If you cast your mind and thoughts back to the halcyon days of the 1990s, you might well remember the Grand Slam Cup, a tournament since dubbed a painless route to easy cash for some of the big tennis stars - but there are plenty of reasons to believe it was so much more than that, and its spirit deserves to be revived.
Played from 1990 to '99, the Grand Slam Cup was essentially a glamorous showpiece for the best players in the world - not unlike today's ATP Finals - which brought together the players who performed best at the year's four Grand Slam events. However, unlike the truncated, compact ATP Finals, it brought together more players; with 16 competing compared to today's eight, it packed a bigger punch and brought together more players who had been involved, and performed well in, the elite competitions.
While its format might seem a tad bloated compared with today's, the main upside of having players involved on merit of Slam performance meant that spectators were really getting the best, in-form participants from the most challenging competitions, plus it gave the 'outsider' a much better chance. While the ATP Finals is always guaranteed to bring the big names from the modern circuit, the Slam Cup had that plus a dash of unpredictability, too.
David Wheaton's out-of-the-blue victory in 1991 epitomises that - beating 1989 French Open champion Michael Chang in the final, Wheaton's success in the second edition of the tournament has often been held up as an example of why it simply did not work as a good tournament. Having never won a Slam before, the American's presence off the back of a semi-final berth at Wimbledon irked many, but it shouldn't have; he had been included on merit and beat the opponents in his way to claim the '91 title.
It was similar with Magnus Larsson in '94 - he never won a Slam in his entire career and yet the Swede was good enough to beat none other than Pete Sampras in the Slam Cup men's singles final. For the purists, it was tantamount to sacrilege to see the big names lose in such a flagship competition, and that was certainly part of the reason why it ran out of fuel as the years went on - while it had its positives, they weren't appreciated enough by the masses and the Slam Cup sort of faded from focus, but that wasn't before it caused a few flare-ups and ignited some feisty conversations among tennis aficionados.
Wheaton, the '91 winner, almost came to blows with Brad Gilbert in the inaugural edition after a call in a tiebreaker that initially went against Gilbert was over-ruled by the chair umpire, causing a racket to be smashed in anger - underlining just how tense and important the competition was for so many, despite revisionism to the contrary.
Courting plenty of other controversy in its day, there were more than a few stars who vocalised their distaste for many of its aspects - which certainly played a key role in its eventual demise just before the turn of the millennium. The ATP Masters was competing with the Slam Cup at the time, but what turned so many people off the big competition was that there was too much money up for grabs - combine that with the fact there were no points on offer, no official ATP title to be won and that it arrived at the end of a grueling professional schedule, and plenty questioned what the point of such a tournament was.
No doubt, for many of its detractors, it hinted at the possibility that tennis was heading down the money before development route, and that the sport was slowly inching towards disrepute. Plus, there was also the fact that the surface, indoor carpet, wasn't universally loved by everyone. Even Pete Sampras, who won the competition twice, first in its inaugural year and again in 1997, and had earned millions as a result took umbrage with the way it tinkered with his game-plan. "I still think the court surface is too fast. Every year that I came I tell the same thing to whoever the tournament director happens to be, but it's still too quick."
However, its propensity to divide the tennis community was part of what made it special - there was an edge to it, an abrasive element that got the tennis community talking, and perhaps more importantly it shook up the established order and forced the wider tennis community to consider where it was going, and why.
Perhaps its lasting legacy was that it became the stepping stone towards today's mainstream ATP tour where the best of the best converge to do battle, and it proved that tennis could be a sport that caused a splash, a bit of controversy and it gave the underdog a shot at glory.
