Analyzing how tennis turned pro

The arrival of the Open era in 1968 was a watershed in the history of tennis—the year that marked its advent as a professionalized sport. Merging wide-angle history with individual stories of players and off-the-court figures, Greg Ruth charts tennis's evolution into the game we watch today. His vivid account moves from the cloistered world of nineteenth-century lawn tennis through the longtime amateur-professional divide and the battles over commercialization that raged from the 1920s until 1968. From there, Ruth details the post-1968 expansion of the game as it was transformed by bankable superstars, a popular women's tour, rival governing bodies, and sponsorship money. What emerges is a fascinating history of the economics and politics that made tennis a decisive, if unlikely, force in the creation of modern-day sports entertainment.

Comprehensive and engaging, Tennis tells the interlocking stories of the figures and factors that birthed the professional game.

| Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Tennis Amateurs and Tennis Professionals 1. Amateur Associations along the American Atlantic Coast 2. The West Coast Game 3. The Cause Célèbre of the Pioneering Professional 4. Depression-Era Developments in Amateur and Professional Tennis Photo Section 1 5. Wartime Southern California Professionals 6. The Cultural Contexts of Mid-Century Women's Tennis 7. The "Kramer Karavan" 8. The World Champion from "The Wrong Side of the Tracks" 9. Tennis Opens Photo Section 2 10. The Rise and Demise of World Championship Tennis 11. The Impact of Sports Agents and Agencies on Professional Tennis 12. Women's Professional Tennis in the Early Open Era Conclusion: Professional Tennis as Global Entertainment Notes Selected Bibliography Index |"Ruth's work is an excellent source for a history of sexism in tennis, while highlighting some of the biggest names on and off the court, who ushered tennis into a profitable sport in the postmodern era." —Journal of American History
"This well-researched volume will be a valuable addition to any sports history collection." —Choice
"This book is for tennis pros, serious amateurs, hackers, lovers of the game, and anyone interested in sport history. Greg Ruth shows us how tennis evolved from England's royal court to L.A.'s public courts to the U.S. Open's billionaire courts. Featuring big personalities and terrific storytelling, Tennis shows us how and why the game evolved over the years. This is excellent sport history."—Elliott J. Gorn, coauthor of A Brief History of American Sports, Second Edition
|Greg Ruth is an independent scholar.