Sporting Gentlemen by E. Digby Baltzell

Author:E. Digby Baltzell [Baltzell, E. Digby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Sports & Recreation, Racket Sports, Tennis
ISBN: 9781351488341
Google: OyEuDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-12T04:35:03+00:00

Professional tennis began in 1926 when an American promoter, C. C. (“Cash and Carry”) Pyle, stole Suzanne Lenglen from the amateur ranks for the then-princely sum of some $75,000. As a supporting cast to the Great Suzanne he signed up the most popular American women, Mary K. Browne, and three American men, Vincent Richards, Howard Kinsey, and Harvey Snodgrass. The first year’s tour was a financial success. Eventually Pyle retired as interest in the new pro-game declined. Richards took over leadership and searched all over Continental Europe for new talent (playing pros hardly existed in England or America at the time), finally signing up a Czech pro, Karl Kozeluh, who was reputed to be the best tennis player in Europe even though he had never played in a major tournament. But Richards still needed a great name to draw the crowds. His talented and dramatic friend, Big Bill Tilden, was just the ticket. Richards signed him on for a tour with Kozeluh which opened at Madison Square Garden, on February 18, 1931 (see Figures 7 and 8). A crowd of 13,500 paid a gate of $36,000 to see Tilden mop up the Czech at will. Then the Tilden Tennis Tour, Inc. hit the road, zig-zagging across the country from Boston to Chicago to Los Angeles. Tilden drove the promoters crazy by winning all the time and inspiring an epidemic of “Big Bill Cancels Czech” headlines in city after city.

As professional tennis players were barred from all clubs by the British and American tennis associations, the pro tours were reduced to winter matches indoors in a variety of inadequate facilities. Arenas had to be booked well in advance so as not to conflict with basketball and hockey games. The more easily available gymnasiums at colleges and schools were often too small. Above all the tours were utterly exhausting. There was no air travel and railroad schedules were too rigid, so most of the travel was by night in automobiles, with a truck carrying the huge and heavy canvas court and other equipment.

The pro tour had a lean year in 1932 as Tilden played Richards and lesser lights. The next year Richards brought the German Champion Hans Nusslein to America to tour with Tilden. But gates steadily declined until 1934, when Ellsworth Vines, United States and Wimbledon Champion, made his pro debut at Madison Square Garden before a turn-away crowd of 16,000, a goodly proportion in black ties. Tilden clobbered him in a little over an hour. Allison Danzig wrote in the New York Times that Vines’s game was “far superior to his showing as an amateur.” But playing one-night stands in 93 cities and towns across the country was pretty hard on the old man and Vines ended up winning 58-35. The Tilden-Vines tour set a pattern for the pro tours. %ar after year most of the best amateurs turned pro and challenged the then Pro Champion. “By the time I signed,” wrote Don Budge, “Tilden, Vines and Perry had also

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