brittak wrote:

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JonH comes home wrote:

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This group is still stubbornly hanging back as the fans least favourite!

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 Yep I dont think many in this group are particularly well known so thats ok. It is the reason why I opted for qualifiers across all the groups as a whole rather than individual groups as I did think this might hapoen.

Anyhow main aim of the qualifying is to pick up any popular less obvious players within the forum and it looks like that this has been achieved.

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 Its good, I wish i had kept my old copies of ACE Magazine and the like so I could cross check!

I recall around the late 70's there was a magazine in Britain called "tennis" (did what it said on the tin) and was like all the mags , a mix of tournament reviews, player interviews, opinion pieces and coaching stuff. Around the 1979 timescale a company called Kent Oil sponsored what they called the Arab Tour ( I think it was that) and organised a series of tournaments in Dubai, Oman and Kuwait. The whole  story made much of the camels and desert, and bedouins etc and how this backward part of the world was being dragged into the 20th century with pro tennis coming to its shores. The tour was made of 3 back to back 8 man events with players like Vilas, Fibak, Tomas Smid, Nastase and Tiriac and maybe an American or two and then a couple of local wild cards for Vilas to destroy. They had some points system ( a little like darts PDC World Series) and the top 4 played in a Masters event in another local location, I think it was Egypt but cant remember. 

Anyway, it brought back memories of how a) the world has developed and that part of the world in particular b) how patronising we could and can be and c) how the pro tour even 40 years ago had lots of room for less structured events. 

I read in something the other day that in one of the early WCT seasons around 1970 or so, when their tour started ( I loved the WCT! WCT Finals in Dallas were bigger than the Masters in New York and the 5th major for 10-15 years or so) Newcombe or somebody played  130 matches in a season! 130! 

The ATP are doing a profile each day/every few days of the 24 World #1's that we have had - they started with Nastase and have done him and John Newcombe. Makes nice reading.           

brittak wrote:

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Like you this poll is making me think back to my youth and lots of memories from when I was first interested in tennis in the early 70s.

Similarly I binned my Ace magazines a while back and I also. did have all the old Tennis World magazines (in binders!) but they too were jettisoned as well.

I do have a full collection of the World of Tennis annuals until they were discontinued and all the ATP/WTA media guides since so I have plenty of old reference books to look at as well.

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 I had all the old ITF World of Tennis annuals as well and binned them! Darn! I bet they would be worth a few bob if in good nick. Didnt John Barrett, from this poll, edit them and then Lance Tingay and then John Parsons, i recall, before they closed down. The end of year rankings list (and World Champion) where selected by that publication each year until the ATP rankings took over, and they ran a ranking top 10 alongside the ATP for several years before giving ground. They were always on a white softback cover, quite thick but ran a review of all tournaments in the year and players etc. What a book!

I was also thinking of the old Kings Cup the other day, the European team championships played over the winter. Not much on it on the internet. Typically it was played in Divisions with 8 teams organised into two groups of 4. GB were often in the top Division and would play 6 , 3 rubber matches v the 3 in their group. 2 singles and a doubles, It was always indoors and we would select venues like Sheffield, Cardiff, Glasgow - not purpose built but sort of large indoor hangars etc. All our top players would play,  and the other countries and the top 2 in each group would play a semi and a final - the final was usually home and away , so 6 rubbers and , I think 5 sets. Czechs often won, Russia, East Europeans generally, Sweden. And France, Italy, Spain where nowhere. We usually did pretty well.