World-number-one Male Tennis-player Rankings - Sources of Rankings and Other Information

Sources of Rankings and Other Information

Other years dating back to 1913 also present difficulties and ambiguities. The rankings below, however, all come from various sources that are as authoritative as can be found. There are eighteen sources:

• The United States Tennis Association Official Encyclopedia of Tennis (1981). This book has annual rankings for the top 10 players as compiled every year from 1914 through 1980. These rankings were made annually by various tennis experts at a London newspaper, The Daily Telegraph: Wallis Myers (1913–1938), John Olliff (1939–1951), and Lance Tingay (1952–1967). These rankings, however, included only amateur players. Beginning with the 1920s, some of the best players in the world were professionals. Once they became professionals, as Bill Tilden did in 1931, they were no longer included in these annual lists.

• History of the Pro Tennis Wars, by Ray Bowers, is a website associated with the Tennis Server website. In thirteen chapters, Bowers gives a very detailed account of the first twenty years of the professional tennis tours, from a modest beginning in 1926 with Suzanne Lenglen and Vincent Richards as the main attractions, on through 1945. He also gives detailed results of some of the tournaments played by professionals in addition to the main head-to-head tours. In his summing-up for each year since 1928, he gives his rankings for the best players of that year, combining both amateurs and professionals, with the number of players ranked varying from year to year. In all cases prior to 1940, his rankings coincide with those of The Daily Telegraph as far as amateurs are concerned.

• Total Tennis: The Ultimate Tennis Encyclopedia (2003), by Bud Collins. This massive work has year-by-year chapters in which Collins gives a brief summation of the pro tour results, often with personal comments about the players. It also has somewhat more complete rankings from the early years of the Daily Telegraph. The combined amateur-professional rankings for 1968 through 1972 are those of Collins himself. Beginning with 1973, the Association of Tennis Professionals began issuing computer-generated weekly rankings. Collins shows the top 10 players in these rankings for the last week of every calendar year through 2002.

• The History of Professional Tennis (2003), by Joe McCauley. This book was published in the United Kingdom and is a year-by-year account of the professional tours and tournaments between 1926 and 1968. The book has 80 pages of year-by-year results for as many tournaments, tours, and head-to-head matches as the author, a long-time writer for World Tennis magazine, could find.

• The Concise History of Tennis (2010), by Karoly Mazak. This e-book is a year-by-year account of (lawn) tennis between 1877 and 2009. Each page contains a short summary of the major events in that particular year, and combined (amateur and professional) year-end rankings in tabulated form that show the performance of the top players at the major events. The greatest novelty of this work is the year-end rankings before 1913. The author has used as many sources as possible, including contemporary magazine classifications (Pastime, Lawn Tennis and Badminton) and official national rankings. The e-book is available at a website with the same name or can be consulted at the Wimbledon tennis library.

• Professional Lawn Tennis Association (PLTA). The PLTA was composed of a group of professional players in the late 1940s and early 1950s and, for several years, issued its own official rankings of professional players at the end of each year. The PLTA was also apparently called the Professional Players Association (PPA) in at least 1946.

• The Game, My 40 Years in Tennis (1979), by Jack Kramer. Kramer's autobiography has information about the 1954 professional tour that is somewhat different from the other sources but that must be considered authoritative in that Kramer himself was the tour promoter that year.

• Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). The ATP has issued its own year-end ranking of the top male players every year since 1973.

• Tennis Is My Racket (1949), by Bobby Riggs. Riggs's autobiography has information about the 1946 professional tour that is slightly different from the other sources. He also writes at length about his 1948 tour with Kramer but says nothing about his playing record in 1947, about which there is much conflicting information.

• The Last Sure Thing: The Life & Times of Bobby Riggs (2003), by Tom LeCompte. This biography published after Riggs's death jibes with his own information for 1946 but is at odds with other sources about Riggs's record in 1947.

• Vainqueurs 1946-2003 (2003), by Michel Sutter (Winners 1946-2003 in English). Apparently based mostly on information drawn from the French sports magazine L'Équipe, this is an updated edition of his earlier book Vainqueurs 1946-1991. Both books list the winners of many professional tournaments and matches for the years shown in their titles, but the earlier book also listed the runner-ups, scores, and the exact dates as well as some commentary, in French and in English, by the author for each year.

• Histoiredutennis.com ("History of tennis"). This is a French website that has much interesting information, particularly in its extended chapters with the history of tennis. Some of its information about the professional tour in 1954, however, seems to conflict with other sources. The 1954 information may actually be for 1953.

• Der Grösste Meister. Die denkwürdige Karriere des australischen Tennisspielers Kenneth Robert Rosewall (1999), by Robert Geist. This is a detailed account of Ken Rosewall's career with many statistics and, in particular, his annual rankings during his professional career.

• Anthony Wilding A Sporting Life (2005), by Len and Shelley Richardson.

• Royal South Yarra Lawn Tennis Club: 100 Years in Australian Tennis, by Richard Yallop.

• Modern Tennis (1915), by P.A. Vaile (second edition).

• Lawn Tennis (1889), by Methven Brownlee (Arrowsmith, Bristol)

• Kings of the court. The story of lawn tennis. by E.C. Potter. (Barnes and Company, New York, 1963.) A very good tennis history book, has many details about the pre–World War I players.

• Fifty years of Wimbledon. by Wallis Myers. (The Field, London, 1926.) Each year of Wimbledon is examined, although it does not contain Top10 world rankings.

However there are sometimes contradictions between all these sources.