Talk:Tennis pro tours and tournament ranking series

Other Tours

Shouldn't this be an intro to Today's Tours? Mjquinn_id (talk) 19:03, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

"World Championship Series"

What is the definition of a "World Championship Series" tour used to distinguish the tours listed in that section from the "other professional tours" in this article? It's not clear to me from just reading the article, so a definition should be added. I've also added all the women's tours from Collins - are any of those classified as "World Championship Series" tours? Letcord (talk) 08:47, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@Trance4Life or @Tennishistory1877, do either of you have any insight into this? Letcord (talk) 16:57, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

@Letcord The "World Series" or "World Championship" tours were very important for many years on the pro tour. The standard format for many years was that the leading amateur champion that had just turned pro would play the reigning champion of the World Series (who was usually called the "World Champion"). A lot of money was on the line, as the winner of the series would take on the next challenger in the next series. After losing the 1949-50 series to Jack Kramer, Pancho Gonzales was consigned to the pro wilderness and only played part time on the pro tour for the next few years, until Kramer finally retired and Gonzales was brought back into the World Series fold. The series would take several months to complete and usually took place in North America (though there were sometimes matches in other countries too). In later years the format was changed so that a larger number of competitors could take part. Eventually the World Series was abolished in favour of a tournament system, but for many years it was the biggest event in pro tennis. Read any great pro player's biography of that era (Budge, Kramer, Gonzales etc.) and they all talk extensively about these tours. Tours that were not World Series tours were not as important, though they were still significant. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 17:16, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

@Tennishistory1877, that's very helpful, thank you. Do you know if there is a definition in McCauley's book that could be quoted in this article? I take it then that none of the women's tours would qualify as a "World Championship Series" under that definition? Also, how complete are these tables? All the tours listed in Collins are here, but he relegates them to a single page at the very back of his encyclopedia, so I don't know how thorough his research into the pro tours was. According to Bowers [1], Vincent Richards played against Foret, Kinsey and Snodgrass as part of the 1926 Lenglen tour... shouldn't that be in this article under "Other professional tours"? Thanks, Letcord (talk) 02:51, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@Tennishistory1877, I don't mean to badger you, but if you have any of the answers I'd really appreciate it. Letcord (talk) 03:42, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

There was very little women's pro tennis. The 1936 World Series is incomplete, because there are still a few missing matches, but the number listed on this page is incorrect. The 1926-7 C. C. Pyle tour can be listed in other professional tours, yes. The world of pro tennis research has moved on a lot since the days of Bowers and McCauley, which were published 20 years ago. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 14:28, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks again @Tennishistory1877. Yes, it would be great to see your book traditionally published so that all the articles on the pro circuit could be updated to the currently understood figures and this article in particular could be brought to a completely accurate state (as far as is possible). It would have been nice if Bowers had continued his series post-WWII, also. Letcord (talk) 15:05, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Even McCauley with his contacts within the tennis world still self-published his book, presumably because it was the only way he could publish it. The main difference between McCauley and myself is that McCauley wrote articles for World Tennis magazine (he was a sort of journalist in addition to being a researcher). I have no desire to be a journalist. I am a researcher first and foremost and I extract information from original sources (from online and offline sources), sometimes information that hasn't been read in many decades. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 17:59, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I didn't know McCauley's book was also self-published, but it makes sense given the very small run it had. I'm surprised none of the pros were willing to front a little of the prize money they sacrificed the limelight for to fund a proper publishing run to secure their legacies. Instead most younger fans have never heard of Kramer or Gonzales or Rosewall or Hoad, and their achievements on the pro circuit are largely undervalued by even those that have. My feeling is that your book, which is already becoming a standard reference for pro results online [2], should be permitted to be referenced on here, but I've seen the WP:RSN discussions that concluded otherwise. I really don't see the difference between it and thetennisbase.com, which is also unofficial and self-published but cited widely on here [3] (including in this article). Letcord (talk) 16:18, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

My book is the most complete and accurate source for the pre-open era pro tour (I say this without any sense of arrogance. I have studied the other sources closely and know where their errors are). I concluded work on my book in 2021 when I released the hardback edition (I found several new tours and tournaments after first publishing in 2019). Although McCauley's book was a pioneering work in its day and hugely important, it contained many errors and was very incomplete. Actually I believe my book does qualify under wikipedia rules as a source, because it was reviewed in a respected publication Tennis Threads magazine https://imgur.com/a/FGaLS4n. I understand that it could be construed as a conflict of interest if an editor is also a source, but I have already agreed not to add links to my book on pages (not that I am editing here much now anyway). There is no logical reason not to include it on wikipedia as a source. It was much easier for people like McCauley and Geist to become known, because in their time there were people within the tennis industry, particularly Bud Collins, who mentioned their research on the pro tour. Nowadays the pre-open era pro tour is rapidly being forgotten. Ex-players make very little effort to promote it in any way, other than those few surviving greats of that era turning up at tournaments and reminding people who they are just by being there. I saw BBC's Sports personality of the year show last year and in their obituary section among male players who died in 2021, only Santana was listed (no Tony Trabert, no Budge Patty). This is because there is an idea abroad now to only focus on tennis in the open era. Stats on TV are now open era only. Unfortunately tennis is not a sport that respects its history. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 21:57, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

I think arrogance and self-interest are the largest contributing causes. The "slam race" narrative that has been pushed since the late 90s has been a boon to TV ratings and interest in the sport, but at the cost of completely diminishing any non-Grand Slam achievements, and particularly those of the pro circuit. The four majors (and especially Wimbledon) revel in being the oldest, largest and most prestigious tournaments around, so why would they want to recognize the fact that for several decades their champions were, in the words of Herman David, 'second class'? I get the optics of it being a conflict of interest for you to use your book as a source here, but the subject matter - locations and scores of tennis matches - is not really one with area for dispute, unlike say some quack professor with a divergent theory adding it to Wikipedia to give it legitimacy. Letcord (talk) 08:22, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

As you say, it isn't a book full of theories, it is a collection of data. Even the narrative section (which does contain a few of my opinions, but not many) is mainly a collection of sources (quotes from biographies and information from newspaper match reports, etc.) It would only be a conflict of interest if I cited my book, not other editors. In fact it is for the benefit of other editors that I wanted it to be used as a source. I can list any result I want to on wikipedia, because I have the original newspaper sources (I used these to list the matches in the 1947 Kovacs Riggs tour, because the winner is given wrongly in other publications such as McCauley and I wanted to make sure that was correct on here). Other editors don't have access to all these newspaper match reports, so should be able to cite my book instead. I think nowadays with the obsession with the Big Three (all three of them great players of course), everything before them has been forgotten by a lot of the tennis media and those people that do remember what went before only go back to the late 1970s usually. The term G.O.A.T. is frequently used, yet very few people within the tennis media bother to look into anything before the time they started following the sport in making their assessment (the last words of G.O.A.T. are ALL TIME!) This is very strange to me, as even when I was a child and started following tennis in the late 1980s, I was always interested in the history of the sport. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 10:43, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Tournament Series

I would suggest adding a section on the tournament series, because that is already included in the leads for this article. There were significant tournament series with ranking points in several years before the annual 1964-1968 tournament series. In 1946, Riggs won the first such tournament series, started by Tilden, and Tilden mentioned in print that one reason for the tournament arrangement was to avoid suspicion of any "rigging" of the results, unlike the two-man tours. Riggs himself pointed to this 1946 series as proof of his No. 1 ranking status in the professional game. Unless there is an objection, I will add a section for the tournament series, following on from the existing material in the introductions already present.Tennisedu (talk) 00:53, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Were those really more significant than the tours in the (other professional tours) section? And why do you not list the annual 1964-68 tournaments to the section you added? I don't know but it feels a lot of context is missing. It's not even clear why the "World Championships" were such a big deal compared to the others. ForzaUV (talk) 22:34, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

See talk thread above this one, ForzaUV. Regarding tournament series, it is known Laver won the tournament series 1965-67 but full results were not published. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 00:24, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

@Tennishistory1877: Ok great but that's exactly the point. You claim that for many years the World Series was the biggest event in pro tennis and other tours were not as important but as Letcord said, it's not really clear that was a case from just reading the article. It'd be appreciated if you could add a paragraph to the section explaining why the players you listed in your reply to Letcord talked extensively about these tours, maybe with a sourced quote from one or two of them since you seem to have some of their biographies. ForzaUV (talk) 18:05, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

The winner of the world series was crowned world champion. Many citations are already on the world number one ranked male tennis players page. I will transfer them to this page if you wish. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 18:10, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for adding them. Regarding the other tours figures, please remove those you think are disputed along with the template. The standings column is what matters the most and as long as the standings aren't disputed we're good.

ForzaUV, the tournament series had their own significance, they were not restricted to just two guys on a marathon tour, but included all the pros ranked by a point system. As you might guess, that is how we rank players today, so the evolution of the tournament points series is a fascinating and important aspect of tennis history. The two-man series could never produce a general ranking list for all the pros, which did not matter if there were only two good pros, but in most years there were several or even ten good pros, so it made sense to get everyone involved in the action.Tennisedu (talk) 04:29, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Tennisedu for contribution. I've removed the template but as I've told you it's still not clear if the PPA and Ampol took days or months to complete. ForzaUV (talk) 18:05, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

We put the beginning and ending dates there, so I am not sure what you mean. Do you mean the total number of matches? Or the total number of days in the tournaments? We could add the total number of tournaments, which is now in the introduction area.Tennisedu (talk) 03:05, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

@Tennisedu: Never mind, fixed already by Tennishistory1877 here. There is something else I'd like to understand, so now we have Riggs in 1946, Hoad in 1960 and Rosewall in 1964 declared as winners by accumulating the most points from the series tournaments. I assume Laver won the series in a similar fashion from 65 to 67 but Roche in 68 and Laver in 69 won the series by winning just one tournament at the end of the year? Was that really the case or I'm missing something? ForzaUV (talk) 22:43, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

No, as you correctly pointed out by adding the two pro tennis leagues for 1968/69, both of those pro tours had a ranking tournament series, which determined the top four players from each pro tour to enter the season-ending tournament, which was a combined tournament of the top players from both tours. This combined event determined the overall champion of the two ranking tournament series. McCauley describes it on P. 156. This format was later adopted by the WCT in the early seventies, which used a point series of tournaments to determine the entrants to a tour-ending playoff tournament. The other pro tour in the early seventies was the Kramer ILTF series, which also used a tournament point series to determine the official rankings. Tennisedu (talk) 22:54, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

@Tennisedu: I get it but my point is that accumulating the most points from the series tournaments in 68/69 wasn't enough for a player to be declared as the winner of the series unlike the previous years when the winner was the one who ended up with the most points without having to win a particular tournament. Both Roche and Laver in 68/69 had to win one final season-end championship, Riggs, Hoad and Rosewall didn't have to.

One more thing, what are the 1954, 66 and 67 editions of the Madison Square Garden Pro about? ForzaUV (talk) 23:48, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Actually, in 1968 and 1969 getting the most points was enough to be declared winner of one of the two tour's tournament series, but in 1968 and 1969 they had two tours and had to go one stage further and hold a combined final tournament to give an overall champion. There was no need before 1968 for this final stage because there was only one pro tennis tour. With two separate pro tours they needed the final step. Those earlier MSG tournaments were not season-ending events, just individual tournaments on the pro calendar. The 1954 was not a tournament, just a stop on the world tour.Tennisedu (talk) 03:12, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for clearing that up, Tennisedu! ForzaUV (talk) 03:26, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Merging World Championship and other tours

I've added many new tours from Bowers. One thing I found while doing so is that having the World Championship and "Other" tours in separate sections makes the chronology difficult to understand. I therefore intend to merge these sections unless there are objections, with the World Championship tours highlighted in red so they are still easy to pick out.

Also, this article now covers not only pro tours but also pro tournament series. It should therefore be moved to Tennis pro tours and tournament series, which I will do unless evidence is provided that "Pro Tour" or "Tournament Series" are proper nouns, in which case I'll move it to Tennis Pro Tours and Tournament Series. Letcord (talk) 07:34, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

You cannot highlight in red as those who are sight challenged may not be able to see it. Plus red is used for broken links at Wikipedia. Things can be bolded but color should never be the only method of discerning something as it infringes on WP:ACCESSIBILITY. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:27, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Do NOT follow me to talk pages of articles you've never edited to repeatedly confront or inhibit my work. This is WP:WIKIHOUNDING behavior that I will not tolerate. Highlighting in red is already done in many tennis statistics articles, and I never implied that it would be the only way that the WCS would be denoted in my proposal, just that it would make them visually easy to pick out. Letcord (talk) 08:56, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Just trying to help.... I have many tennis articles on my watchlist that I have never edited. Cheers. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:19, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I disagree to the merging of World Championship tours with other tours. They should be listed separately. I agree to moving this page to the page Tennis Pro Tours and Tournament Series, as I suggested on a previous thread. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 08:49, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Any reason why you disagree? The 1936 tours where the Vines and Tilden groups split off after playing together initially for example would be much easier to understand if listed together, rather than one as a World Championship tour and one as an "other" tour. Also no sources have been provided to distinguish these two types of tours, so the classification as it stands is original research. The 1935 "World Championship Tour" for example had the doubles as the headline match, so didn't fit the amateur singles challenger vs pro champion format.

I'll move to the new title, but are "Pro Tours" and "Tournament Series" proper nouns? If not they should not be capitalized. Letcord (talk) 09:57, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Sources have been provided to distinguish the world tours from other tours, the world champion citations for example. The 1935 World championship tour began as Vines v Stoefen (which was the actual tour), but Stoefen pulled out, so the remainder of the tour became almost like a fill-in tour. In 1936, only the first two matches of Tilden Barnes and Vines Stoefen tours were played together. The World tours were the main reason the players turned pro in the first place and were hugely important. The world tours were more separate from other tours than "Pro major" tournaments were from other tournaments. Yet pro majors have their own separate pages on wikipedia. In my view, pro major tournaments should always include Wembley Pro, French Pro and US Pro, but there are a few other tournaments that in certain years that can and should be regarded as Pro Majors (for instance the Wimbledon Pro was the most important Pro event prior to 1968). Regarding the World Championship tours, there were no other tours in any year that were as important as the world tours were. Regarding capitalization of page title, whatever you prefer. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 11:34, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Other tours

I think we should set a minimum limit of 5 matches for the "Other tours" section, as otherwise there are many smaller series of matches/exhibitions that we could include that would clutter the page, and fewer than 5 matches is hardly a "tour". The question also arises about whether the team events should be classified as "Other tours", be put in a section of their own, or even be included at all given that they were in a tournament format and not tours. I think the "Tournament ranking series" section would be a better fit at Major professional tennis tournaments before the Open Era, as the head-to-head tours were a unique phenomenon deserving of a standalone article. Letcord (talk) 17:03, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

There are hardly any tours listed on this page below five matches anyway, but I'd be happy to make 5 matches a minimum length of tour. There weren't a lot of team events, but those that do exist should probably have their own category. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 17:57, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Letcord, there is already some overlap by "Tournament ranking series" with "Major professional tournaments before the Open Era", but it is not a close fit, just some occasional overlap. For example, in 1960 Kramer excluded the U.S. Pro from his ranking tournament series. In 1959, Kramer excluded the U.S. Pro (billed Cleveland World Pro) from his ranking series of tournaments. The "Tournament ranking series" had a specific purpose, to provide a ranking of the complete pro field, not just two or a few players. By the late fifties, there were 11 HOF players on the pro tour. There was a clear distinction between "world champion" and "world No. 1", but sometimes the distinction broke down in the promotional literature and the press reports. Both types of series were of major significance, "world champion" and "world No. 1" were both major titles, and on that basis they should both be included in this article.Tennisedu (talk) 19:09, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

There is no need to refer to the article on Major Pro Championships, because the tournament series awarded identical points to major tournaments as to secondary tournaments, the majors were not given special status on the tournament series. The tournament points series existed as a separate event apart from the more important tournaments. Linking to the article on Major pro tournaments would not help to identify which pro majors were included in the tournament points series. Unless we added that information to the article on the Major pro tournaments. We could do that, and then establishing a link would make sense.Tennisedu (talk) 05:55, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

What we should do before adding a link to Major Professional Tournaments article is to list the tournaments which are included in the three tournament series. That would indicate which important tournaments are involved. I will proceed to do that.Tennisedu (talk) 22:52, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

New Zealand 1962 tour

I tried to find the citations to support this tour, but the material apparently comes from the article Ken Rosewall Career Statistics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Rosewall_career_statistics. That particular article contains zero citations, so I do not know where we can find the sources for this tour. How can a tennis article exist without any citations?Tennisedu (talk) 05:02, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

I think Tennis base is the only useable citation for final results for this tour. All the results are known, but there are not final tallies printed in the New Zealand newspapers available online. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 10:26, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Incomplete Tours

I would like to suggest that we refrain from adding tours to the "Other" list until we actually have the results, otherwise the page will become cluttered with unknown results of tours. I have added "Incomplete Tour results" to those tours for which we have no results, only names. We now have a huge number of unknown result tours.Tennisedu (talk) 20:12, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

I disagree. There is no harm in listing the tours and participants. The Incomplete results tag shows these results are not complete. Some tours will never be complete because there are results that aren't even reported in local newspapers where the matches took place, but that doesn't mean that they should be ignored. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 21:50, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

A tour should be mentioned if we know the order of finish for the participants, otherwise we get no useful information from the fact that a certain group of players went on a tour somewhere. We need some final results to make it worthwhile reporting. I would suggest putting the incomplete results tours into a sandbox working area where some of them could be completed by stages and then added to the article when they have sufficient results.Tennisedu (talk) 22:32, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

I disagree. This is impractical, as finding every available result for every tour from online newspapers would require thousands of newspaper citations (and some newspapers aren't available online). This is one instance where McCauley is not very useful for final tallies of tours. I agree with what Letcord began with this page and I continued. Listing the tour participants and only listing final tour numbers when they are known AND where sources are available. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 23:02, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

No one is suggesting that we need to find every single result, but we need to at least know who the winner of the tour is, or else we are not putting anything of value into that space. If we know nothing about who even won the tour, it has no value. It is not even a curiosity.Tennisedu (talk) 01:24, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Strongly disagree that tours listed without results have no value. They tell you who was touring with whom when and where, which provides a lot of context about the make-up/organization of the pros and gives you a lead for searching newspaper archives for further info about each series. If Tennis Base/McCauley have accurate H2H leaders then those can be listed in the "Head-to-head results" column as e.g. "Tilden–Richards" even if they don't have final tallies. I don't have access to those sources so can't do that work. Also URLS should be added to the Tennis Base citations, as just e.g. "Tennis base 1933 World Tour" isn't really enough for online sources. This can be done by adding "|url=..." to each citation. Letcord (talk) 06:14, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

January 1959

The Australian tour in January did not include the Ampol Trophy series, which began on January 10. What is this Australian tour referring to?Tennisedu (talk) 20:49, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

The Australian exhibitions in January and February 1959. No, these aren't all in McCauley, because that book is 22 years old and obsolete, which is why I added Tennis Base as a citation. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 21:05, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Okay, that's what I thought. Those exhibitions do have some interesting matches between MacGregor and Anderson, and Gonzales and Rosewall.Tennisedu (talk) 21:26, 18 April 2022 (UTC)