Tennis Pro Tours


Until the draw of Open tennis in 1968, the usual format for the handful of playing pros was a tour of one-night stands, indoors on a portable canvas court, across the United States and sometimes other countries as well. The champion of the previous tour went head-to-head against a challenger, most often the leader amateur who had turn pro. Whoever the promoter, he lured the leading amateur with a guarantee against a percentage of gate receipts, making a similar type of deal with the champion and generally paying the others' salaries.
Although the pros grew in numbers and began leaning toward tournament format in 1964, hastening the day of the opens, tours continued into 1968, but merely as exhibitions, lacking the king-of-the hill aspect.
There were important tournament series, however, which were referred to as establishing full field rankings in an objective way.
In 1946, there was a professional tournament series linked by a points system won by Riggs, which he relied upon as evidence of his mastery of the entire pro field. In 1959/1960, Kramer established a series of 15 tournaments around the world linked by a point system which provided an official comprehensive ranking of all the contract professionals, with Hoad emerging as No. 1, and which was referred to as a world championship in the press. In 1964, the pros established a world wide series of tournaments with a points system, and a world champion was named as a result, Ken Rosewall.

World Championship Series

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Records

Other professional tours

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