Great review by Scott on the Happer book. Obviously Happer is an insider of the dynamics of the promotional games, and can give first hand details about the frictions of the rivalling pro organisations in the early open era. I will give a short review on the Greg Ruth book, which is a bit cheaper. Ruth book is an academic thesis in tennis history, following in the footsteps of Gillmeister (on early tennis origins) and Baltzell (on the gentlemens game). Like Happer, he focusses on the promotional conditions of the pro game, but also studies sociological backgrounds with the current and now predominant academic impetus on gender and racism. He goes longer back in history, starting with the Lenglen/Piles pro tour of the mid 1920s, then concentrates on the West Coast game between Perry Jones, the amateur czar, and Jack Kramer, the pro king. He has a long chapter on Pancho Gonzalez, and gives insight on the struggles of the mens pro game in the open era, and - more than Happer- on the development of the womens game, looking at the long line of conflicts of women top stars like Lenglen, Marble, Betz and later King and the WTA.
What is interesting, is, that he uses sources and archive material, which we discussed here earlier, especially in the thread: The structure of the old pro game. Those sources include the (there mentioned) McCall papers, letters of Mark McCormack and IMG, material of Lamar Hunt and the WCT. We get here no new results of the pro tours, but insights into the fragile standards of pro tennis. For instance, Ruth studied papers of the lawsuit of Gonzalez, filed in 1963 before a federal court in LA against the pro organisation IPTA and the leading pro players. Pancho lost the case, but here we find new numbers of his income in 1963. He had an income of 49000$, including a contract with a Bahamas hotel for 25000$ and a contract with Spalding company for rackets for 15000$.
Gonzalez is a bit of the hero of Ruths book, he makes clear that Gonzalez often was on the negative end of financial rewards, and under the thumb of Kramer, with whom he had bitter feuds. He won all this World Series, but always the losers like Trabert and Hoad got the lion share of the money. However i find it problematic, that Ruth frequently mentions the race issue in this context against the likes of Kramer and Trabert, but has no supporting sources for it. Certainly, Gonzalez had faced adversity due to his mexican-american background in his youth, but on the other side, the tennis people like Jones and his DC squads or the Kramer pro troups included or signed people like Segura, Olmedo, Ayala and Gonzalez without any apparent discrimination. In the 1960s, the pros wanted to sign Arthur Ashe badly.
We can also learn a lot about the impact of IMG and Mark the Shark McCormack on the off- court earnings of the top pros, beginning with the signing of Laver in 1968. Laver got a lot of new lucrative contracts outside the classical racket and sports business, with Hotels, resorts, tennis clincis, books, videos and magazines, ensurance companies, clothes, cars, peanuts and whatever you want.
The book is well written, sadly he has not included the new material, we have had laid down here on this forum about the expanding pro scene in the mid 1960s, when the pros on their own and just before the open era, with new promoters like Dill, McCall, Dixon and others made strides to a better future, while establishing a new solid US pro circuit with bigger prize money and expanding venues (up to 16 US pro tournaments in 1967). On the whole, the book is recommended and complements the recently published books of Underwood, Jordan and the findings here made on this forum.
