This is part of a series of reference posts that lay out what historical data is available at TennisAbstract.com. I recently did a similar post about pre-Open era men’s singles data. I’ll try to keep this post updated as the site expands.
Amateur-era doubles data–even doubles results from early in the Open era–is thin on the ground. I’m trying, slowly, to change that.
The TennisAbstract.com site now contains over 1,300 men’s doubles results from 1957 to 1967, the last eleven years of the amateur era. That includes:
- Grand slam finals
- All Davis Cup doubles rubbers
- Doubles matches from professional tournaments and barnstorming stops. This varies enormously from year to year, in part because the pro tours sometimes played doubles every night, and sometimes they rarely did. At the extremes, I have 83 pro doubles matches from 1958 and only one from 1961. Reporting of these matches was extremely inconsistent at the time.
- Doubles finals from all amateur tournaments where at least one member of the Tennis 128 competed–assuming I could find it. This amounts to roughly 60 finals per year, spanning most of the circuit’s most notable events.
Note my focus on finals. Eventually, I may expand on that, especially for grand slams. But collecting doubles results is extremely slow going, and contemporary coverage was much spottier than for singles. There’s nothing quite so disheartening as trying to add a match to the database when the losing side is listed only as “Smith/Smith.” Or worse: “Smith/partner.”
On any player page, you can find doubles results–assuming the player has some–by scrolling down, or by clicking here:
Here’s what you’ll see, at least if you’re on Rod Laver’s page:
This “notable” table is limited to 20 matches. For most players, that’s all I have at this point. If I have more, the “notable” table lists a combination of slam finals and the most recent matches.
If there is an “All results” link above the table–as there is for Laver–that means I have more than 20 matches, and you can click through to get the full list. Here, for instance, is Gordon Forbes:
Eventually, these pages will be filterable, like the singles results. For now, it’s just a reverse-chronological list.
Next up, I hope to add men’s doubles from the 1968 season, as well as a few more seasons from the beginning of the Open era. Then I’ll go back to 1956 and add more amateur-era seasons.
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