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Great Tennis At The 2005 Us Open, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

Thirty years ago the country was in a tennis frenzy. Television had discovered the sport and colorful and attractive personalities seemed to be in an endless supply as they paraded before the cameras. Public tennis courts were overcrowded with people from seven to seventy. At the indoor courts of the major cities you were lucky to be able to get a reservation to play between three and four o'clock in the morning. Manufacturers of tennis equipment were making money hand over fist, and the tennis ball factories working around the clock (what we would now term 24/7), could not meet …