About The Roots of Tennis book
Blue blood Dwight Davis’ other contribution to tennis; jumpstarting the growth of tennis for the masses in public parks, first in St Louis, then the country.
The huge growth of tennis from the early 1900s, evidenced by the 1923 St. Louis City Parks Department report on spending $14,000 for tennis court maintenance or about 45 cents per player--works out to be around 31,000 players. During that same year Dwight Davis, as president of USLTA, stated that in 1922 1,785,711 tennis players used the public courts in 42 cities throughout the U.S.
Having huge numbers of people suddenly involved in tennis created fine players, tournament organizers, good venues, large galleries of spectators, and tennis entrepreneurs of all kinds. St Louis during 1920s and early 1930s had spectacular national championships, Davis Cup matches, touring world class players. The people who played, ran, or watched these events became the main cadre who jumpstarted the mega tennis boom of the post-WW II era; there were huge numbers of champions and high-ranking players of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s.
Many of the later beneficiaries of the early public parks tennis boom were from blue collar backgrounds; such players as Jimmy Connors, Butch Buchholz, Chuck McKinley, and Arthur Ashe.
This all came together, not as a Big Bang theory of tennis development, but because of a number of concurrent happenings. The Roots of Tennis -- Blue Bloods to Blue Collars shows how this happened.