Biggest Tennis Gripe!

It is getting to the point where I want to throttle any individual who calls the 'Slams' Majors!

This is not golf!!! They should be called 'Slams' and referred to them only in that name. Anyone that wins the 4 Slams can claim the 'Grand Slam'

So Greg, Inverdale, Marcus and yes even you Murray at times! No more of the 'Major' crap!!

Slam all the way!

The term Grand Slam was orginally coined for winning all four Majors in one year. They have always been called Majors and once the term Grand Slam came into play, the four Majors were the four Grand Slam events.
It's only relatively recently that each event has been called a Slam.

Major, Major, Major, Major!

Be it on Majors or slams, my biggest tennis gripe is not playing the game within the rules!!!!

I rather agree with LK - I hate "Majors" and prefer "Slams"

JuliusHMarx wrote:The term Grand Slam was orginally coined for winning all four Majors in one year. They have always been called Majors and once the term Grand Slam came into play, the four Majors were the four Grand Slam events.
It's only relatively recently that each event has been called a Slam.
Major, Major, Major, Major!

You say 'relatively recently', but a tennis "Grand Slam" consisting of winnining in Australia, Paris, Wimbledon, and the US has been common currency since the 1930's. I don't know what the four big tennis tournaments were called before that, but what has set them apart since the 1930's is the concept of their being the four corners of a Grand Slam (just missed by Jack Crawford in 1933 and achieved by Don Budge in 1938). I think the usage of "Slam" since then is well-established and far more prevalent than "Majors".

"Majors" is what the Golfers call their current big 4, the professional tournaments at the Masters, US Open, Open, and US PGA. This grouping's 'Major' status only started to take hold from in the early 1960's when Arnold Palmer led the charge of US professionals to the Open. Like tennis, Golf already had it's "Grandslam" from the 1930's when the 4 corners of the Grand Slam were the Open, the Amateur, the US Open and the US Amateur won by Bobby Jones in 1930. The professional era mean that was an obsolete concept and at the beginning of the 1960's people turned their mind to what was the professional equivalent - Palmer suggested it was the current 4 in a conversation with a journalist and the tag stuck.

I think that's why golfers talk about the Majors and tennis players about Slam or Grand Slam tournaments.

Simon Reed.

Barry,
Budge is quoted here http://sorrel.hubpages.com/hub/Tennis---Origins-of-the-Grand-Slam

He says he wanted to win all 4 'major' tournaments.

I'm pretty sure players talked about Majors in the 70s/80s rather than Slams, but that may just be my failing memory.

legendkillar wrote:It is getting to the point where I want to throttle any individual who calls the 'Slams' Majors!

This is not golf!!! They should be called 'Slams' and referred to them only in that name. Anyone that wins the 4 Slams can claim the 'Grand Slam'

So Greg, Inverdale, Marcus and yes even you Murray at times! No more of the 'Major' crap!!

Slam all the way!

legendkiller

No need for the violent talk!

Anyway if you win one you should be able to call it what you like. So that rules out Greg, Inverdale, Marcus and yes even you Murray!

hawkeye wrote:
legendkiller

No need for the violent talk!

Anyway if you win one you should be able to call it what you like. So that rules out Greg, Inverdale, Marcus and yes even you Murray!

Who is Marcus?

Tenez wrote:

hawkeye wrote:
legendkiller

No need for the violent talk!

Anyway if you win one you should be able to call it what you like. So that rules out Greg, Inverdale, Marcus and yes even you Murray!

Who is Marcus?

Marcus Buckland TV soloist errr I mean Sky Sports TV Anchor. He calls them Majors. Bring back Chris Bailey!

JuliusHMarx wrote:Barry,
Budge is quoted here http://sorrel.hubpages.com/hub/Tennis---Origins-of-the-Grand-Slam

He says he wanted to win all 4 'major' tournaments.

I'm pretty sure players talked about Majors in the 70s/80s rather than Slams, but that may just be my failing memory.

Ah - the word "major" in that article is used descriptively rather than as a title, as in "Majors" or "Major Championships"; it could be replaced by "most important" or "biggest". What that suggests is that the current terminology was not as well-established in the 1930's as now.

When the four slams formed a committee for the first time in 1989 it was called the "Grand Slam Committee", not the "Major Championship Committee", by contrast when the the golf tournaments exercise a combined function, i.e. approving of the golf ranking system, they call themselves the "Major Championship Organisers".

legendkillar wrote:Marcus Buckland TV soloist errr I mean Sky Sports TV Anchor. He calls them Majors. Bring back Chris Bailey!

barrystar wrote:When the four slams formed a committee for the first time in 1989 it was called the "Grand Slam Committee", not the "Major Championship Committee", by contrast when the the golf tournaments exercise a combined function, i.e. approving of the golf ranking system, they call themselves the "Major Championship Organisers".

Fair enough - I think it may be after 1989 that 'Slam' started to be used more frequently, instead of 'Major'.
In Nastase's book he uses 'majors', whereas Sampras uses 'slams'.

ATP website describes them as Grand Slams, which is clearly ludicrous since the 'Grand Slam' is to win all 4, but does tend to back up the suggestion that they are now officially 'Slams' rather than 'Majors'.

One thing for sure is that in French we woudl not use "Major" but slam!

However it seems we are less sensitive on the matter.

major tennis gripes:

1) Simon Reed (good shout BB)

2) the uniform playing conditions. Should be impossible to win tournaments on clay and on grass playing exactly the same way. Llodra should be beating Djokovic at wimbledon instead of being thrashed.

3) the fact that on any decent tennis forum, half the threads turn into Fedal debates one way or another.

4) Gael Monfils.

5) The fact that Murray hasn't won a Slam (yet).

This reminds me of the people who get all upset when people call football - 'soccer' and think that's an American invented word.

Back in 'the day' everybody called it soccer. Most people (who followed the sport back then) of a certain age call it soccer. Just because Americans now call it soccer to distinguish it from their sport (and we get to hear it more often due to the internetz and more TV coverage), doesn't mean there's anything wrong with people calling it soccer elsewhere.

legendkillar

I think Major is what the "Golfists" call their big 4 events and it sort of spread to tennis when people started to compare the achievements of Federer and Woods.

ps:- Your'e still a drama queen !

Biggest tennis gripes :

1 - The LTA
2 - The LTA
3 - The LTA
4 - Andrew Castle's commentary
5 - The LTA

For me, major is golf and slams is tennis. Major in tennis is just a cool, alternative way of saying slam. I think Mcenroe might have done it, Sampras maybe, could be a US thing too as many changes in English come from the US these days.

Bear in mind also that language often develops as follows:
1: A wrong usage by a small minority of uneducated fools gets laughed at by the rest.
2: The wrong usage becomes more common. People who like dictionaries and books still sneer at it and, but can't control the young. Still considered a definite wrong ussage or error at this stage.
3: The wrong usage becomes so common, perhaps even the majority use, that everyone except language pedants and purists have to accept it, and eventually even the purists have to bregrudingly accept it.
4: Wrong use takes over completely and becomes the right use.

An example of this is the word "will". In the 1950s it was considered a shabby, uneducated version of "shall" and was probably in stage 2. Now it's in stage 4.