John Albert Kramer (August 1, 1921 – September 12, 2009) was an American tennis player of the 1940s and 1950s, and a pioneer promoter who helped drive the sport towards professionalism at the elite level.

Kramer also ushered in the serve-and-volley era in tennis, a playing style with which he won three Grand Slam tournaments (the U.S. Championships in 1946 and 1947, Wimbledon in 1947).

Kramer began his tennis career by taking lessons from renowned teaching professional, Dick Skeen.

In 1940 Kramer defeated fourth-seeded Frank Parker in a five-set quarterfinal but lost to second-seeded and eventual champion Don McNeill in the semifinal.

[6] The first Grand Slam tournament Kramer entered after the war was the 1946 Wimbledon Championships where he was seeded second but was upset in by Jaroslav Drobný in a five-set fourth round match.

Those rankings apparently did not include consideration of the world pro tours, which were not inclusive events but restricted to a small group of usually two players.

[29][30][31] In early June 1949, Kramer won the Wembley Professional Championships in London, England, edging Segura in a close five-set semifinal, and defeating Riggs in the final.

However, Kramer won the Slazenger Pro at Scarborough, England in July 1949 beating Segura in the semifinal and Budge in the final.

At the Roland Garros Round Robin Professional event in Paris, Kramer defeated Gonzales but lost to Segura, who won the tournament.

[54] At the 1952 Wembley Professional Championships, Kramer lost a close five-set final to Gonzales, regarded as one of the classic all-time matches.

[27][25][26][28] Kramer retired from competitive tennis in 1954 due to arthritic back problems and went on to promote his Pro Tour.

[64] Kramer also played a South American tour in late June and early July 1956 with Gonzales, Sedgman and Trabert.

[66] Kramer made a comeback on a four-man world tour with Hoad, Rosewall, Segura, and Sedgman in the fall of 1957.

"Kramer, as accurate as ever, seldom hit a loose shot and Hoad, closely confined by so much admirable lawn tennis, did not seem to have patience enough to fight his way out of his difficulties.

[75] In 1978, Ellsworth Vines ranked his all-time top 10 in Tennis Myth and Method and rated Kramer number two, behind Budge.

In the early years of the 21st century, Sidney Wood compiled his list of the Greatest Players of All Time (later published posthumously in a memoir "The Wimbledon final that never was and other tennis tales from a bygone era").

"From that time on, through to the late 1970s (doubles only towards the end), I was privileged to compete against virtually every top player in the world" said Wood.

[77] In 2014, Frank Sedgman ranked Kramer number one in his greatest male tennis players of all-time list in his autobiography 'Game, Sedge and Match'.

Pro at Forest Hills, and the touring pros agreed to become members of the USPLTA and to refrain from establishing a separate contract player's organization.

The issue emerged again in 1951 when a group of touring pros established the Professional Tennis Players Association, which supported the Cleveland event as the U.S.

[80] He signed Frank Sedgman and Ken McGregor to contracts for the 1953 world tour, which cemented Kramer's position as the foremost promoter in the professional game.

He subsequently signed a succession of amateur players to professional contracts: Tony Trabert and Rex Hartwig in 1955, Ken Rosewall in 1956, Lew Hoad in 1957, Ashley Cooper, Mal Anderson and Mervyn Rose[81] in 1958, Alex Olmedo in 1959, Mike Davies, Andrés Gimeno, Robert Haillet, Kurt Nielsen,[82] Barry MacKay and Butch Buchholz[83] in 1960 and Luis Ayala in 1961.

[84] Some of these amateurs were pitted against Pancho Gonzales in marathon head-to-head match series for the title of World Professional Champion, which were played primarily in the U.S.. Gonzales won a four-man tour over Segura and Sedgman in 1954, a world series marathon against Trabert in 1956, another long tour against Rosewall in 1957, and against Hoad in 1958.

In 1959, Kramer organized a year-long series of 15 tournaments in Australia, North America, and Europe linked by a points system to create a ranking of all the 12 professionals under contract to his World Tennis Inc. Tours, with a significant bonus money award to the number one finisher.

In 1964, Kramer advised and helped arrange a five-month series of 17 tournaments in the United States and Europe with a points system to determine the rankings of the touring pros.

Kramer attended Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, and he played on the tennis team in the 1941 and 1942 seasons.

Kramer started working for the BBC as a commentator on the Wimbledon Championships in 1960, a role in which he was very popular because of his intimate off-court knowledge of most of the players.

However, he was dropped by the BBC in 1973 because of his role in the ATP boycott of Wimbledon that year, which saw 81 players, including defending champion Stan Smith, stay away from the tournament.

When he was 13, the family moved to San Bernardino, California, and after seeing Ellsworth Vines, then the world's best player, play a match, Kramer decided to concentrate on tennis.

[15] Jack Kramer died from a soft tissue cancer on September 12, 2009, at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.