Talk:Australian Pro

Australian Pro in 1957, 1958, and other years

We have some identity problems here.

As much as I would like to believe that this event actually existed, there are problems with the sources. It is well understood that the 1957 Sydney event was the Ampol Tournament of Champions and not the Australian Pro. And the 1958 Sydney was the Sydney Masters and not the Australian Pro. It appears that there is no basis in the sources for these "Australian Pro" titles, outside of McCauley, and we have no idea where McCauley got these tournament titles. It may be that the 1954 edition was the only Australian Pro identified as such in the sources.Tennisedu (talk) 02:17, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

I just looked up multiple contemporary sources for 1966, 1965, 1964, 1957 that call it the Australian Pro Championships. It might have multiple names but it certainly existed under that name. And it might be that in future years other events became known and incorporated into the Australian Pro. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:32, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Fyunck, the 1957 event was clearly labelled in the press as the Ampol White City Tournament of Champions, I could not see any reference to this event as the "Australian Pro". What is your contemporary source for 1957 showing "Australian Pro"? I would like to see it. The same is true for the other late fifties events, they all had clear names, not "Australian Pro". I have not followed up on 1964-66.Tennisedu (talk) 00:43, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I can't help what the press was calling it when I did searches but it was already being called the Australian Pro. I did see "Ampol professional tennis tournament" but I more often saw articles such as "Segura over Sedgman 7-5, 6-0, 6-4 at the Championship of Australian Pro Tennis." The day before it was "Pancho Segura whipped Pancho Gonzales in the semifinal of the Australian Pro Tennis Tournament." Later that week Segura said the reason he won the first Australian Pro tennis title was that he needed the money badly. Perhaps the posters around town called it what you said for sponsorship and money reasons, but the press and fans called it differently. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:49, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

There should be no Australian Pro page like this inferring these titles are all the same event. I can see no reason for grouping them together in this way. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 10:40, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Do you know of any sources that describe the Australian Pro in the context of a coherent multi-edition tournament e.g. references to a tournament history or to earlier editions? --Wolbo (talk) 22:37, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

That's an interesting question. While I could find newspapers that would call it the Australian Pro tournament, I did not see anything in say, 1966, that said Rosewall has won his 2nd Australian Pro title. Fyunck(click) (talk) 03:27, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Although the original event in 1954 was Australian Pro, they soon branched out to hold pro events in several Australian state capitals (Melbourne Victoria, Sydney New South Wales, Brisbane Queensland, Adelaide South Australia and Perth Western Australia, even Tasmania had a pro event on the odd occasion). However, sometimes these state capital events were Tournament of Champions etc., so they were not always billed as New South Wales pro, etc. But I think the concept that emerged in the late 50s was to hold state capital events. What is interesting is all of the many matches that were played in non-state capital towns are one-night stands (sometimes part of an overall series of matches across the country) and not tournaments. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 12:47, 30 October 2020 (UTC)