Imagine being the best tennis player in the world, a hero in your own country through your exploits in the Davis Cup and the Grand Slam tournaments.
You decide to turn professional, which means you are ineligible for all those events, so you find that at 23 or 24 years of age you... are to a certain extent a forgotten commodity.
To most modern-day tennis fans, it is impossible to believe that until the late 1960s, professional tennis players - that is, those who played openly for money - were banned from competing in the world's major tournaments. Before this time the great contests such as the Davis Cup, Wimbledon and the national Championships were exclusive to so-called amateurs. Amateur tennis players were meant to compete only for glory. Though this division arose soon after the turn of the twentieth century, by the 1930s the 'Pro Tour' was entrenched, and endured for another forty years.
In The Pros: The Forgotten Heroes of Tennis, author Peter Underwood explains why professional players were forced into what was often called a 'travelling circus', where these sporting outcasts played each other during long and rather tatty tours taking them all over the world. Focussing on the eight champions who dominated the Pro Era - beginning in 1930 with the ultimately tragic figure of Big Bill Tilden - the book follows each Pro Champion until the era's end in 1968 with Rod The Rocket Laver, great and young enough to dominate the new Open Era.
Underwood's book is more than just history: his colourful depictions of ruthless battles among the pros for prize money and status of top dog, offer unique insight into the virtuoso's journey towards mastery of their craft, and the fascinating intersection between personality, background and individual style.
The Pros is a significant work about a forgotten but seminal era of tennis, and the brave men who, against the odds and entrenched prejudice, fought to become supreme masters of the game. According to 'Newk' - and to John Clarke, the revered Australian wit - the result is a 'must read' for every tennis lover.
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