John Grasso - Historical Dictionary of Tennis

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Editors Foreword

Tennis has become one of the most popular sports around the world, to judge by the numbers of people playing it and also the sizes of audiences watching it on television. Yet, for the longest time, it was relatively marginal in the world of sports. That was partly due to a mindset that found it perhaps less sporting than other sports and partly because of disadvantages inflicted on it by purists, making it more complicated and inaccessible than necessary, and by the sports associations that were again more purist than in other fields and insisted that it remain an amateur sport when everything militated against that. Now that it has been given free reign, it is easier to see why tennis appeals to so many, whether they engage in it themselves or just watch. Thus, over the years, it has spawned numerous generations of top-seeded players, whose names are almost household words but who are surrounded by large numbers of less known but quite good players, men and women, of all races and, increasingly, all nationalities. And they have created records, repeatedly outdoing their predecessors, which makes this aspect of the sport almost a specialization in its own.

It is on this background that the Historical Dictionary of Tennis should meet with a warm welcome since it traces the history, reaching back to the oldest recorded predecessors and working its way gradually up to the present day. That is done, among other things, in the introduction, which provides a broad overview of the underlying progression and the issues it had to contend with, while passing in review some of the best tennis players. The chronology is no less important, tracing this evolution from year to year. And, to follow the sport, it does not hurt to have lists of the acronyms of the major tennis associations and the country codes. Nor can the appendixes be overlooked as they list the top players over the years. But obviously, the most important part is a fairly large dictionary section with fairly long entries that track, among other things, the careers of outstanding players and the relative standing of major countries while also informing us about the top championships, main organizations, and larger stadiums. Other entries provide simple definitions of basic terms and concepts, including the rules for scoring, among many other things.

The author of this volume, John Grasso, has a rather eclectic range of sports interests, all of which he has increasingly broadened and deepened and on which he has also written. His initial (and still active) interest was in boxing, on which he has written widely. Then comes basketball, which has already generated two books as well as the Historical Dictionary of Basketball in this series. Tennis only came later, but now he is also deeply involved, playing a bit of tennis himself, but especially compiling a huge library on the topic and researching it whenever and wherever possible. Certainly, just reading this volume will show the incredible number of facts and figures he has accumulated, which is actually the easy part, and how he managed to organize them coherently to present the careers of dozens and dozens of players, which is far harder. And even harder than that, although Grasso accomplishes it simply in passing, is to put all the pieces together so they form a coherent picture and give us a feeling for a sport that has come from behind but is now known to everyone everywhere, some just superficially, others quite passionately.

Jon Woronoff

Series Editor

Preface

It is impossible in a book of this size to cover all aspects of an activity that has been practiced worldwide for more than 100 years. I have tried to include a fair representation of both men and women from all eras and countries. The emphasis has been on their performance in Grand Slam events, the Olympic Games, and team events, such as the Davis Cup, Federation Cup, and Wightman Cup. As can be seen by the list of people inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame (appendix A), there have been many contributors to the sport that have had to be omitted from this volume. Space limitations have restricted entries to brief sketches, but readers interested in more details are advised to make use of the extensive bibliography at the end of this book. It is hoped that the information contained here will provide the neophyte reader with a general introduction to tennis and that some of the anecdotal details will be of interest to the reader with a broader background.