Tennis : a history from American amateurs to global professionals
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Tennis : a history from American amateurs to global professionals
（Sports and society）
University of Illinois Press, 2021
- : cloth
Available at 1 libraries
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [293]-305) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
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.
Table of Contents
CoverTitle PageCopyrightContentsAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Tennis Amateurs and Tennis Professionals1. Amateur Associations along the American Atlantic Coast2. The West Coast Game3. The Cause Célèbre of the Pioneering Professional4. Depression-Era Developments in Amateur and Professional TennisPhoto Section 15. Wartime Southern California Professionals6. The Cultural Contexts of Mid-Century Women’s Tennis7. The “Kramer Karavan”8. The World Champion from “The Wrong Side of the Tracks"9. Tennis OpensPhoto Section 210. The Rise and Demise of World Championship Tennis11. The Impact of Sports Agents and Agencies on Professional Tennis12. Women’s Professional Tennis in the Early Open EraConclusion: Professional Tennis as Global EntertainmentNotesSelected BibliographyIndex
by "Nielsen BookData"