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Tennis : a history from American amateurs to global professionals
- Author / Creator
- Available as
- Online
- Summary
-
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 pla...
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.
Details
- Creator
- Greg Ruth
- Format
- Books
- Language
- English
- Publication
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- Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 2021
- Physical Details
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- 1 online resource (xii, 317 pages)
- ISBNs
- 0252043898, 9780252043895, 025205279X, 9780252085888, 9780252052798
- OCLC
- on1266909055, on1232010715
- Also issued in print: 2021.
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Introduction: Tennis amateurs and tennis professionals -- Amateur Associations along the American Atlantic Coast -- The West Coast game -- The cause célèbre of the pioneering professional -- Depression-Era developments in amateur and professional tennis -- Wartime Southern California professionals -- The cultural contexts of mid-century women's tennis -- The "Kramer Karavan" -- The world champion from "The Wrong Side of the Tracks" -- Tennis Opens -- The rise and demise of world championship tennis -- The impact of sports agents and agencies on professional tennis -- Women's professional tennis in the early Open era -- Conclusion: Professional tennis as global entertainment