Carlo Giovanni Colussi
Semi-Pro
I enjoyed reading that section. I have to say that I think I disagree with their top 4 tournaments in 1970 and 1971. Laver won the 'Tennis Champions Classic' both those years. In 1971, Laver achieved the seemingly impossible feat of winning 13 straight matches against the cream of the world's pros in the Tennis Champions Classic. That is like winning two Grand Slam tournaments back to back in a row!
In the 'Tennis Champions Classic' only the WCT players were invited so Laver hadn't to face Smith, Kodes or Nastase (Rocket lost successively to Ian and Ilie at Stockholm and Wembley that year) so I don't truly agree that it was like winning 2 true Slam in a row. Besides Laver in his autobiography clearly wrote that those classics were merely exhibitions because sometimes the attendance were poor (if my memory is good he picked up the Boston Garden match against "Rochey") and Laver then understood that the public in the 70's wasn't interested any more in "head-to-head one night-stand" events but at the time already favoured tournaments.
In the early 70's the Italian champ was important (nowadays it is a "1000" as any other) and in particular in 71 the only great players missing were Rosewall (injured) and Nastase (because Tiriac had convinced Nasty to play Madrid where Ion beat Nasty for the last time) whereas at Roland Garros 1971 were missing exactly 16 (out of the 32) WCT players among them Laver, Rosewall, Okker, Newcombe, Roche (I recognize the latter being already injured enough) ...
Globally I agree superb SgtJohn's list (that I have recorded to scrutinize it precisely in months to come) except that in my mind he underrates Vines' pro feats in favour of Slam amateur events and that he never picked up Davis Cup events when that competition was the most important of all in the 20's. Tilden was considered as the best in the early 20's mostly because he was unbeaten in Davis Cup and Cochet the same in the late 20's because he beat Tilden in that team event. Here is my list (only since 1950) which is slightly different from SgtJohn because SgtJohn considers that in the 50's one has to select a great clay event each year to be fair to modern players. I answered somewhere that in return in the 2000's one should pick up a true fast court event each year to be fair to ancient players (unhappily a true great fast court tournament doesn't exist anymore : Wimbledon nowadays is "almost" as slow as Roland, of course I'm kidding a little but not so much, and Flushing is considered by the ITF as one of the slowest fast surfaces) : http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showpost.php?p=2840980&postcount=45, and http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showpost.php?p=2840980&postcount=46