Laver's book came out in 2013, and by then there had been a long-running debate about 1964 based on Andrew's documentation of Laver's and Rosewall's win/loss records for the year. His stats were published to Wikipedia, along with many of his other findings such as Laver's total of 200 tournament titles. That information has been incorporated into new books, such as the new edition of The Education of a Tennis Player. I think, in that context, Laver's statement in his 2013 autobiography may not be based on official records such as rankings points from 1964 -- records which after all this time are probably lost -- but on Andrew's new stats. Laver, or his co-author, could well mean that he was the top-ranked pro at the end of '64 in the sense that he had the best stats and the best overall record, based on the new and widely available information provided by Andrew. That's how much of an impact Andrew's work has had (and rightly so); and I think it's more likely that a statement made today would be based on the currently available stats, rather than on old statistics kept by the pros in '64 which are probably lost. I know both Bobby and Bud Collins have asked Butch Buchholz for the exact numbers of the '64 ranking points, and Buchholz told Bud that he could not remember them; obviously he didn't have them on hand anymore, or know where to find them.
Andrew, you might say, is the closest analogy in tennis to your baseball statistician friend
Having said that, when we refer to Andrew's new stats, we should be clear that they were new to us, when he provided them -- but there is no reason to think that Kramer, Rosewall and Buchholz did not know, at the time, everything that happened on the tour. If there was money involved on a tour, or a single stand, or a tournament, surely Rosewall as treasurer had the records. Kramer put together the tournaments of the US circuit in '64 and I know he also traveled to Europe that year for the tournaments there. Buchholz seems to have participated in virtually everything on the pro circuit (exaggerating not by much) in '64; he accompanied Laver on that last trek through the Middle East and France in November, before composing his article for World Tennis. Possibly no one was in a better position than he was, to give an overview of the main '64 tour and to know what all the players did in '64, and who was ranked in what spot, etc.
That information was surely known and recorded in '64, so I cannot agree that we necessarily know better what the situation was. We do know the situation better than McCauley knew it when he wrote his great book in 2000 -- thanks to Andrew's work -- but that's because the records had long since been forgotten or lost.
Buchholz was a regular columnist for World Tennis, so when he wrote his article summarizing the tour, he was not some one-time guest columnist who had no other contact with the magazine. If they wanted to know something about the pro scene and its tour, it would have been easy for them to ask him. So the fact that World Tennis, in its
April 1965 issue, said that Laver was still challenging Rosewall for the number one spot and might soon get it, is quite significant, and cannot be dismissed as some random newspaper making some mistaken assumption. I cannot see how the preeminent American tennis magazine would not know who stood atop the rankings in April 1965, or at any time -- or why they would make a careless and mistaken assumption about who the top pro was. They would have been corrected by Buchholz, Laver, or someone else; often when they did make errors, readers pointed them out, in letters to the editors, published in the magazine.
Bobby mentioned in a post above, as well, that to his knowledge no letter was published in World Tennis to the effect that Buchholz was wrong in naming Rosewall as the unquestioned pro champ for '64. I've had a look myself and found no such correction/objection in the first few months of '65.
In any case, I have to disagree with your assertion that Joe McCauley made a mistake in his book, in your post from a few days ago when you said you'd contacted one of the '64 tour players. McCauley, as far as I can see, faithfully followed the documentation of the time period: Rosewall was ranked #1 above Laver at the end of '64 (as stated twice by World Tennis, once by Buchholz; and by numerous newspapers), and Laver overtook him in '65.
If you mean that McCauley incorrectly called the '64 pro circuit a championship tour, well I don't recall him doing that; I don't have the book on me but I recall him saying only that the pros used a points system for their tournaments and that Rosewall ended up at the top of it by years-end.
