User:Kvwiki1234/Tennis/Major professional tennis tournaments before the Open Era

List of Professional Majors champions
Notes:


 * 1) The status of the 1933 French Pro is unclear. In History of the Pro Tennis Wars, by Ray Bowers, there is no mention of a French Pro tournament in 1933. The only professional competition played that year at Roland Garros was a USA-France meeting, September 22–24, in the Davis Cup format. Many sources probably wrongly considered the Tilden-Cochet match as a final of a supposed French Pro.
 * 2) The Wembley Championships of 1936 and 1938 did not take place. The London Daily Mail of August 24th 1936 contained an article stating that the 1936 Wembley event would not take place due to Tilden and Vines being unavailable. Ray Bowers, in his History of professional tennis, says that 1936 and 1938 Wembley tournaments never occurred and offers substantiating evidence for his assertion.
 * 3) The 1937 US Pro was the first pro event open to amateur players and is considered as both the U.S. Pro Tennis Championship and first "true" U.S. Open event.
 * 4) The championship events from 1951–1962, were billed as the International Pro or World Pro Championship. In 1951, a U.S. Pro was held at Forest Hills authorized by the USPLTA, and an International Pro was held at Cleveland. There was no USPLTA U. S. Pro event held in 1952 or 1953, but the International Pro was held at Cleveland in those years and was regarded as the U. S. Pro.     In 1954, the USPLTA authorized Kramer to hold the U.S. Pro at L.A. Tennis Club in Los Angeles (this was the successor tournament to the 1951 U.S. Pro at Forest Hills and Segura was the defending champion). The International Pro and World Pro events at Cleveland from 1951-62 were not authorized by the USPLTA to be the U.S. Pro, and were not billed as such. The USPLTA were an organisation of teaching professionals and the touring professionals did enter U. S. Pro events in this period.        In some interviews in the 1950s, Gonzales and Segura referred to the Cleveland World Pro as "the National" or the "U. S. National Professional Championships" . There were many newspaper and magazine articles in the 1950s that also referred to Cleveland events as U. S. Pro.
 * 5) The status of 1953 "French Pro" is unclear. Joe McCauley included this tournament in his list of French Pro tournaments but he prefaced in his book "History of Professional Tennis" that it may not have been considered at the time as an official French Pro. Same for the 1950 "French Pro" that was held in the same location as the 1953 tournament listed, different from the regular location at the Roland Garros.

Other important tournaments
The Championships at Wimbledon, the US Championships, the French Championships, and the Australian Championships were typically the top events, where amateur players could compete for the title, albeit without prize money. Since the professional circuit was less organized and somewhat less popular than the amateur circuit, the professional events hierarchy changed each year. In 1934 the US Pro was a high-class tournament with all top ranked pro players whereas in 1936 it was a meeting between pro teachers without any leading pro players. A tournament could even be canceled at any time due to poor attendance.

Consequently, for a given year a pro tournament was important when it attracted the best pro players and then another year this same tournament could be a second-rank tournament because few or no leading players came. Before the open era in addition to numerous small tournaments and head-to-head tours between the leading professionals, there were some major tournaments which stood out at different periods. Some survived sporadically because of financial collapses while others temporarily rose to the highest levels of competition when other tournaments weren't held. These include:

Bristol Cup: 1920–1932
Sometimes labelled "Professional Championships of France" this tournament was held on the French Riviera at Menton, at Cannes.

List of Bristol Cup winners:

Professional Championship of the World: 1927–1928
This event was held in October on Clay courts, at the Queen's Club in London. In 1928 Myers of the Daily Telegraph wrote that "this was the best pro tournament ever held in England."

List of Queen's Club Pro winners:

World Pro Championship: 1932–1933
The World Pro Championship were held in 1932 and 1933 in Berlin at the Rot-Weiss club, on clay. It had a very large participation (over 80 players). According to Ray Bowers in the History of the Pro Tennis Wars Chapter IV (cited lower down), this tournament at the time was regarded as the most prestigious professional tournament in the world.

List of World Pro winners:

Bonnardel Cup: 1935–1937
This was a team tournament created by Bill Tilden and modeled on the Davis Cup format. In 1935, early rounds in France were hoped to be played at Roland Garros, but the French Tennis Association would not allow the event to be played at the stadium.

International Pro Championship of Britain: 1935–1939
The International Pro Championship of Britain (also known as the Southport Pro, as well as the Southport Dunlop Cup for sponsorship purposes) was a professional tennis tournament held at Victoria Park in Southport between 1935 and 1939. It was open to professional players only, amateurs were not allowed to compete. The tournament was held on outdoor En-tout-cas, "all-weather" artificial clay.

List of International Pro Championship of Britain winners:
 * Singles


 * Doubles

U.S Pro Hard Courts: 1945–1946
In LA; the only significant pro tournament of the last year of World War II.

Australian Pro: 1954–1966
This had multiple venues from the east and west coasts of Australia and was not played in 1955, 1956, 1961 and 1963.

List of Australian Pro winners:

Tournament of Champions: 1957–1959
The Tournament of Champions was a professional tennis tournament between 1957 and 1959. The tournament was held on the grass-courts of Forest Hills, New York, between 1957 and 1959, and an Australian version of the Tournament of Champions was held on grass at White City, Sydney in 1957 and 1959, and at Kooyong Stadium in Melbourne in 1958. The 1957 and 1958 Forest Hills tournaments had a round robin format, while the 1959 Forest Hills was an elimination tournament with 10 players. The Sydney version was an elimination event, while the 1958 Kooyong event was a round robin format.

The Forest Hills Tournament of Champions was broadcast nationally in the U.S.A. on the CBS television network, the only professional tennis tournament in the U.S.A. to achieve this status.

The 1958 Kooyong Tournament of Champions was the richest tournament of the era, with a prize money of 10,000 Australian pounds (24,000 USD). In 1968, the tournament was picked up again for a one off tournament during the open era and called Jack Kramer's Tournament of Champions held at Wembley Arena.

List of Tournament of Champions winners:


 * Forest Hills


 * Sydney White City and Melbourne Kooyong


 * London

Masters Pro: 1956–1967
Round Robin in Los Angeles, held from 1956 to 1960, and again in 1964, 1965, and 1967.

Masters Pro winners:

Kramer Cup: 1961–1963
A team format tournament.

Madison Square Garden Pro: 1966–1967
Madison Square Garden Pro winners:

Forest Hills Pro: 1966
The Forest Hills Pro was held in June 1966 on the grass courts of the West Side Tennis Club using the VASSS Scoring System

Forest Hills Pro winner:

Wimbledon Pro: 1967
The Wimbledon World Professional Championship, also known as the Wimbledon Pro, was held in August 1967. The tournament was sponsored and broadcast by the BBC to mark the invention of colour television. It was first time that professional tennis players played at Wimbledon.

Wimbledon Pro winner: