Tombstone
Born: 1973 – WTT founding franchise
Re-Branded: December 16, 1976 (New York Apples)1Foley, Red. “Sets to Sell Apples as New Name in WTT”. The Daily News (New York, NY). December 17, 1976
First Match: May 7, 1974 (L 29-25 vs. Hawaii Leis)
Last Match: August 27, 1976 (W 31-13 vs. Golden Gaters)
World Team Tennis Champions: 1976
Arena
Nassau Coliseum
Opened: 1972
Branding
Team Colors: Blue & Green21976 Super-Tiebreaker World Team Tennis Program
Ownership
Owner: Sol Berg
Attendance
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Sources:
- 1978 New York Apples Media Guide (1974-1976 Sets figures)
- ASSOCIATED PRESS. “World Team Tennis attendance increases”. The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis, MN). August 21, 1976. (1974-1976 League figures)
Record Book
WTT Male Most Valuable Player
- 1976: Sandy Mayer
WTT Male Most Valuable Player (Playoffs)
- 1976: Sandy Mayer
WTT Female Most Valuable Player (Playoffs)
- 1976: Billie Jean King
WTT Coach-of-the-Year
- 1976: Fred Stolle
FWIL FAVORITE
New York Sets
Team Tennis T-Shirt
The Sets and World Team Tennis brought the leading lights of professional tennis to Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum during the mid-1970’s. Billie Jean King topped the bill, but was hardly the only star on a roster that included Grand Slam champions Fred Stolle and Virginia Wade and King’s mixed doubles partner Phil Dent.
Also available in women’s scoop neck and racerback tank styles from Old School Shirts!
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Background
The New York Sets/Apples were a pro tennis franchise active on Long Island and in Manhattan from 1974 to 1978. The club was a participant for all five season of World Team Tennis (1974-1978), a funky little organization that attempted to graft the classic tropes of American professional team sports (team scoring, standings, cheerleaders, booing and cheering) onto the hushed, snooty atmosphere of the pro tennis tour. The league was founded in 1973 by serial sports entrepreneur Dennis Murphy in partnership with the game’s greatest female star, Billie Jean King, her husband/business partner Larry King, and a few other investors.
Jerry Saperstein, son of Harlem Globetrotters founder Abe Saperstein, originally held the New York franchise but quickly sold it off to commodities trader Sol Berg. WTT owners were inexplicably enamored with team names relating to the rules and equipment of the game. Loves, Nets, Racquets and Strings were among franchise monikers. New York ended up with one of the dullest and least imaginative – the New York Sets. The Sets identity also aligned the team with New York’s resident major league teams of the era: the Mets, Jets and Nets.
The Sets debuted on May 7, 1974, losing to the Hawaii Leis before an announced crowd of 4,990 at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum. Under WTT’s novel scoring system, each match consisted of five sets – one each of men’s singles and doubles, women’s singles and doubles, and mixed doubles. There were no love or advantages – each game of a set was simply scored zero, 1, 2, 3, game. Match scoring was simply the cumulative games won from each of the five sets.
The Sets finished in the cellar in 1974 with a 15-29 record. Fans were largely indifferent. The club drew an average of just 2,869 spectators for 22 home dates that first summer.
Arrival of Billie Jean King
The Sets’ fortunes changed in February 1975 when the Sets traded for league founder Billie Jean King, whose Philadelphia Freedoms franchise was about to go under. King, still a formidable player at age 31, made the team an immediate contender.
The Sets made the playoffs in 1975 and won the World Team Tennis championship in 1976, sweeping the Oakland-based Golden Gaters. The decisive match drew 5,730 to the Nassau Coliseum in late August.
The other members of the 1976 championship team were males Phil Dent and Sandy Mayer and former U.S. Open and Australian Open women’s singles champion Virginia Wade. King and Dent, who paired in Mixed Doubles play for the Sets, also won the U.S. Open Mixed Doubles title together in 1976.
Fred Stolle earned World Team Tennis Coach-of-the-Year honors in 1976 for the Sets’ championship run.
Move To Manhattan & Demise
In 1977 the club moved into Manhattan, splitting dates between the 17,800-seat Madison Square Garden and the more intimate 3,700-seat Felt Forum tucked inside the Garden. To celebrate the move, the club also re-branded, dropping the dreadful “Sets” nickname and becoming the New York Apples for the 1977 season.
Attendance surged in Manhattan to nearly 5,000 per match in 1977. The Apples repeated as World Team Tennis champions in 1977.
Team owner Sol Berg folded the Apples in late October 1978, precipitating the overall collapse of WTT during the weeks that followed. Reduced to just two member clubs willing to move forward, the league folded after five seasons of play in early 1979.
Billie Jean King re-booted Team Tennis in 1981. That lower-profile version of the league continues to operate today, entering its 40th season in the summer of 2020.
New York Sets Shop
Editor's Pick
Bustin' Balls
World Team Tennis 1974-1978, Pro Sports, Pop Culture & Progressive Politics
by Steven Blush
Bustin’ Balls tells the strange but true story of World Team Tennis (1974-1978) that attempted to transform the prim and proper individual sport of tennis into a rowdy blue-collar league. Billie Jean King and her partners merged feminism and civil rights with queer lifestyle, pop culture and a progressive political agenda to create a dazzling platform for the finest tennis players of the day to become overnight stars.
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In Memoriam
Sets/Apples owner Sol Berg died of cancer at age 92 on July 4, 2017.
Downloads
March 1975 New York Sets Racquet Report Newsletter
March 1975 Racquet Report Newsletter
1975 World Team Tennis Season Advertising Rates Brochure
Links
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