Tournament of Champions - 1956 to 1959 - is it a Pro. Slam - yes or no?

[BobbyOne]

Originally Posted by timnz

What is equivalency in your view? What made them equivalent?

Regarding Tradition - what establishes tradition? The duration of the event right? But that is only discovered retrospectively. They only knew the French Pro, Wembley and the US Pro had longevity retrospectively. But at the time, refer to the photo of Nusslein from my last posts, they regarded the World Pro alongside of the US Pro. - as being part of the 'big' events. They weren't to know that the World Pro. didn't have staying legs. We must judge history as how people perceived it at the time. Otherwise if we might find that the present 4 majors drop off the list of majors in the future because one or more might go out of fashion.

I think it is useful to compare this to golf. Golf's 4 majors changed over times. Bobby Jones is regarded as the guy who won Golf's calendar Grand Slam. However, the majors he won are different than today's majors. Nobody depreciates Jones' achievement and says that it is not a grand slam, because the events are not the same as today's events. No, they realise that the majors change over time - so they judge his achievements according to what was perceived at the time. Everybody in late 1933 early 1934 regarded Nusslein as World Pro. Champion. They did because of his win in Berlin. It's very clear that that event held at least as much weight if not more than the US Pro championships at the time. The fact that it didn't continue as the World Championship shouldn't take anything away from the fact, at the time, it was the World Championship and therefore worthy of a Major status.

Let me rephrase this. If the Berlin World Pro. Championships had continued for decades - then it would be regarded as a Pro. Slam right? (According to your 'tradition' statement). But if it had continued in 1934,1935, 1936...etc etc, 1966, 1967 - would that have made the 1933 event more different for Nusslein to win? No, not at all. It was was it was at the time. He should be given credit for winner what was a major at the time.

The same problem has happened with the World Hard Court Championships. It was officially (according to the ILTF) and regarded by all of the players of the day as a Major. But these days because it is a forgotten event - suddenly people don't recognize it as a Major anymore. But that doesn't take away from the fact that it was recognized as a major at the time. We must get away from historical revisionism.

I partly agree with your reservation regarding tradition and equivalents. But only regarding the pre WW2 events. Not regarding the post WW2 events. The latter had long tradition and were equivalents to the G.S. tournaments as they were held at Paris, at London and in the USA.

The US Pro was establishes as early as 1927 and had a certain tradition even in the 1930s.

I think it's common sense at the majority of experts that pro tennis had three majors after the war (or since 1956 the Paris event). Thus we were able to state that Rosewall and Laver achieved a so called Pro Grand Slam even though the players themselves did not call it that way.