Tennis/Catalogs/World No. 1 male players

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This is a supplement to the articles about Tennis and Famous tennis players, and to the articles about the individual players.

Under construction: This will be a chronological listing of both the male tennis player who, at the end of a full year of play, has generally been considered to be the best overall player for the entire year, and of the runner-up for that year. Before the Open era of tennis arrived in 1968, rankings for amateur players were normally only compiled for a full year of play and the professional players had no rankings at all except for seedings in individual tournaments. Even for the amateurs, there was no single official overall ranking that encompassed the entire world; rankings were done by the national tennis association of each individual country. It was only with the introduction of computerized rankings in the Open era that rankings became common on a more frequent basis than at the end of the year. There were no official rankings of players worldwide until approximately 1972, so that all rankings in this list, no matter how authoritative, are both unofficial and entirely subjective. For each year, however, at least one, and sometimes more, authoritative source for that ranking is given:

(A = Amateur, P = Professional)

Year Name World No. 2 Source of Ranking and Additional Information
1913 Tony Wilding (NZ) A. Norman Brookes (AUS) A. and Maurice McLoughlin (USA) A. A. Wallis Myers of the London Daily Telegraph; his top 10 players, all amateur, were Wilding, Brookes and McLoughlin tied for 2nd, Jim Cecil Parke, R. Norris Williams, Percy Dixon, Otto Froitzheim, Stanley Doust, André Gobert, and Max Décugis.
1914 Maurice McLoughlin (USA) A. Norman Brookes (AUS) A. and Tony Wilding (NZ) A. A. Wallis Myers of the London Daily Telegraph; his top 10 players, all amateur, were McLoughlin, Brookes and Wilding tied for 2nd, Froitzheim, Williams, Parke, Arthur Lowe, F. Gordon Lowe, Heinrich Kleinschroth, and Décugis.
1915-1918 World War I, no world rankings
1919 Gerald Patterson(AUS) A. and Little Bill Johnston (USA) A. A. Wallis Myers of the London Daily Telegraph; his top 10 players, all amateurs, were Patterson and Johnston tied for 1st, Gobert, Bill Tilden, Brookes, Algernon Kingscote, Williams, Percival Davson, Willis Davis, and William Laurentz.
1920 Big Bill Tilden (USA) A. Little Bill Johnston (USA) A. A. Wallis Myers of the London Daily Telegraph; his top 10 players, all amateurs, were Tilden, Johnston, Kingscote, Parke, Gobert, Brookes, Williams, Laurentz, Zenzo Shimidzu, and Patterson.
1921 Big Bill Tilden (USA) A. Little Bill Johnston (USA) A. A. Wallis Myers of the London Daily Telegraph; his top 10 players, all amateurs, were Tilden, Johnston, Vinnie Richards, Shimidzu, Patterson, James Anderson, Brian Norton, Manual Alonso, Williams, and Gobert.
1922 Big Bill Tilden (USA) A. Little Bill Johnston (USA) A. A. Wallis Myers of the London Daily Telegraph; his top 10 players, all amateurs, were Tilden, Johnston, Patterson, Richards, Anderson, Henri Cochet, Pat O'Hara Wood, Williams, Kingscote, and Gobert.
1923 Big Bill Tilden (USA) A. Little Bill Johnston (USA) A. A. Wallis Myers of the London Daily Telegraph; his top 10 players, all amateurs, were Tilden, Johnston, Anderson, Williams, Frank Hunter, Richards, Norton, Alonso, Jean Washer, and Cochet.
1924 Big Bill Tilden (USA) A. Vinnie Richards (USA) A. A. Wallis Myers of the London Daily Telegraph; his top 10 players, all amateurs, were Tilden, Richards, Anderson, Johnston, René Lacoste, Jean Borotra, Howard Kinsey, Patterson, Cochet, and Alonso.
1925 Big Bill Tilden (USA) A. Little Bill Johnston (USA) A. A. Wallis Myers of the London Daily Telegraph; his top 10 players, all amateur, were Tilden, Johnston, Richards, Lacoste, Williams, Borotra, Patterson, Alonso, Norton, and Takeichi Harada.
1926 René Lacoste (FR) A. Jean Borotra (FR) A. A. Wallis Myers of the London Daily Telegraph; his top 10 players, all amateur, were Lacoste, Borotra, Cochet, Johnston, Tilden, Richards, Harada, Alonso, Kinsey, Jacques Brugnon; the promoter Charles C. Pyle signed Richards, Harvey Snodgrass, Kinsey, and Paul Féret for the first professional tour, which toured the United States and Canada in the fall of 1926; the headliner, however, was the French female player Suzanne Lenglen against Mary Kendall Browne and there are only scattered records of the men's matches.
1927 René Lacoste (FR) A. Bill Tilden (USA) A. A. Wallis Myers of the London Daily Telegraph; his top 10 players, all amateur, were Lacoste, Tilden, Cochet, Borotra, Alonso, Frank Hunter, George Lott, John Hennessey, Brugnon, and Jan Koželuh; Ray Bowers ranks Karel Koželuh, the older brother of Jan Koželuh, and Vinnie Richards as being tied for #1 among the few professional players but does not make a joint amateur-professional ranking.
1928 Henri Cochet (FR) A. René Lacoste (FR) A. Bowers merges his pro list with Myers's amateur list and ranks the top 8 as being Cochet, Lacoste, Tilden, Koželuh, Richards, Hunter, Borotra, and George Lott, with Koželuh and Richards being the only professionals.

References

I will add references as I go along

Sources

  • The Official Encyclopedia of Tennis of the United States Tennis Association, edited by Bill Shannon, Harper & Row, New York, 1981, has annual rankings for the top 10 amateur players as compiled every year from 1914 through 1980, pages 496-501. These rankings were made annually by various tennis experts at a London newspaper, The Daily Telegraph: A. Wallis Myers (1913-1938), Sir F. Gordon Lowe (1939), Pierre Gillow (1946 and 1951), John Dliff (1947-1950), and Lance Tingay (1952-1980). Beginning with the late 1920s, first many, then most, of the best players in the world were professionals; once turning professional, as Bill Tilden did in 1931, they were not longer included in these annual lists.
  • History of the Pro Tennis Wars, by Ray Bowers, is a Web site associated with the Tennis Server site. In twelve chapters, Bowers gives a very detailed account of the first sixteen years of professional tennis, from its modest beginnings in 1926 on through 1942. In his summing-up for each year, he gives his rankings for the top 8 to 10 best players of the year, combining both amateurs and professionals. In almost all cases, as far as amateurs are concerned, his rankings coincide with those of the Daily Telegraph.
  • Total Tennis: The Ultimate Tennis Encyclopedia (2003), by Bud Collins. This massive work has year-by-year chapters in which Collins gives a brief summation of the Pro Tour results, often with personal comments about the players. It also has somewhat more complete rankings from the early years of the Daily Telegraph. The combined amateur-professional rankings for 1968 through 1972 are those of Collins himself. Beginning with 1973, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) began issuing computer-generated weekly rankings. Total Tennis shows the top 10 players in these rankings for the last week of every calendar year through 2002, and the top 2 player are included here.

See also

External links

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