Originally published at: Bustin' Balls: World Team Tennis 1974-1978, Pro Sports, Pop Culture, and Progressive Politics | Boing Boing
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Relive the most fun tennis ever had in the photo-filled history, Bustin’ Balls
The truth is hard to swallow…
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Huh, never heard of World Team Tennis, seems interesting. Reminds me of the multiple attempts at revisiting American Football with modified rules for indoor play with smaller fields and less players.
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“You join us here at the Michigan Stadium Micro-dome, for final of the Men’s Singles American Football tournament; it is the Miami Loners versus the New England Solitaires…”
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If you listened to some folks, the NFL is already a single-player match-up of QB vs. QB
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I vaguely remember this, although I wasn’t the biggest tennis fan back then. What a great idea and a shame it didn’t take off and keep growing.
Been that way as long as I can remember, and I started watching in 1982 (quit watching in 2012).
Not a tennis fan (even as a kid, when I’d be interested in amost all televised sports), but I remember my hometown Buffalo shared a team with Toronto for one season. If I rememer correctly, one of the big deals was that fans were encouraged to make noise during play to bother the opponents.
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I remember when all of this was on the nightly news!
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Hope the sound track for the documentary isn’t as irritating as the one for the trailer.
As I recall the greatest innovation of WTT was keeping score by counting 0, 1, 2, 3, instead of Love, 15, 40, whatever…
I take issue with the bit:
“Iconic trailblazer King infamously played a hyped 1973 Battle of the Sexes against Bobby Riggs proving definitively that women athletes were competitive equals and changed the sports landscape forever.”
because it is not actually true.
Billy Jean King was a great player in her own right and didn’t need to prove anything to anybody, but Bobby Riggs was 55 when they played, and he may have actually thrown the match to erase debts to the mafia.
Riggs had beaten the world number one Margaret Court 6-2, 6 -1 a couple of months before.
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