Tennis
Tennis history
How the competition came to look the way it does.
Four surfaces, one ranking
The open era merged the amateur and professional games and created the tour structure recognised today.
Rankings replaced subjective seeding committees and made the calendar itself competitive.
Equipment and string technology changed the sport's physics more quietly than any rule ever has.
Season-by-season champions, records and historical tables need a licensed historical data source. Until we have one, this page carries written history only.