How the Pro Tour
Really Began
Mark Winters
In January 2022, I received an email from Tom O'Neal wishing me a Happy New Year and adding, "I trust you are still writing about tennis. Please give me a call at your convenience as I had a thought that might be of interest to you."
O'Neal is a Renaissance Man when it comes to his approach to life and to tennis. He has traveled widely and has a diverse corporate executive background. He has also worked at every level of the game which has given him an appreciation of what has taken place and more important all that was required to see a project to fruition.
The Tour Is Born
After our telephone visit, he emailed saying, "As I mentioned, I thought the signal advancement of pro tennis in the 1960's was moving from the one-night stands format in numerous cities to a series of weeklong tournaments. Butch Buchholz explained that Jack Kramer decided in the early 1960's to try a series of five or six weeklong tournaments, like the golfers had in those days.
"Signing Rod Laver to the group was a key. Then Butch managed to get a sponsorship commitment from a St. Louis Volkswagen dealer. They leveraged this sponsorship to secure five or six more and the tour was born."
The first incarnation was a summer circuit with $80,000 in total prize money. The year was 1964.
Who Was Buchholz?
Who was Butch? In the late 1950s, Butch Buchholz had been one of the best juniors in the world. He was the boys' singles titlist at Roland Garros and at Wimbledon in 1958. The same year, he doubled at the US Boys'18 Championships, winning the singles and the doubles with fellow St. Louisan, Chuck McKinley.
He was ranked in the US Top 10 four times. He was a member of the US Davis Cup team in 1959 and 1960, the same year he lost to Laver in the semifinals of the US National Men's Singles championship.
Speaking with me from his home in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, he expanded on O'Neal's account about that first week-long event.
It was called The St. Louis Bi-Centennial Professional Tennis Tournament. The prize money was $10,000 and it was played June 7-13 1964. Tickets were $3.00 or $15 for the entire event.
"We had been playing one-night stands," Buchholz said of professional tennis at the time. "There were only a few tournaments. We had sixteen to twenty guys, who had all won major tournaments, but everyone thought we were playing exhibitions."
"We wanted to see if we could find some sponsors and see if we could find some sites and play some tournaments which we did. By 1967 we had 20 to 25 tournaments around the world."
These were the first staggering steps in an industry that today makes almost $150 million annually.
The field also had international stars besides the Australian, Andrés Gimeno of Spain, Luis Ayala of Chile, and Alex Olmedo of Peru.
Buchholz remembered in the early days of the tour, "We used to pull people out of stands to call lines."
And the results? Playing when the temperature was the highest, Buchholz had a 6-4, 7-9, 6-4 victory over Laver in the semis. Ever been to St. Louis in the summer?
