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George MacCall

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George Russell MacCall Born: May 7, 1918 in Kearny, New Jersey, USA Died: December 24, 2008 in Castaic, California, USA (natural causes) ref. his Daughter Robin MacCall Sims. Wife: Mary Withington, Born: July 18, 1926 - Died: January 30, 2006 ( 2 children)

       Robin & Polly

HISTORY George MacCall served as U.S. Davis Cup Captain from 1965 to 1967. During that time, he organized a professional tennis circuit, the National Tennis League, including Arthur Ashe, Rod Laver, Roy Emerson and Stan Smith.[1]

In 1968 Billie Jean King became the first woman of the Open Era to sign a pro contract to tour, in a group with Rosie Casals, Françoise Dürr and Ann Haydon-Jones as the women's section of the National Tennis League.[2] "On April 1, 1968, we signed with the National Tennis League, as George MacCall's troupe was called. Frankie (Durr) and Rosie (Casals) received a guarantee of $20,000 per annum for two years, mine (Ann Haydon-Jones) was $25,000 and Billie Jean King's was $40,000. George envisaged us playing a lot of matches and tournaments amongst ourselves and did not expect us to be as much involved in open tennis as later proved to be the case....We joined the six men that he already controlled - Emerson, Laver, Gimeno, Gonzales, Rosewall and Stolle. A group of ten was an attractive proposition to offer and he believed he was going to do very well from it. His main problem was one of administration. He had to keep flying all over the world to tie up arrangements with the various associations but didn't leave sufficient time to organize his professional tours in America, the most important part of the operation, and didn't seem to be able or willing to delegate."—From A Game to Love by Ann Jones. Published 1971 by Stanley Paul & Co Ltd; p. 135 and 136

In June 1969 Fred Podesta's formed Tennis Champions Inc. and became the parent company of the NTL with Podesta as president and MacCall as executive director.[3][4][5]

Both professional organizations, the NTL and WCT, banned their contracted players from contesting the grand slams at some stage during their short tenure and this made the International Lawn Tennis Federation, the predecessor of the current ITF, very nervous. That was the catalyst that led to the abandonment of the distinction between amateur and professional tennis players and by 1968, the beginning of the Open Era, all tennis players could compete in all tennis tournaments[6] George MacCall sold the NTL's player contracts to Lamar Hunt in July 1970.[7] He became the first Commissioner of World Team Tennis in 1974. Some of the players he signed to contracts were: Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Roy Emerson, Pancho Gonzales, Fred Stolle, Billie Jean King and Rosie Casals. He traveled the world to sign players. Many tournaments had to get their players through George.[8]


This article "George MacCall" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:George MacCall. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

  1. Steve Carp (Dec 25, 2008). "MacCall, fixture of local tennis, dies at 90". Las Vegas Review-Journal.
  2. "Billie Jean Moffitt King". International Tennis Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007.
  3. Robert H. Boyle (February 9, 1970). "Big Cat On The Prowl". Sports Illustrated.
  4. "Tennis Pros View Grand Prix Circuit With Optimism". Ludington Daily News. Apr 9, 1970.
  5. "Podesta, MacCall Head Tennis Group". Reading Eagle. AP. Jun 29, 1969.
  6. "Tennis Turns Pro, The move toward the "Open Era"".
  7. "Lamar Hunt obtains six pro tennis stars". Eugene Register-Guard. Jul 29, 1970. p. 2D.
  8. "Former USTA official George MacCall passes away at 90 in Las Vegas". Bob Larson's Tennis News.