Remembering The Start Of Open Tennis... 50 Years On
Fifty years ago, tennis was a non-commercial enterprise with amateur players receiving tournament expenses, often better than the living wage, and were still able to compete in the world’s leading tennis tournaments. Across the great divide, ever since the first pro tour in 1926, were a small band of former amateurs turned contract pros, who had been banished from the public spotlight and criss-crossed the globe in search of a pay cheque. Over the course of one eventful decade, starting in the late 1950s, a handful of leading powerbrokers began to effect a change in the way the sport was promoted, for a free, shared market that led to the modern professional game of superstar athletes. The featherboard fence, on...