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It is a pity open tennis has not arrived earlier for Pauline Betz. As buscemi has written, she has dominated Osborne, Hart and Brough and would have won many more Grand Slams. Years ago I tried to make combined pro-amateur rankings for women before the open era. I took into account how dominant...

The open era rankings website has all this info on a week-by-week basis. You can also calculate the tournament points if you deduct the bonus points from the total number of points, which are reported on the ATP website.

Sydney and Tokyo, both of them indoors in October.

I wonder whether any of those planned matches were actually played. I found no evidence for them in the German newspapers. Probably the pros did not have the time to organize and play those matches.

Starting in 1993, the ATP gave special Super Series status to 9 of their 11 single-week Championship Series tournaments. The idea was to get the top players to play each other more often and add prestige to selected ATP events. The prize money and thus available computer points (between 280 and...

My calculations show another possible solution to this puzzle. I think the five Australian tournaments at the start of the year counted, just as every event with a draw of at least 6, where they played for the 3rd place. It excludes Dallas, Newport and Cannes. After Laver won in San Raphael...

Well, not even Chris Jordan's book has any additional results. I searched Gallica, and found a few details. April 2, 1935: France beat Holland 3-2 in Amsterdam, will meet the winner of the Great Britain vs Ireland match...

There was no increase, in 1982 the Grand Prix winner (Connors) also got 600,000 dollars. However, by the time of the 1982 Australian Open he had such a big lead, that noone could have caught up with him.

Chris Jordan's book only has the results and the venues, but not the exact dates.

Scroll through the "rankings database" topic at "mens tennis forums". Slasher1985 has managed to reconstruct most of the rankings from the 1970s. Of course, the Grand Prix was the real tour before 1990, but the ATP computer ranking points and the Grand Prix points were different.

One of the reasons the USA and Australia was so dominant in the 1950s is that they were effected less by World War 2 than European countries. Tennis in the 1930s was also far more international than after the war. Before that tennis players were geographically separated and travelled usually...

On the openerarankings site you can find the ranking system rules, and even the reconstructed weekly rankings between 1979 and 1986. Your table from 1977 shows the Grand Prix points, which were different from the ATP ranking points.

I have also read the Happer book and there are many aspects I like about it. There are many pieces of insider information I have not read before on tournament categories and player designations. It was apparently Happer who often designated players to certain Super Series events. The book helps...

Thanks for calling this book to my attention. I have read the excerpt on Amazon (the years 1968 to 1972 are there), and it seems to be a well-researched book worth reading.

I remember watching some of those doubles masters on tv, maybe on Eurosport.

May he rest in peace. His article series about professional tennis was excellent.

It is well-known that in 1923 the ILTF introduced the Official Championship category to replace the world championships in 1924, and initially the national championships of Australia, France, England and the United States belonged here. ILTF recognized other national events in subsequent years...

Thanks for the clarification. It could mean River Oaks was the only significant event on red clay in the US before the 1970s. Maybe some of the events on the Florida clay court season (e.g. Dixie at Tampa) was also on red clay?

Was River Oaks always on red clay, already in the 1930? I do not know what kind of clay was used at the US Clay Court Championships in its first decades, but one of its venues, the Woodstock Country Club in Indianapolis already had tournaments on Har-Tru by 1950 (probably earlier as well). The...

St. Louis switched to hard court from 1966 on. In 1966 the World Pro Clay Court in Barcelona was the top clay-court tournament. In 1967 important pro events on clay were played in Orlando and Miami Beach. In the first part of the 1950s the US Pro Clay event was significant, even if the best...

In 1971 there was no unified tournament circuit or point system. Grand Prix and WCT had different point systems, and many important events (TCC, USLTA Winter Circuit, South African Open, Davis Cup) were not part of either of these circuits. I have done an arbitrary spreadsheet using my own...

Yes.

Grand Prix events still had to have at least 50.000 USD prize money (just as in 1977), so I would not lower the prize money limit for the main circuit.

Basel is now listed with 50.000 prize money. Zurich, Auckland and Laguna Niguel have 25.000. However, for some reason the Laguna tournament was not included in the ATP rankings.

Take a look at the openerarankings website. All the rules and points are explained there.

You got a good point here, I also think this prize-fight mentality determined who was regarded the best player for many decades. And boxing was enormously popular in the time period we talk about, it is understandable people could make analogues in tennis as well.

Yes, I am aware of this, but I could not find ELO rankings for the 19th century.

Kramer's book "The Game" has some info on Kramer's plans. After he beat Sedgman in 1953, there were no other top amateurs to tour with. Hoad and Rosewall were too young, and Trabert was still building a reputation. So Kramer took a year off just to promote the 1954 pro tour in a mini-tournament...

It was in 1887 that W. Renshaw suffered an elbow injury at the Scottish Championhips and could not defend his Wimbledon title. Yes, he played a lot of doubles and mixed doubles matches at tournaments where he did not take part in the men's singles event (including the Irish and Northern England...

I do not know the complete rules for the ELO system, but I have seen it applied to football (soccer). I will leave it to others who have the necessary computational skills and time to work out how it can be applied to tennis.