gino
Legend
Dude.... Marcelo Rios was #1. Murray has never been #1. Further proof that accumulation of points doesn't define talent. Del Potro was never #1.
Emmo not a superhero, nor an idiot.
- Thread starter KG1965
- Start date
Dude.... Marcelo Rios was #1. Murray has never been #1. Further proof that accumulation of points doesn't define talent. Del Potro was never #1.
I need a source.
NatF
Bionic Poster
Murray is number 1 right now lol.
pc1
G.O.A.T.
You mean Eddie Murray??
gino, Murray is No.1.
Courier was stronger than Emerson because he reached No.1 while Emerson never did. Don't know whch of these two players was more talented.
krosero, I once read that Rosewall won that series with a 10:1 balance. Don't remember where I read it.
pc1
G.O.A.T.
I like Bill Murray better.Bill Murray
pc1
G.O.A.T.
LOL.
Groundhog Day is one of my favorite all time movies. When I first saw it I couldn't believe how good it was.
Gary Duane
G.O.A.T.
Love that scene.
Phoenix1983
G.O.A.T.
Thank you, Bobby. I'm not going to include that 10-1 figure in Rosewall's stats until we can get this confirmed somehow, but 10-1 makes some sense. That Melbourne series was reportedly going to be for "13 matches" (13 days of play?), and I saw a report that Olmedo dropped out of the series at the last minute. Perhaps Rosewall didn't get to play Olmedo and ended up playing only 11 matches.
Rosewall's known record for '62 is 53-7, only 60 matches played. But these TV series would add a good deal more, if it was 11 matches in Melbourne, plus a week's worth of matches in the TV series at Sydney.
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So we really have 3 TV series still to document:
Sydney in February '62
Melbourne in December '62
Los Angeles in June '63
Rosewall seems to have won the Sydney series and, if Bobby is correct, the Melbourne. LA, who knows.
Below, additional material I've found on these series.
Sydney Morning Herald of Feb. 25, 1962:
An AP report from Melbourne, in the Arizona Republic of December 15, 1962:
AP report on Saturday, December 15, 1962, filed from Melbourne:
Sydney in February '62
Melbourne in December '62
Los Angeles in June '63
Rosewall seems to have won the Sydney series and, if Bobby is correct, the Melbourne. LA, who knows.
Below, additional material I've found on these series.
Sydney Morning Herald of Feb. 25, 1962:
For a week or more at the White City a group of professional tennis players have been playing one-setters for a TV series.
Winners have received approximately £450 a match, and the losers half that amount. Ken Rosewall’s earnings alone have been more than £3,000.
An AP report from Melbourne, in the Arizona Republic of December 15, 1962:
Laver … will turn pro after the Challenge Round in Brisbane Dec. 26-28 and launch a head-to-head series against Rosewall, new champion of the pros….
Besides Rosewall, Sedgman, MacKay and Buchholz, players competing in the pro tournament at Cowes include Andres Gimeno of Spain, rated second behind Rosewall, Hoad, Ashley Cooper, Malcolm Anderson and Rex Hartwig.
AP report on Saturday, December 15, 1962, filed from Melbourne:
Olmedo Departs Pro Net Tour
… The former U.S. Davis Cup star pulled out of the $38,610 tournament at nearby Cowes Thursday after a dispute over expenses.
Without a word to his teammates, Olmedo caught any early morning bus to Dandenong, and a train to Melbourne, 90 miles from Cowes, and then a plane to Sydney….
Frank Sedgman, president of the association—which pro tournament players formed after the withdrawal of Jack Kramer as promoter—said Olmedo became miffed when he was asked to kick in with a share of the travel costs for the world tour of the past year….
Sedgman said he thought Olmedo’s move was an impulsive one and he felt sure the Peruvian would rejoin the troupe for the world tour next year.
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pc1
G.O.A.T.
I saw it at least 10,000 times.
Apparently in one of the drafts of the script Phil Connors lived out Groundhog Day ten thousand times.
http://www.slashfilm.com/bill-murray-repeating-groundhog-day/
http://www.express.co.uk/entertainm...-how-Bill-Murray-Phil-was-trapped-and-escaped
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There is a reference in the Rosewall Wiki bio, also I read somewhere that this match was the final match in the series, which would make it the deciding match, according to the format you mention above.
I will look for where I read that.
Right now I am trying to follow up on that Benrus Cup award for 1963 and 1964, a very intriguing investigation, which should settle the status of the Cleveland event.
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Trabert tended to dominate Rosewall in big matches.
Rosewall made his greatest showing in 1957, when he pushed Gonzales hard on their tour, and won Wembley. Considering the opposition, which you should do, that was a great showing.
Well spoken. I agree.
A figure of 10-1 would mean that Rosewall was defeated and lost his final match in that tournament. It was an elimination tournament.
Limpinhitter
G.O.A.T.
Shhhhhh! They don't want to hear that part.
Limp, Instead of making a new lie you finally should APOLOGIZE for your previous lies, especially for your mean lie about me regarding Rosewall's "40 open era" majors!!!
The Wiki bio for Rosewall has him losing 8 (eight) matches for 1962.
Dan Lobb, Forget about Benrus Cup. The status of Cleveland has already been settled, lately also by krosero.
Dan Lobb, You are not right. Trabert and Rosewall were even (3:3 matches) when being amateurs even though Trabert was four years older then and in his prime while Rosewall was very young.. Altogether Rosewall leads 7:6 in big matches.
Dan Lobb, It was great showing but surely NOT his greatest showing.
Dan Lobb, Maybe you are right. In that case Hoad would have been the winner with only one match win while Rosewall would have won ten matches (lost only one) and was the loser. Would be a rather strange format.
Ok I do have some results now for these TV series.
Since newspapers generally kept silent about results of these matches, I ran searches in the TV listings of weekend newspapers. A series of matches "filmed in Australia" came up at newspapers.com in a couple of places. The matches were shown in Burlington, Vermont on Sunday afternoons, starting June 30, 1963. Later they were shown on Aussie television as well, starting in December '63 as listed in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.
Each weekend would have a listing, for example: "Sedgman vs. Cooper." Of course the results were not given, but you can make out quite easily who the winners were by following the matchups each weekend. As the Aussie press described it, the format was "the 'King of the Mountain' format, which means that the winning player of each match plays successive matches until he is beaten."
So the Feb. '62 series went like this:
Sedgman d. Cooper (reported in the Aussie press as the first match of the series)
Gimeno d. Sedgman
Gimeno d. McGregor
Rose d. Gimeno
Anderson d. Rose
Rosewall d. Anderson
Rosewall d. Buchholz
Rosewall d. Hartwig
Rosewall d. Ayala
Rosewall d. Trabert
MacKay d. Rosewall
Hoad vs. MacKay
That's 12 matches, featuring a total of 13 players.
I don't know for sure whether Hoad/MacKay was the last match of the series, but these programs were consistently shown on the same day and time each week so they were easy to check, and there is nothing listed after Hoad/MacKay.
I also don't know who won the Hoad/MacKay match.
The series was described both in the Burlington and Aussie papers as having Tony Trabert as commentator.
A singles and a doubles, also following the King of the Mountain format, was played each day.
McCauley has for the February 1962 TV series only this:
Rosewall d. Trabert 8-6
Sedgman/Buchholz beat Hoad/Anderson 9-7
_________________________________________________
December '62 series, I found actual results in The Age (Melbourne):
December 13
Hoad d. Anderson 8-6
Hoad d. Segura 8-5
The Age reported that these were “the first two matches of the £17,550 professional tennis TV series at Cowes”, played “on a concrete court”.
That agrees with the preview I posted above, in which Hoad was to open the series against Olmedo and the winner was to go against Anderson. We know that Olmedo left the series (his scheduled match against Hoad on Dec. 12 may actually have been rained out, and he departed the next morning), so the first match of the series appears to be Hoad/Anderson.
_________________________________________________
I've got nothing on the '63 series in Los Angeles. But per the report above, “Laver and Buchholz met in the opening match and play has so shifted that Hoad and Rosewall will clash when the fifth round is filmed next Tuesday.” That seems to mean that Laver and Buchholz were eliminated early, one of them eliminating the other, the winner then losing to Rosewall, Hoad or another player. Ken and Lew then met in the 5th round, out of 10 planned altogether.
Since newspapers generally kept silent about results of these matches, I ran searches in the TV listings of weekend newspapers. A series of matches "filmed in Australia" came up at newspapers.com in a couple of places. The matches were shown in Burlington, Vermont on Sunday afternoons, starting June 30, 1963. Later they were shown on Aussie television as well, starting in December '63 as listed in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.
Each weekend would have a listing, for example: "Sedgman vs. Cooper." Of course the results were not given, but you can make out quite easily who the winners were by following the matchups each weekend. As the Aussie press described it, the format was "the 'King of the Mountain' format, which means that the winning player of each match plays successive matches until he is beaten."
So the Feb. '62 series went like this:
Sedgman d. Cooper (reported in the Aussie press as the first match of the series)
Gimeno d. Sedgman
Gimeno d. McGregor
Rose d. Gimeno
Anderson d. Rose
Rosewall d. Anderson
Rosewall d. Buchholz
Rosewall d. Hartwig
Rosewall d. Ayala
Rosewall d. Trabert
MacKay d. Rosewall
Hoad vs. MacKay
That's 12 matches, featuring a total of 13 players.
I don't know for sure whether Hoad/MacKay was the last match of the series, but these programs were consistently shown on the same day and time each week so they were easy to check, and there is nothing listed after Hoad/MacKay.
I also don't know who won the Hoad/MacKay match.
The series was described both in the Burlington and Aussie papers as having Tony Trabert as commentator.
A singles and a doubles, also following the King of the Mountain format, was played each day.
McCauley has for the February 1962 TV series only this:
Rosewall d. Trabert 8-6
Sedgman/Buchholz beat Hoad/Anderson 9-7
_________________________________________________
December '62 series, I found actual results in The Age (Melbourne):
December 13
Hoad d. Anderson 8-6
Hoad d. Segura 8-5
The Age reported that these were “the first two matches of the £17,550 professional tennis TV series at Cowes”, played “on a concrete court”.
That agrees with the preview I posted above, in which Hoad was to open the series against Olmedo and the winner was to go against Anderson. We know that Olmedo left the series (his scheduled match against Hoad on Dec. 12 may actually have been rained out, and he departed the next morning), so the first match of the series appears to be Hoad/Anderson.
_________________________________________________
I've got nothing on the '63 series in Los Angeles. But per the report above, “Laver and Buchholz met in the opening match and play has so shifted that Hoad and Rosewall will clash when the fifth round is filmed next Tuesday.” That seems to mean that Laver and Buchholz were eliminated early, one of them eliminating the other, the winner then losing to Rosewall, Hoad or another player. Ken and Lew then met in the 5th round, out of 10 planned altogether.
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hoodjem
G.O.A.T.
Murray is no. 1 right now--for the last 18 weeks.
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krosero, Thanks for your great findings and projections.
Two surprising results in the February series: MacKay defeated Rosewall (Barry's only second win over Muscles in 27 matches, as far as I know) and semi-retired Rose defeated Gimeno who finished No.3 of the pros in 1962.
Scott_tennis
Rookie
That the old pro tour had lower percentages than other environments is something that's been long known
I think PC1 was one of the first to note it on this board, and I talked about it extensively in my more recent thread: https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/career-percentages-of-17-alltime-greats.562591/
Emmo's win/loss percentage took quite a dive in '68 but again I think that was at least partly due to a change in formats, though the reverse of what we usually mean. Usually we say, correctly, that Laver's percentages went up in '68 because he was now participating in tournaments with large draws, in which he could pick up several easy wins over lower ranked opponents, in contrast to the old pro tour where it was common to play 2-round or 3-round tournaments with no easy wins.
Emmo had large draws throughout the 60s but in '68 he actually started playing smaller draws that were not that different from what he would have seen on the old pro tour. He was an NTL player and NTL often put on 4-man or 6-man tourneys. In those types of tournaments, again, you get at most 1 easy win, before you come up against the top players in the world.
I don't have Emmo's '68 record in front of me so I can't say at all how much this change in format was a factor in his low percentages. But I have to believe that it played some factor, because I'm sure he played at least a good number of small-draw events that he would not have seen on the amateur circuit.
So it's ironic, Emerson did, in a way, get a taste of the old pro tour format, but only when the sport went Open. That may sound strange but others including @urban have pointed out that the transition to the OE was not sudden but somewhat gradual; the first years of the OE had many events that would not have been foreign to the old pros.
Emmo's amateur percentages were impressive, even higher than Laver's and Rosewall's. But we're looking at Emerson's absolute peak years (the mid-60s), whereas Rosewall and Laver had their best percentages as amateurs, before their peak years; and as OE pros, when they were in decline; so you can't do a true comparison.
One thing that's clear is that Emerson did not have great longevity, though that is not exactly news.
I reviewed my records regarding Emerson's individual match results for 1968. I have calculated a total match record of 39-24 after he turned pro (starting with Hollywood FL event and ending with Wembley event). The 39-24 record breaks down to 11-19 vs. other NTL players and 28-5 vs. all other players.
His head-to-head vs. other NTL players: 5-4 vs. Laver; 1-1 vs. Rosewall; 1-3 vs. Gonzales; 2-6 vs. Gimeno and 2-5 vs. Stolle. Interestingly, Emerson played Rosewall in each of his first two pro events (Hollywood FL and Wembley BBC), but did not play another match against him for the remainder of the year.
In eight "open" events (Bournemouth, French Open, Kent, Queen's Club, Wimbledon, US Open, PSW and Buenos Aires) his record was 27-7.
In fifteen pro-only events his record was 12-17.
I do not have his results readily available for the first three months of 1968 (before he turned pro)
This was especially true in Davis Cup and Kramer Cup.
If the Benrus Cup remained in Cleveland in 1963 and 1964, that would show that there was no relationship between the cup and the U.S. Pro, which all observers acknowledge went to Forest Hills and Longwood.
Unless shown otherwise, I am assuming that the Cleveland folks did not give up the cup in 1963, so that there was no relationship between the cup and the U.S. Pro title.
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Interesting that Emerson had the hth advantage over Laver...amazing, considering that some posters here appear confused about Emerson's abilities.
Scott_tennis
Rookie
Emerson beat Laver at Hollywood FL, Midland, Lima, Buenos Aires and Wembley (year-end).
Laver beat Emerson at Madison Square Garden, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo and La Paz.
Dan Lobb, All posters here are aware that Emerson was an excellent player. Truth is that he was not a really great player though.
EDIT: By the way, I'm sure that Emerson would not be called a really great player even if he would have turned pro early. Even more I'm convinced that Gonzalez, Hoad, Rosewall and Laver would be called great players even if they would have stayed amateurs.
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TB has him 1-1 at Thunderbird in March (QF) and 4-1 at Vanderbilt Athletic (Finalist) a couple of weeks later, and 44-27 for the entire year.
Andrew Tas has Laver and Emmo 5-5 for the year. He has Laver winning their QF (1R) at NTL Paris April 18-20 (4-6, 6-4, 6-2). TB has this as well.
pc1
G.O.A.T.
All this discussion about Emerson not being a great player makes me wonder if Laver, Gonzalez, Rosewall and Hoad would have been considered great if they didn't turn pro early!
I don't think they would have been CONSIDERED great. They may have been great but I think the general opinion may have been that they might not of been great if they did not turn pro early.
Thoughts??
I don't think they would have been CONSIDERED great. They may have been great but I think the general opinion may have been that they might not of been great if they did not turn pro early.
Thoughts??
pc1
G.O.A.T.
True and how much could they have done better than Emerson c1964? Hard to do much better.
Phoenix1983
G.O.A.T.
pc1
G.O.A.T.
You have to treat Emerson with respect. I don't understand why some say that.
Ellsworth Vines didn't rank him in the top ten for his book but if I recall he said he ranked Emerson number 11 and many rank Emerson in the top ten.
That's why I write if players like Gonzalez, Rosewall and Hoad stayed amateurs how much better could they be than Emerson? They almost certainly imo would not have risen to the heights they reached in real life because of the lesser competition and their amateur record did not show them as invincible. Maybe Emerson would be glorified as the one who turned pro and the others would be thought of in a lesser manner which also would be terrible.
Emerson had great talent so it's not incomprehensible that he would have thrived in the pros.
pc1
G.O.A.T.
You're right. I forgot to mention he only included to list players who played after WWII.
Incidentally Vines clearly ranks Tilden number one before and after World War II.
Phoenix1983, Emerson does not have a really great record. He never won an open era or pro major. Even his record as an amateur is not a huge one. In the 1963 to 1967 period, when all the great players were pros, he "only" won 10 majors and was a clear No.1 for only two years.
We must value Emmo for what he has done not what he maybe could have done if he had turned pro at the begin of the 1960's.
Regarding peak level I cannot rank him among the top 25. I'm sorry. Perhaps No.26.
In contrary to another poster, I don't think Emerson was very talented. He was not a genius like Tilden or Gonzalez or Hoad or Rosewall or Laver or McEnroe.
That is a great result for Emerson, and shows that he could play against the greatest players.
But then, that was already apparent from the early sixties.
Emerson's record in majors is clearly superior to Gimeno or Roche.
Dan Lobb, You compare apples with broken screws. Of course Emerson is superior to Gimeno and Roche in majors as the latter two played in a different league than Emerson did! Gimeno was a pro where he had to deal with GOAT candidates, Laver, Rosewall, Hoad and Gonzalez. Roche in his short prime succeeded in open era where Emmo did nothing.
It would be good for you and for us if you would learn tennis history...
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