This is the first in a series of reference posts that aim to describe what historical data is available at TennisAbstract.com. My goal is to keep these updated as the site continues to expand.
TennisAbstract.com now contains approximately 37,000 men’s singles results from the years 1957-67, the decade-plus that preceded the Open Era. The site has a reasonably complete set of pro results from 1968 to present, though I occasionally plug gaps and make corrections there as well.
Remarkably, 37,000 matches is nowhere near a complete representation of eleven years of amateur-era tennis.
Here’s what you can now find on the site for the years 1957-67:
- Complete grand slam singles results
- Complete Davis Cup singles results
- Every professional match I’ve been able to find, including matches from pro tours, which often featured just one or two singles matches per stop
- Every singles match from any tournament where a member of the Tennis 128 competed (not just matches involving Tennis 128ers).
The last category is quirky: It means that I now have results for some minor tournaments, like the Romanian National Championships when Ilie Năstase entered as a young man, or some regional collegiate events where Arthur Ashe or Stan Smith competed. It also means I lack some significant events–for instance, some editions of the U.S. Indoors or Bournemouth–if no 128ers happened to enter that year.
Despite the odd way I’ve drawn the line, the result is a pretty good representation of each season, one that includes most of the notable events. The decision also means that as I work backwards, I’ll complete–insofar as it is possible–the careers of the most historically significant players.
My goal is to make one pass back to 1920 or so before going through each year again, at which point I’ll shoot for a much more thorough level of coverage. Even this “limited” approach means adding more than 3,000 matches per season. That’s enough for the moment, at least if I hope ever to finish.
You can browse all this data the same way you view results for current players. For instance, here are the yearly summaries for Roy Emerson:
And here are some match-by-match results for Ken Rosewall at the end of his first pro season, in 1957:
Next, I plan to fill in some gaps in the first few years of the Open era, then jump back to 1956 and work backwards from there.
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