
The Forgotten Home of Tennis’s Open Era - Graham24
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/22/sports/tennis/british-hard-court-championships.html
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dmurray
It's strange to think of an era where the prestigious competitions were in
amateur sports and this watershed moment was allowing professionals (who made
their money playing in smaller tournaments) to compete. My understanding is
that this was a class issue, where ladies and gentlemen who did not need to
work for a living did not rub shoulders with the people who did.

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Scarblac
In Dutch chess, grandmaster JH Donner was the first professional player. In
the 1960s he played in the Dutch team.

The other team members got paid for playing in tournaments because they had to
take time off from their jobs and obviously had to be compensated for that,
but Donner got paid nothing because as a chess professional he didn't have a
job.

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Graham24
How odd to find an article in the NYT about my home town.

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eosophos
How does this belong on Hacker News?

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JorgeGT
Human org dynamics are always interesting, because they can be applied to many
other fields. Consider, "Xerox, the forgotten home of OS's GUI era".

How an org can pioneer a multi-billion business such as modern tennis and
still become forgotten, unknown and semi-dilapidated is an insightful lesson
IMHO.

