Major Professional Tennis Tournaments Before The Open Era

Major Professional Tennis Tournaments Before The Open Era

Before the beginning of the Open era in April 1968, only amateurs were allowed to compete in established tennis tournaments, including the four Grand Slams. There was no prize money and players were compensated for travel expenses only. This changed with the advent of the Open era. However many top tennis players turned professional to play legally for prize money in the years before the open era. They played in separate professional events, mostly on tours involving head-to-head competition, but also in professional tournaments as the biggest events on the pro tour.

Read more about Major Professional Tennis Tournaments Before The Open Era:  Professional Majors, List of Professional Grand Slam Champions, Other Important Tournaments

Famous quotes containing the words major, professional, tennis, open and/or era:

    Power is not of a man. Wealth does not center in the person of the wealthy. Celebrity is not inherent in any personality. To be celebrated, to be wealthy, to have power requires access to major institutions.
    C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)

    I trust it will not be giving away professional secrets to say that many readers would be surprised, perhaps shocked, at the questions which some newspaper editors will put to a defenseless woman under the guise of flattery.
    Kate Chopin (1851–1904)

    [My one tennis book] was very, very old. It had a picture of Bill Tilden. I looked at the picture and that was how I learned to hold the racket.
    Maria Bueno (b. 1939)

    Parents’ accepting attitudes can help children learn to be open and tolerant. Parents can explain unfamiliar behavior or physical handicaps and show children that the appropriate response to differences should be interest rather than revulsion.
    Dian G. Smith (20th century)

    ... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.
    Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)