The Forgotten Home of Tennis’s Open Era

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.

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.

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

How does this belong on Hacker News?

why not?

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.