popularity, fleeting popularity...
That is very true.Even more than Laver and Borg, Lendl´s way of playing turned to be the most imitated, 20 years after his retirement...
Just thought of another big name, Rene Lacoste, inventor of the first non wood racquet made out of steel, great great tennis player and of course we have his clothing line.
He may be the number one guy.
Who knows, without him we may be playing with tiny wood racquets. That's big.
I think he may have invented the tennis ball machine but I'm not sure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEaL7Euh_mI
Kramer was very influential, and possibly tennis greatest ever politician.
Tilden gave tennis a big boost and was considered the first tennis intelectual.
Other guys that were responsible for the growth of tennis were promotors Lamar Hunt and George Mc Call.
They (Kramer and Tilden) are definitely candidates for most important player. I suppose most influential might be a better term.
Laver and Rosewall helped keep the popularity of tennis alive in the 1960's so they were influential also. Borg created almost the rock star image of tennis in the 1970's with some other players I suppose.
Pancho Segura was very influential in his own way as a player and a coach.
Without Kramer (now maybe someone else would have risen to do what he did?) there would not have been any Borg the rock star or other household names in the 70's as the game would have remained small in stature. He brought tournament tennis to the masses. Behind the scenes, he was constantly working on greater exposure thru TV and larger venues and greater money. He was the visionary that brought tennis into the big time and out of the short 2 minute news reel.
If Hoad neevr played tennis, he´d have been one of the big movie stars of the 50´s and 60´s.Right there with Charlton Heston,Paul Newman,Kirk Douglas.Looked like a musculated and nicer looking Alan ladd.
If Hoad neevr played tennis, he´d have been one of the big movie stars of the 50´s and 60´s.Right there with Charlton Heston,Paul Newman,Kirk Douglas.Looked like a musculated and nicer looking Alan ladd.
Lew Hoad tried cocaine. He even wrote about it in his book.
The names you mention, plus Sean Connery, were close friends of Hoad.
In popularizing the game, I play tennis because my mom had a crush on Borg when she was a teenager and started playing tennis because of him. She's not from the US, though. Mac and Connors allegedly reinvigorated tennis in the US (according to my dad, at least, I wasn't alive). It's too difficult for me to say much about the Pro-era dudes because that's so far removed from anything I know about.
As far as influential otherwise, I feel that it has to be Arthur Ashe.
Ashe protested South Africa's Apartheid, raised awareness about heart disease and AIDS, and spearheaded the ATP.
Althea Gibson, Billie Jean King, perhaps Gottfried Von Cramm, and maybe Martina (I dunno how big of a deal her defection from the Iron Curtain to the US was).
Is it true? well, Lewis would have been a great 007, with his heavy aussie accent included¡¡ " bring me a Vodka & Martini: smashed, not sliced " or maybe " Twisted, not topspinned "?
Hoad may have been too strong to play 007. Any evil villain who punched him would be in pain because they would basically be hitting steel.
Who's been the most important male player in regard to bringing tennis to the masses and for a time transcending tennis itself!
under that particular definition? Connors...closely followed by Bjorn and Mac. They took it out of the country clubs and made it both accessible and exciting.
Tilden, in good and in bad ways. No other male player did represent tennis as a person like Tilden did. He transcended his sport and became a public figure - without the help of Nike or Adidas. His writings set the classic tennis standards. When Newcombe after his Wim win in 1967 was asked, how he had learned tennis, he said: By reading Tilden. Tilden became a figure in literature, too. Nabokov styled a figure in Lolita after him. I only know of Di Maggio in a similar way, who was cited by Hemingway or Paul Simon. Tilden also was responsible, that for a long time tennis was called a sissy sport.
For both genders, i would nominate the Divine Lenglen. She transcended sports into arts. Novels, ballets and plays were written about her, her match with Wills at Cannes was the most heralded and media studded match of all time.
Yeah¡¡.I can imagine Jack Kramer as "M" and Bill Tilden as "Q"...Gonzales was a true villain.A Hoad vs Gonzales fight certainly would match and suprass any Bond´s battle, and possibly any heavyweight fight ever...
Tilden, in good and in bad ways. No other male player did represent tennis as a person like Tilden did. He transcended his sport and became a public figure - without the help of Nike or Adidas. His writings set the classic tennis standards. When Newcombe after his Wim win in 1967 was asked, how he had learned tennis, he said: By reading Tilden. Tilden became a figure in literature, too. Nabokov styled a figure in Lolita after him. I only know of Di Maggio in a similar way, who was cited by Hemingway or Paul Simon. Tilden also was responsible, that for a long time tennis was called a sissy sport.
For both genders, i would nominate the Divine Lenglen. She transcended sports into arts. Novels, ballets and plays were written about her, her match with Wills at Cannes was the most heralded and media studded match of all time.
Actually, Hoad and Gonzales were good friends, they travelled together and shared the same cheap motels on tour, played pool together.
They also regarded themselves as the two greatest players ever, an opinion shared by Rosewall.
It's amazes me to this day how one match, Lenglen against Wills is still talked about today. To me honest I cannot think of one match that I have seen in my lifetime that can equal that match, relatively speaking in people discussing it and the anticipation prior to the match.
And you are right about Tilden and how he transcended the sport. He was the Babe Ruth of his day. It was never about his opponent, it was either Tilden won or Tilden lost the match.
In a February 1951 AP poll on who was the greatest tennis player of the last 50 years, there was 393 votes in total and out of those 310 voted for Tilden, followed by Don Budge, Jack Kramer, Helen Wills, Suzanne Lenglen, Bill Johnston, Fred Perry and Ellsworth Vines. Of all the sports in which they asked that general question (baseball and others) Tilden had most votes in his favor.
To me it's a shame that Tilden has fallen so far in the minds of the general public because he was about as dominant as you can get as a player. According to Bud Collins' Encyclopedia, Tilden from 1912 to 1930 won 138 out of 192 tournaments. How many more dominant can you get?
Laver, in his book, remembered the first time he hold down Gonzales after a big contract discussion.He was amused at how, big and fierce Pancho was surprised to see that small aussie call him out.He thought he would get punched, but from then on, Gonzales knew who was the true boss of the circuit.[/
Gonzales' weak point was contracts and finances. Kramer, Laver, Hoad and Rosewall all did better than him at the bank, and Kramer defeated Gonzales in the latter's attempted lawsuit.
In the period 1957 to 1960, Hoad earned over $100,000 per year, which was much more than Gonzales' earnings, although Gonzales probably contributed as much as Hoad to the ticket sales.
Hoad was the first pro tennis player to earn over $100,000 a year from play on a regular basis. It took Laver and a decade of inflation to match this record (1959 dollars were worth about 20 times today's dollars).