Was there anything before the "Open Era"?

Question

I always hear the commentators talking about, "No other man has done this in the Open Era..."

Was there anything before the Open Era? Any information on it?

Answer 1

Well this is what I found on wikipedia.


The Open Era in tennis began in 1968, when the Grand Slam events such as the Wimbledon Championships abandoned the longstanding rules of amateurism and allowed professionals to compete.

Professionals, previously a rather small part of the tennis scene, swiftly achieved overwhelming dominance.


Only 6 players have won 4 or more titles in one Grand Slam tournament:
Pete Sampras: (7 Wimbledon and 5 US Open),
Björn Borg: (6 French Open and 5 Wimbledon),
Jimmy Connors: (5 US Open),
John McEnroe: (4 US Open),
Roger Federer: (4 Wimbledon),
Andre Agassi: (4 Australian Open).


Pete Sampras of the United States holds the men's record for most Grand Slam singles events won in the Open Era, with 14.
Shares record with Roger Federer of having had 4 winning streaks of 20 or more consecutive matches.
Rod Laver of Australia is the only male player to win the Calendar Grand Slam in the Open Era (1969). (He also won all four tournaments in 1962 before the Open Era).
Andre Agassi of the United States won the Career Grand Slam in 1999, after winning the Championships at Roland Garros (French Open). As such, he is also the only male player to win all four majors on four different surfaces (hardcourt, clay, grass, and Rebound Ace).
Only man in the Open Era to complete the Career Golden Slam: All four Grand Slams and the Olympic Gold Medal (non-consecutive).
Won 7 of the 9 ATP Masters Series Titles throughout career.
Most overall ATP Masters Series Titles (17).
Oldest #1 Male Tennis Player in the World (33 years and 13 days).
Most number of US Opens competed in (21).
Most years finished in the Top Ten (16) (tied with Jimmy Connors).
Roger Federer of Switzerland holds numerous Open Era records:
Longest winning streak on hard court: 56 (2005-06).
Longest winning streak on grass court: 48 (2003-present).
Longest winning streak against Top-10 players: 26 (2003-2005).
Most finals won in succession: 24 (2003-2005).
Highest number of ranking points at the end of the year: 6,725 (2005).
Highest number of ranking points at any time of the year: 7,760 (August 14, 2006).
Highest number of Race points (since 2000): 1,345 (2005).
Earliest to seal Year-end No. 1 spot: September (2004).
Winner of his first 7 Grand Slam finals.
Most consecutive Grand Slam finals: 5 (Wimbledon 2005-present).
First man to win 4 ATP Masters Series (since 1990) titles in one season.
Holds a record-tying (with Pete Sampras) 4 winning streaks of 20 or more consecutive matches:
23 (Jun 2004-Aug 2004: W Halle, Wimbledon, Gstaad, Toronto, 1st round Cincinnati).
26 (Aug 2004-Jan 2005: W U.S. Open, Bangkok, Tennis Masters Cup, Doha, SF Australian Open).
25 (Feb 2005-Apr 2005: W Rotterdam, Dubai, Indian Wells AMS, Miami AMS, QF Monte Carlo).
35 (Jun 2005-Nov 2005: W Halle, Wimbledon, Cincinnati AMS, U.S. Open, Davis Cup match, Bangkok, F Tennis Masters Cup).
First man to win at least 10 titles in a season without losing in a final (2004).
First man ever to record "double bagel" at a Year-End Championship (Federer d. Gastón Gaudio, SF 2005 Tennis Masters Cup).
Only player to have won consecutive Wimbledon and US Open titles in back-to-back years.
First man to win ATP Masters Series in Indian Wells and Miami back-to-back in consecutive years (2005-2006).
Ivan Lendl
Longest match winning streak indoors: 66 (between October 1981 and January 1983).
Won second most tournaments after Guillermo Vilas (1977) in a single year: 15 (1982).
Only player to have won three tournaments in consectutive weeks on three different surfaces.
Has reached most consecutive finals: 18 between 1981-82.
Rafael Nadal
Longest match winning streak on clay: 60 (2005-present).


2005
Rafael Nadal of Spain became the first male teenager to reach the second place in the ATP Entry Rankings since Boris Becker.
Nadal has won 8 titles on clay in 2005, most since Thomas Muster (7) in 1995.
Nadal's 24 match winning streak is the longest streak of any teenager in the Open Era.
For the first time since 1990 two men have won 10 singles titles each in one season: Roger Federer (11) and Rafael Nadal (11).
2006
Roger Federer's victory at the Australian Open meant his 7th win in 7 Grand Slam finals; a record. Only Williams Renshaw and Richard Sears achieved the same feat, but they played in 19th century. Interestingly, all of Renshaw's wins came at Wimbledon and all of Sears' wins at the U.S. Open.
Federer became the first player to win the Indian Wells-Miami double for the second consecutive year.
By winning the French Open, Nadal set a clay court winning streak of 60 matches--besting the previous record of 53 wins by Guillermo Vilas. His victory over Federer in the finals prevented the latter from earning a non-calendar Grand Slam. Federer's Grand Slam finals record now stands at 8-1.


Margaret Smith Court of Australia holds the record for most Grand Slam singles titles by any person, with 24 (11 in the Open Era).
Margaret Smith Court and Steffi Graf are the only two female players to win the Grand Slam in the Open Era. Graf also won the Olympic gold medal that year (1988), making her the only player ever to win the Golden Slam. Court actually won a record 6 consecutive Grand Slam tournaments in that she also won the last Grand Slam event of 1969 (US Open), then all 4 titles in 1970, and then the first Grand Slam tournament of 1971 (Australian Open). Martina Navratilova shares this unique record of 6 consecutive Grand Slam wins as she won the last three grand Slams of 1983 and the first 3 of 1984. Graf also won 6 consecutive Grand Slams that she played in (French Open 1995 - US Open 1996). She, however, did not play in the Australian Open of 1996.
When Steffi Graf won the 1995 US Open singles title, she became the first and so far the only player, male or female, to win 4 titles at each of the Grand Slam tournaments.
Steffi Graf became the first woman in the Open Era to lose in the first round of a Grand Slam as a defending champion, in 1994 Wimbledon. Three more Grand Slam champions would follow her:
Jennifer Capriati (U.S.) in the 2003 Australian Open.
Anastasia Myskina (Russia) in the 2005 French Open.
Svetlana Kuznetsova (Russia) in the 2005 US Open.
2005
Lindsay Davenport created history in Indian wells 2005. As the top seed (and world number one), she double bageled then world number three Maria Sharapova in the semi-final match - it was the first time in history of tennis when a player in the top three had been double-bageled.
Lindsay Davenport became the first women's player to notch 50 wins at Melbourne park in the Open Era.
Justine Henin-Hardenne (Belgium) lost in the first round at Wimbledon and became the first reigning French Open champion to do so.
Maria Sharapova became the first Russian woman to reach the number one spot in the rankings, holding it for 7 non-consecutive weeks.
2006
The Australian Open finals between Amelie Mauresmo and Justine Henin-Hardenne marked the first time in the Open Era that a Grand Slam women's singles final (and just the second Grand Slam singles final) was won when a competitor retired.


And now, before Open Era:

Tennis can be traced as far back as the ancient Greek game of sphairistike (Greek: Σφαιριστική). Major Walter Wingfield borrowed the name of this Greek game, in order to name the recreation he patented in 1874. It was soon converted into a three-syllable word rhyming with “pike” and afterwards abbreviated either to sticky or the mock-French stické, before being finally called "lawn tennis", which was a second name patented by Wingfield for the game.

Its establishment as the modern sport can be dated to two separate roots. In 1856, Alex Ryden, a solicitor, and his friend Batista Pereira, a Portuguese merchant, who both lived in Birmingham, England played a game they named "pelota", after a Spanish ball game. The game was played on a lawn in Edgbaston. In 1872 both men moved to Leamington Spa, and with two doctors from the Warneford Hospital, played pelota on the lawn behind the Manor House Hotel (now residential apartments). Pereira joined with Dr. Frederick Haynes and Dr. A. Wellesley Tomkins to found the first lawn tennis club in the world, and played the game on nearby lawns. In 1874 they formed the Leamington Tennis Club, setting out the original rules of the game. The Courier of 23 July 1884 recorded one of the first tennis tournaments, held in the grounds of Shrubland Hall (demolished 1948).

In December 1873, Major Walter Clopton Wingfield devised a similar game for the amusement of his guests at a garden party on his estate at Nantclwyd, Wales. He based the game on the older sport of indoor tennis or real tennis ("royal tennis"), which had been invented in 12th century France and was played by French aristocrats down to the time of the French Revolution.

According to most tennis historians, modern tennis terminology also derives from this period, as Wingfield borrowed both the name and much of the French vocabulary of royal tennis and applied them to his new game:

Tennis comes from the French tenez, the imperative form of the verb tenir, to hold: This was a cry used by the player serving in royal tennis, meaning "I am about to serve!" (rather like the cry "Fore!" in golf).
Racquet comes from raquette, which derives from the Arabic rakhat, meaning the palm of the hand.
Deuce comes from à deux le jeu, meaning "to both is the game" (that is, the two players have equal scores).
Love may come from l'œuf, the egg, a reference to the egg-shaped zero symbol; however, since "un œuf" is more commonly used, the etymology remains in question.
The convention of numbering scores "15", "30" and "40" comes from quinze, trente and quarante, which to French ears makes a euphonious sequence, or from the quarters of a clock (15, 30, 45) with 45 simplified to 40.
Seeing the commercial potential of the game, Wingfield patented it in 1874, but never succeeded in enforcing his patent. Tennis spread rapidly among the leisured classes in Britain and the United States. It was first played in the U.S. at the home of Mary Ewing Outerbridge on Staten Island, New York in 1874.

In 1881 the desire to play tennis competitively led to the establishment of tennis clubs. The first championships at Wimbledon, in London were played in 1877. In 1881 the United States National Lawn Tennis Association (now the United States Tennis Association) was formed to standardize the rules and organize competitions. The comprehensive I.L.T.F. rules promulgated in 1924 have remained remarkably stable in the ensuing eighty years, the one major change being the addition of the tie-breaker system designed by James Van Alen. U.S. National Men's Singles Championship, now the U.S. Open, was first held in 1881 at Newport, Rhode Island. The U.S. National Women's Singles Championships were first held in 1887. The Davis Cup, an annual competition between national teams, dates to 1900.

Tennis was for many years predominantly a sport of the English-speaking world, dominated by the United States, Britain and Australia. It was also popular in France, where the French Open dates to 1891. Thus Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the French Open and the Australian Open (dating to 1905) became and have remained the most prestigious events in tennis. Together these four events are called the Grand Slam (a term borrowed from bridge). Winning the Grand Slam, by capturing these four titles in one calendar year, is the highest ambition of most tennis players.

In 1926 promoter C.C. ("Cash and Carry") Pyle established the first professional tennis tour with a group of American and French tennis players playing exhibition matches to paying audiences. The most notable of these early professionals were the American Vinnie Richards and the Frenchwoman Suzanne Lenglen. For 42 years professional and amateur tennis remained strictly separate. Once a player turned pro he or she could not compete in the major (amateur) tournaments. In 1968, commercial pressures led to the abandonment of this distinction, inaugurating the Open era, in which all players could compete in all tournaments, and top players were able to make their living from tennis.

I'm sorry for making it so big... but that's the way it says in Wikipedia. If you want to read more, visit those two pages down, listed as my sources.

Answer 2

It was amateur dominated. The money in tennis was nothing.