Selecting the 4 greatest events of each year from 1968 to 1990

[Otacon]

Professional tennis in the first 20 years or so of the open era was quite chaotic, as there were parallel circuits and the event hierarchy was instable. We can divide the Open Era into 3 phases.

1- 1968-1978: Although the game was then open, it remained factionalised with professional groups such as World Championship Tennis and the National Tennis League at odds with the ILTF. WCT and NTL players boycotted various Grand Slams while the ILTF countered the control of promoters by creating a grand prix series thanks to Jack Kramer. In 1972, the players formed their own syndicate (ATP) to protect themselves from the promoters and associations. The ILTF, who retained control of the Grand Slams and the Davis Cup, changed their name to the ITF in 1977. In 1978, after 10 years of bickering, WCT merged with the grand prix series. As for the Australian Open, except for the 1969 and 1971 tournaments, the overwhelming majority of leading players kept disregarding it, because of the remoteness, the inconvenient dates (around Christmas and New Year's Day) and the low prize money.
2- 1978-1990: Tensions remained in the men's game with WCT leaving the grand prix series in 1982 but with lesser success. In 1988, the AO was first held at Flinders Park (later renamed Melbourne Park). The change of the venue also led to a change of the date from mid-December to mid-January and the court surface from grass to a hard court. In 1989, the ATP announced, in a parking lot at the US Open, that they will take control of the men's game. Within weeks of the announcement, 85 of the world's top 100 players have signed on to the new ATP tour.
3- From 1990 onwards: In January 1990, the ATP tour officially begins. The name grand prix disappears and, at the top end, the ATP tour is made up of the Super Nine, later renamed the Masters Series, in addition to the Grand Slams.The sport experiences greater unity than at any time since the open era began. Grand Slams eventually came around to offering substantial prize money and all top players started attending the four Grand Slam Events every year for the first time in tennis history.

After this little introduction, it is easier to understand why so many Grand Slams should be asterisked and other do not even deserve the "Grand Slam tournament" label.
Now we can almost fairly compare open era players' achievements in "real" major tournaments.

Grass Clay Outdoor hard Indoor carpet

 

[Limpinhitter]

No mention of the 70' and 71' TCC? Shameful!

 

[KG1965]

I like the premise.
I do not agree with the final result because:
1) the majors are only the slams (Bud Collins and the other gurus can write and say what they want but the majors must have a seeing ... major)
2) The Finals (ATP, GP or WCT) are ... the Finals, an 8 tournament can not be a major, it's a big title, a great tournament but not a major
3) in the 70s it is difficult to consider Paris a major, Melbourne even more, there were better tournaments like Philadelphia, Palm Springs, L.A., Rome ... but none was major.
4) Sorry for Connors, Borg and the others but the actual majors who could play were 2 each year (or three).

 

[Otacon]

No mention of the 70' and 71' TCC? Shameful!

What is TCC ?

 

[NatF]

What is TCC ?

Tennis Champions Classic, more of a series of one night stands than a tournament, it's bit of a contentious subject on here

 

[Limpinhitter]

What is TCC ?

Exactly!

 

[thrust]

No mention of the 70' and 71' TCC? Shameful!

Exhibitions. What about 71 WCT? Overall, a ridiculous list favoring Laver, whenever possible.

 

[NatF]

Exhibitions. What about 71 WCT? Overall, a ridiculous list favoring Laver, whenever possible.

The Tennis Champions Classic's weren't exhibitions I don't think they were the greatest events on Earth like some do but let's not go too far the other way.

 

[Limpinhitter]

Exhibitions. What about 71 WCT? Overall, a ridiculous list favoring Laver, whenever possible.

One more time - read more, write less.

 

[Limpinhitter]

The Tennis Champions Classic's weren't exhibitions I don't think they were the greatest events on Earth like some do but let's not go too far the other way.

FYI, TB ranks Laver #1 for 1970, and also in 1971 apparently based on his sweep of TCC as a monumental achievement. To my recollection, most of the commentators of the time held that achievement as basis to rank Laver #1 as well the best player. Laver himself considers it to be one of his greatest achievements from the prominence it received in his Tennis Digest.

 

[NatF]

FYI, TB ranks Laver #1 for 1970, and also in 1971 citing the TCC as a huge achievement. To my recollection, most of the commentators of the time held that achievement as basis to rank Laver #1 as well the best player. Laver himself considers it to be one of his greatest achievements from the prominence it received in his Tennis Digest.

The way he won it (especially in 1971) is to be lauded but the event itself didn't require him to go undefeated, the preliminary matches were just to qualify for the 4-man (?) event at the end. It's a fine achievement and made legendary by how he did it but the actual TCC itself wasn't that big.

 

[Limpinhitter]

The way he won it (especially in 1971) is to be lauded but the event itself didn't require him to go undefeated, the preliminary matches were just to qualify for the 4-man (?) event at the end. It's a fine achievement and made legendary by how he did it but the actual TCC itself wasn't that big.

I disagree. As you know, the TCC itself was that big because, in an era where the majors paid virtually token prize money and didn't even attract all of the top players, the extraordinary amount of prize money of the TCC drew all of the best players in the world to fight their guts out to win it.

 

[Drob]

Big reach for a net profit
New tournament formats and inflated purses are turning professional tennis into a lavish sport, especially for Australia's rocketing Rod Laver

By Alfred Wright




View Cover
March 29, 1971




Original Layout
Rod Laver—all red-haired and freckles, with a big beak of a nose on his gaunt face—looks like some sort of prehistoric bird, but on the tennis court he flies loops and Immelmanns around the hawks and eagles of today's game, hardly ruffling his feathers in the process. Last week, having just stepped off a plane after a 10,000-mile flight from Sydney with a momentary stopover in Southern California, he rushed through a couple of routine victories on successive nights at Madison Square Garden in New York and thereby added another $50,000 to his 1971 bankroll.

It has been that way with Laver for the last couple of years. His schedule is crowded and rich. He began the month of March at a tournament in London, where he picked up $7,800 for winning. He was in Australia the Monday after for another tournament, in which he lost in the quarterfinals, and spent the following weekend at home with his wife in Corona del Mar, Calif. He arrived in Manhattan a week ago Monday for a press conference, and by 10 o'clock Friday night his earnings for the first three months of 1971 had risen to the neighborhood of $175,000 (he made slightly more than $200,000 in all of 1970), not including a few nickels and dimes from the Sydney tournament and some doubles matches that he had not yet bothered to add up. It is possible that no other athlete has made so much in so short a time—not Arnold Palmer, not Willie Shoemaker, perhaps not even Muhammad Ali or Joe Frazier if you figure in all the months it takes a boxer to get ready for his payday.

Plainly the big money in sport is beginning to rub off on tennis—or began to a couple of years ago, as Laver reminds one. But it is not yet obvious why. The rally, which is what tennis is all about, was bombed out of men's singles about the time of Pearl Harbor. Now it is serve, run to the net, put it away; serve, run to the net, put it away. Unless Pancho Gonzales, the supreme tragedian of tennis, happens to be on the card, a really big gate will find 10,000 people in the stands (there were fewer than 9,000 for each of the two nights at the Garden last week, though a lot of those in attendance did pay the $10 top price). In the smaller towns pro tennis is delighted to find 3,000 to 4,000 in the house.

None of this daunts an intrepid man like Fred J. Podesta. It was he who put up the $210,000 for the Tennis Champions Classic, which is the name of the event that Laver won. Podesta is a former Garden official who got hooked on pro tennis in the days when Jack Kramer used to comb the sticks in a beat-up station wagon with an opponent, a rolled-up piece of canvas for a court and a couple of has-beens for doubles. Last year Podesta introduced the Classic, which involves a 16-match competition among nine pros. There is a $10,000 winner-take-all prize for each of the matches until the semifinals, where the purse is split $15,000 and $5,000 apiece for the two winners and losers, in the finals the winner gets $35,000, the loser $15,000. Laver, of course, won it last year, and Podesta was happy enough with the results to try again.

The first problem in a promotion of this kind is to get your nine pros. The best are now under contract to World Championship Tennis, a Dallas outfit owned by Lamar Hunt and Al G. Hill Jr. They have their own deal, which consists of 20 tournaments throughout the year with a purse of $45,000 apiece and a grand finale at the end for $100,000. If you are Podesta, you go to Hunt and Hill and ask when you may borrow nine of their chaps, and they give you a number of dates beginning on Jan. 2 and finishing March 19.

 

[Drob]

Then you pick the pros you think will arouse a dozing public. Laver (the Rocket) naturally, Tom Okker (the Flying Dutchman), Roy Emerson ("venerable 34-year-old Australian"), John Newcombe (1970 Wimbledon champion), Ken Rosewall (1970 U.S. Open champion), Tony Roche (1970 U.S. pro champion), Arthur Ashe (new pro), Roger Taylor (English) and Gonzales, except that Gonzales can't accept because he is flirting with a rival setup of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association and claims that he no longer belongs to Hunt and Hill. So in his place you get Dennis Ralston (Dennis the Menace). Next you book single dates at arenas in Boston, Rochester, New Haven and Philadelphia, plus two in Detroit and Los Angeles and nine at Madison Square Garden.

The scene is set, and Laver starts the new year by beating Rosewall in straight sets at the Garden. Two and a half months later Laver is again at the Garden, standing in front of the umpire's chair and receiving an outsized replica of a check for $160,000, which is not exactly the way he really gets paid but it presses home the money point as the flashbulbs pop. Laver accumulated the $160,000 by winning 13 straight matches, a streak that included two victories over Ashe, two over Emerson, two over Ralston and three over Okker. At this point it becomes too complicated to explain why, in reducing nine players to one, it is necessary for Laver to beat so many of them so often. Suffice it to say that Laver won 39 sets and lost only 10, which is evidence enough that no one is in his class today when his mind is on winning.

As for the real money, Podesta mails that to World Champion Tennis after each match, and it shows up in the check that each of the pros later receives from Hunt and Hill. Perhaps it is only natural in a game where some points are worth 15, some 10 and some only one that a fellow should have to go through such convolutions to earn a buck.

Laver seems not to mind it at all. "The money is good," he explains for the benefit of those who can't count, and he tries as hard as he can to emit the kind of charm that makes a sports hero the idol of millions. It is not easy, for Rod was raised in the Harry Hop-man school of Australian tennis where a small grunt is the only communication allowed between player and public. Does he dislike the weekly intercontinental commuting his profession demands? "No. The chap you're playing against has probably made the same trip." Is traveling a major problem, what with arranging all the airline tickets and hotel reservations and currency changes? "No. Have you ever heard of the American Express credit card?"

Thus it is that Laver is obliged to express his personality through his performance, and certainly no one since William T. Tilden II has had the variety and subtlety of strokes to do it with. For a superior athlete Laver is a small man, no taller than Little Bill Johnston, who always seemed so slight and frail when he played against the likes of Big Bill Tilden. But at 5'8½" and 155 pounds, Laver's body is as hard as an ingot, and his left arm, beginning at the shoulder, would be an asset to a stevedore.

In some ways Laver's size is his advantage. His speed and quickness on the court are such that only a most extraordinary placement is beyond his reach. His assortment of shots—top spin, slice, flat, drop shot, volley, smash, drop volley—far exceeds the repertoire of any modern player, most of whom were raised on the theory that the big serve, volley and smash could get the job done.


In his final match with Okker, Laver demonstrated the value of his exceptional versatility. Okker began the match aggressively, running off the first three games after breaking Laver's first serve. His cross-court backhand was scoring clean placements, sometimes flat and with great speed, sometimes with looping top spin. But Laver quickly shifted the attack to Okker's forehand, and, as he quietly explained afterward, "Tom was having such great success with his backhand that he may have eased up a bit on his forehand."

Laver evened the set, but Okker never looked like losing until they reached 5-all and went into the 12-point, sudden-death playoff now used by the pros. Here Laver, with all his art and craft, called on shots that only he owns—crowding Okker's big serve and putting it away untouched, letting out the full power of his own big serve, leading Okker into positions so awkward that his shots were easy prey. After the sudden-death reached 2-2, Laver ran off the next five points as if he suddenly remembered he had an important engagement elsewhere. The match was as good as over, and Laver completed the next two sets with the loss of only three games. Okker conceded it all was inevitable. Like the other pros, he knows that no one beats Laver when his game is in shape, and, as Laver pointed out, "I played some of the best tennis I've ever played at the right time."

The rest of the pros might as well get used to this sort of thing because Rod Laver enjoys what he is doing, particularly the money part. What with his endorsements—mostly clothes and equipment—and what he intends to win in the remaining tournaments of the year, his income may reach $400,000. And Rod, at the age of 32, is not even thinking about retirement. He does not live high—there is hardly time for that—so what do you do with so much money? "I like to invest it," he says.