World Championship Tennis (WCT)
In 1967, future USFL founder Dixon persuaded his friend and the AFL founder Lamar Hunt to finance World Championship Tennis. After signing John Newcombe to a professional contract, Dixon persuaded Cliff Drysdale, Nikki Pilic, Roger Taylor, Tony Roche, Dennis Ralston, Pierre Barthes and Butch Bucholtz, seven of the world's ten best male tennis players, to turn pro within a few weeks. The US Open, the French Open, the Australian Open, and the Wimbledon Championships, formerly limited to amateur players, admitted professionals and the popularity of the game grew dramatically. Remarkably, within ten years the leading money winner on the tennis pro tour was earning more money than the leading money winner on the pro golf tour.
Read more about this topic: David Dixon (businessman)
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or tennis:
“The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a projection of God in the unconscious.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)