October 27, 1973: The Whiskey Circuit

I definitely remember the Dewar Cup and possibly went to some matches at the Royal Albert Hall. Well, I definitely went to matches there, I just can't recall if they were Dewar Cup or something else!!

Babfive wrote:

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Thanks for sharing. I'd heard of the Dewar Cup but never really known exactly what it was and what it entailed. It's great to get this information to fill in a gap in my tennis knowledge.

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 No worries, Babfive

 

If you go onto Tennis Abstract and scroll down to the series of articles on 1973, you will see a whole host of stuff related to that year, Jeff went big on it! 

https://www.tennisabstract.com/

I am not sure if he plans to go through other years - last seasons project was his 128 greatest players of all time, where he rated and ranked the players (since 1921 anyway) and took a view on where they stood in the panetheon. He used some sort of algorithm linked to ELO ratings, longevity, peak performance etc and came up with Rod Laver at the top of the list, in a mixed mens and womens list. Each player had a well produced write up on their careers and place in the history of the game

https://www.tennisabstract.com/blog/2022/02/01/introducing-the-tennis-128/

Next year, he may have another project - they are always informative, well written and interesting!   

More from tennis abstract on the Dewar Cup Circuit

The Dewar Cup circuit was not what it used to be. British tennis in general was fighting a rearguard action against richer tournaments around the world, as players chose dollar signs over tradition. The Dewar's-backed late-season mini-tour had once spanned six weeks and featured Margaret Court and Evonne Goolagong. By 1973, it was down to four weeks, and the fields were considerably less star-studded.

It wasn't all about the money, but the money didn't help. The total purse for women at the Dewar Cup of Edinburgh, the second stop on the circuit, was $3,500 (£1,430), including $825 for the singles winner. By comparison, at the Virginia Slims Championships in Florida just a few weeks earlier, first-round losers took home $800. The same performance at a Whiskey circuit stop was worth a measly fifty bucks, or twenty pounds sterling.

Dewar's, the booze-selling sponsor, tried to emphasize the opportunities that a lower-profile circuit gave to young players. (17-year-old Sue Barker took part, as did Romanian teens Virginia Ruzici and Mariana Simionescu.) Another positive aspect, at least for local fans, is that the events were increasingly dominated by British players. In Aberavon, Wales, the first stop, Mark Cox and Virginia Wade took the titles. In Edinburgh, on November 3rd, 21-year-old Brit John Feaver challenged Wimbledon semi-finalist Roger Taylor for the men's title, while Wade faced Julie Heldman for the second week in a row.

In Wales, Heldman had tried and failed to outhit Wade, and she went down quickly. What fans didn't know is that just about everything was going wrong for the 27-year-old American. The press had come down on her--unfairly, she thought--for her win by retirement over Billie Jean King at the US Open, she was going through a bad breakup, and she had a nagging cough, spiraling into a bronchitis that would take her out of action the following week. If that wasn't enough, she hated her new haircut.

She might have disliked Wade even more. Decades later, she still prickled at the British player's "arrogance and dismissiveness." No matter that the odds were against her, Heldman would throw the kitchen sink at her leonine nemesis.

The London Observer's Shirley Brasher credited the American with "clever changes of spin and pace," the sort of game to put Wade off balance. Heldman lost the first set, but when Wade started rushing into errors in the second, the American took advantage and forced a decider.

It became as testy a battle as the two ladies had ever contested. Words were exchanged in the third game of the deciding set; alas, the British press did not record them for posterity. In the end, wrote David Gray, "Miss Heldman concentrated so hard on winning the intellectual battle that she lost accuracy and concentration." Wade took the final set, 6-1, despite the fact that, according to Lance Tingay, her "evenness of temperament was tried to the full."

Wade hardly needed to call her accountant about another $825 prize, but there was one consolation. Taylor, the men's champion, got the same amount. While the Whiskey circuit was on the way down--in a few years it would disappear entirely--the shrinking rewards of the Dewar Cup were distributed equally to men and women.

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According to the BoE calculator $825 in 1973 would be $8500 or so now, so that feels like Challenger money as well.

This is the report of the mens final of the Dewar Cup 1973 at the Royal Albert Hall.

www.tennisabstract.com/blog/2023/11/17/november-17-1973-tears-of-a-clown/

-- Edited by JonH comes home on Friday 17th of November 2023 11:23:33 AM