1976 atp tour

1976 Grand Prix (tennis)

The 1976 Commercial Union Assurance Grand Prix was a professional tennis circuit administered by the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) which served as a forerunner to the current Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) World Tour and the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Tour. [1] The circuit consisted of the four modern Grand Slam tournaments and open tournaments recognised by the ILTF. The Commercial Union Assurance Masters is included in this calendar but did not count towards the Grand Prix ranking. [2]

December 1975

Points system, atp rankings, list of tournament winners, external links, further reading.

The 1976 Grand Prix circuit consisted of 48 tournaments held in 21 different countries.

The tournaments listed above were divided into six groups. Group TC consisted of the Triple Crown — the French Open, the Wimbledon Championships and the US Open — while the other tournaments were given star ratings ranging from five stars to one star, based on prize money and draw size. [3] Points were allocated based on these ratings and the finishing position of a player in a tournament. No points were awarded to first-round losers, and ties were settled by the number of tournaments played. The points allocation, with doubles points listed in brackets, is as follows:

The 1976 Grand Prix tournaments were divided in six separate point categories, ranging from the Triple Crown tournaments (150 points for the winner) to the smallest One Star tournaments (40 points for the winner). At the end of the year the 35 top-ranked players received a bonus from the bonus pool. To qualify for a bonus a player must have played a minimum amount of One and Two Star tournaments. The top eight points ranked singles players and top four doubles teams were entitled to participate in the season-ending Masters tournament . [2]

These are the ATP rankings of the top twenty singles players at the end of the 1975 season [4] and at the end of the 1976 season, [5] with numbers of ranking points, points averages, numbers of tournaments played, year-end rankings in 1976, highest and lowest positions during the season and number of spots gained or lost from the first rankings to the year-end rankings.

The list of winners and number of Grand Prix singles titles won, alphabetically by last name:

The following players won their first Grand Prix title in 1976:

• 1976 World Championship Tennis circuit
• 1976 WTA Tour
• ↑ This match was stopped at two sets all due to bad light. The final set was played on 15 September during the Grow Professional Doubles Championships.

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• 1 2 John Barrett , ed. (1977). World of Tennis 1977   : a BP yearbook . London: Macdonald and Janes. pp.   25–31. ISBN   9780354090117 .
• ↑ "$5-Million Tour For Grand Prix Tennis" . Sarasota Herald-Tribune . UPI. 23 January 1976.
• ↑ "ATP Rankings (singles) as of December 15, 1975" . atpworldtour.com . ATP Tour, Inc. 15 December 1975 . Retrieved 2012-01-11 .
• ↑ "ATP Rankings (singles) as of December 12, 1976" . atpworldtour.com . ATP Tour, Inc.
• ↑ "ATP rankings 15 Dec, 1975" . ATP . Retrieved 14 September 2023 .
• ↑ "ATP Year-end top 20" . ATP . Retrieved 14 September 2023 .
• ATP Archive 1976: Commercial Union Grand Prix Tournaments
• ATP – History Mens Professional Tours
• Collins, Bud (2010). The Bud Collins History of Tennis: An Authoritative Encyclopedia and Record Book (2nd   ed.). New York: New Chapter Press. ISBN   978-0-942257-70-0 .
• Association of Tennis Professionals
• World Team Tennis

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History Of The Nitto ATP Finals

Men's professional tennis has always featured a year-end championship ever since Jack Kramer, the first executive director of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), implemented the Grand Prix structure of a year-long series of tennis tournaments in 1969 . Right from the first Masters in Tokyo in December 1970 it became a prestigious event, and was subsequently held in Paris, Barcelona, Boston, Melbourne, Stockholm, and Houston before the event started a 13-year association with Madison Square Garden in New York from 1977 to 1989 . The Masters evolved into the ATP Tour World Championships in 1990 . Frankfurt and Hannover shared the event through 1999 . In 2000 , the event was rebranded Tennis Masters Cup and was held in Lisbon, Sydney, Houston and Shanghai. In 2009 , the event moved to The O2 in London, the world's busiest entertainment arena, as the Nitto ATP Finals and celebrated the 50-year anniversary in 2020. After a successful 12-year stint in London, the tournament moved to Turin in 2021 .

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March 26, 1976: the day Ilie Nastase was famously defaulted in Palm Springs

Every day Tennis Majors takes you back in time to celebrate a great moment in tennis history. Today, we go back to 1976 to witness how, after a week of antics, gamesmanship and provocation, Ilie Nastase was finally defaulted from the American Airlines Games quarter-finals, while he was trailing 6-3, 2-1 against Roscoe Tanner

What happened exactly

On this day, March 26, 1976, in Palm Springs, Ilie Nastase, the first player to have ever occupied the top spot of the ATP rankings, was defaulted from his quarter-final clash against Roscoe Tanner. The Romanian had already received several warnings from the tournament referee, Charles Hare, in his previous match, and this time, he found no mercy and was disqualified in the early second set. 

The players involved : Ilie Nastase and Roscoe Tanner

• Tempestuous and mercurial Romanian Ilie Nastase

Ilie Nastase, born in 1946, started competing internationally in 1966, playing doubles with fellow Romanian Ion Tiriac, and he obtained his first remarkable results in singles in 1969, when he managed to  beat great players such as Tony Roche and Stan Smith. He played his best seasons between 1971 and 1976.

In these years, loved by the crowds and despised by most of the other players because of his attitude, he started by reaching the Roland-Garros in 1971, where he was beaten by Jan Kodes (8-6, 6-2, 2-6, 7-5). After another major final lost at Wimbledon in 1972 (lost to Stan Smith in five sets, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 7-5), Nastase claimed his first Grand Slam title at Forest Hills a few months later, defeating Arhur Ashe in the final (3-6, 6-3, 6-7, 6-4, 6-3).

The following year, after triumphing at Roland-Garros against Nikki Pilic (6-3, 6-3, 6-0), he became the first player to become world No 1 in the newly established ATP rankings. He held on to this spot for 40 weeks.

Nastase obtained his best result at the Masters Cup, a tournament he won three times, in 1971, 1972 and 1973. Nastase was known to be a great entertainer, but his unpredictable behaviour was controversial amongst his peers, and although the crowds generally liked his antics, he often went too far and was booed as a consequence. An entire book would not be enough to tell all the anecdotes about “Nasty”. Constantly arguing with the officials, he could also imitate his opponents, taunting and badmouthing them until they lost their temper.

• Rocket Roscoe Tanner

Roscoe Tanner, the first player in tennis history to become mostly famous because of his deadly lefty serve, which earned him the nickname “The Rocket”, was born in 1951. He turned pro in 1972, and he soon reached his first final, in Los Angeles, defeated by Stan Smith (6-4, 6-4). In 1974, after he finished runner-up to Rod Laver in Palm Desert (6-4, 6-2), he claimed his first title, defeating Arthur Ashe in the Denver Open final (6-2, 6-4).

The same year, he obtained his first remarkable Grand Slam performance, reaching the US Open semi-finals (lost to world No 1, Jimmy Connors, 7-6, 7-6, 6-4). Connors then defeated Tanner in the Wimbledon semi-final in 1975 (6-4, 6-1, 6-4). In March 1976, the Tennessee-born left-hander was world No 13. 

The place : The American Airlines Games, Palm Springs

The American Airlines Games, held for the first time in Tucson, Arizona in 1974, became the ancestor of the Indian Wells Masters 1000 when it moved to California in 1976. It was played on indoor hard courts at the Mission Hills Country Club, and its first two champions were Australian –  John Newcombe and John Alexander.

In March 1976, Ilie Nastase, although he had started the year much better than 1975, defeating Jimmy Connors in back-to-back finals at the US National Indoor and the Celebrity-Pro, was not the same player who dominated the game in 1973. The Romanian, famous for being the first world No 1 in the history of the ATP rankings, had not obtained any remarkable results in a Grand Slam tournament for several years, and he was now mostly known for his outrageous gamesmanship. 

At the American Airlines Games, in California, Nastase surpassed himself in terms of unsportsmanlike behaviour. At the end of his round of 16 win against Dick Stockton, during which the Romanian saved a match point, there was no handshake.

“It’s hard to play when a guy is doing the things Nastase does on the court,” explained his opponent, quoted by The New York Times . “He did everything to win the match in an unfair way. He stalled around. He called the umpire and referee every name in the book. He called me names. There’s no excuse for it. They let him get away with it.”

In the quarter-finals, Nastase faced Roscoe Tanner. Tanner knew what to expect from Nastase, however, having seen what had happened in the previous match, he was determined to enforce the rules. He explained his mindset before the match in his autobiography, Double Fault: my rise and fall, and my road back .

“Look, I’m going to play this fair and square,” he told the tournament referee, “but if Nastase gets his three warnings, on the next thing, I’m quitting, so you will have to default one of us. I’m not going to be the dummy who stands out there and goes through all this and loses.”

When the match began, Tanner took control early on, and Nastase soon felt that his only chance was to put up more antics to try and break his opponent’s concentration. However, Charles Hare, the tournament referee, was not in the mood to let him mess around once again.

“I had to go on the court for an hour Wednesday and for an hour yesterday,” he explained later. “Today I was forced to sit on the court from the first minute. I’ve never known any referee, except in Davis Cup, to have this much pressure.”

It wasn’t long before Nastase received the warnings Tanner had anticipated before the match. 

“The first time I had to speak to him he bowed, giving me his behind. I gave him a warning,” said Hare. “In our second altercation, he called me a four‐letter word. Nobody can call me that. Then he actually left the court, sat in a box and put his feet up on the railing. If you leave the scene of action, under the rules you are defaulted.”

Tanner then did exactly what he had told the referee before: he walked back to his chair and put his racquets away, digging his bag to find the rule book. However, there was no need for that: the referee had already defaulted Nastase from the American Airlines Games.

“I think the answer is for him to be taken out of the game for a while,” added the referee, who regretted that fines had very little impact on players with big incomes like Nastase.

Roscoe Tanner would make his way into the final of the American Airlines Open, where he was defeated by Jimmy Connors (6-4, 6-4). He would claim his first and only Grand Slam title in January 1977 at the Australian Open, defeating Guillermo Vilas in a final of left-handers (6-3, 6-3, 6-3). The American would reach one more major final, also on grass, defeated by Bjorn Borg at Wimbledon in 1979 (6-7, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4). After his retirement, Tanner would unfortunately become famous because of his record of conflicts with the law, which would lead him to jail on several occasions.

1976 would be Nastase’s last great year on the tour, as he would finish runner-up to Bjorn Borg at Wimbledon (6-4, 6-2, 9-7), before reaching his last Grand Slam semi-final at the US Open (beaten again by Borg, 6-3, 6-3, 6-4). Following his default in Palm Springs, rules would be reinforced in ATP Tournaments, a change which Bud Collins, the famous tennis commentator, would call “the Nastase Act”. However, his antics would peak at the 1979 US Open, in a infamous match-up lost to John McEnroe.

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ATP TENNIS RANKINGS HISTORY - The No. 1 Players

From 1973 to 1999 the ATP utilized a 52-week Ranking System that now is used for the ATP Entry Ranking. The ATP Champions Race provides an easier-to-follow calendar-year race, culminating with a single year-end No. 1. The figures below highlight the achievements of the players over the past years. Since Ilie Nastase first reached No. 1 on the ATP Rankings on August 23, 1973, there have been 29 different players to reach the No. 1 ranking.

WTA No. 1 History ATP/WTA Ranking Stats

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