For all the worthwhile reminiscing about tennis’s golden anniversary, it’s worth remembering an important step that occurred 51 years ago: In 1967, the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, which runs Wimbledon, staged an eight-man professional tournament in August.
The pros had been banned from the Grand Slams, so even an offseason event was all but scandalous. But the BBC had approached Wimbledon about launching its new color television service with an event like this, and the club was the most forward thinking of the Slams.
“The chairman [Herman David] of the All England Club called and said you give me your best eight players and we are going to have a pro Wimbledon after the ’67 Wimbledon,” said Rod Laver, who went pro in 1963 after winning his second Wimbledon title the year before. He thought he would never play the event again (he would win it in ’68 and ’69). “And he said, ‘If you fill the stadium, you are invited to come and be in our tournament next year.’ That just broke everything open, that was the greatest thing that ever happened to tennis, as we all know.”
The 1967 pro event indeed sold out, but it would take a vote of the Lawn Tennis Association to allow pros into Wimbledon.
“To their eternal credit, the LTA did pass such a resolution thanks to a rousing speech from future Chairman Derek Penman,” John Barrett, an amateur and pro player in the ’50s and ’60s, wrote in an essay on open tennis for the All England Club.
The LTA then lobbied for a 1968 spring meeting of the International Tennis Federation in Paris. It was there that the votes occurred to allow pros into the Slams.
