Open-era tournaments by surface

[money_ball]

I pulled all the tournament data from the ATP website:

1877-1967 (pre-Open era): 260 tournaments
1968-2016 (Open-era): 3787 tournaments

[Note: The ATP website does not provide any non-Grand Slam data for the pre-Open era.]

Here is a chart of the # of men's pro tennis tournaments (excluding Challengers, Futures, etc.) by surface by year:

You can view the data in this spreadsheet:

• Tennis tournaments data: Surfaces

I'm not too knowledgable about the history of tennis, but it seems to me if one were to use "# of tournaments" as a metric to measure "popularity", the most popular period would be:

• 1971-1982

I don't know why the big dip from 1982-1986 (perhaps some of you can fill me in), but there seems to be a second popularity surge during:

• 1987-1999

I also don't know too much about the business of tennis and the ATP. But I do know that of the times that I've been to the US Open and Wimbledon during past five years, they both have been ****ing packed!