The third decade of life of the Conde de Godó Trophy saw the emergence of professional tennis in the tournament and on the world circuit. In 1970, after numerous conversations between the leaders of amateur tennis and the organizations that controlled professional players, the Conde de Godó Trophy held its first Open tournament, which culminated in Manolo Santana's victory over Rod Laver.
It was a brave bet by the RCTB, which first knew how to get convincing advice on the situation, to then adopt it courageously despite the fact that in the Spanish federative spheres, defenders of amateur sports, there was much reluctance.
With the arrival of the professionals, and the evolution of the racket sport, the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona adapted to the new era. It was a decade marked by the popularity of great figures once television had embraced tennis. Their faces were known for their victories in the best world tournaments, but so were the racket brands they played with, the clothes they wore and the details of their personal lives, some of them filling the pages of the so-called tabloids.
And it is that, in parallel to the sport itself, all the marketing concepts that surrounded a player were being developed. For example, racket manufacturers had already focused both on improving metal ones, using different alloys, and on adding fibers to wooden frames, the design of rackets with an open heart, and new materials that provided better performance to the frames. .
Likewise, the hitherto almost essential natural gut string used in the rackets of the best, gradually lost ground before the irruption of synthetic strings. Even at Wimbledon, an upholder of the white dress tradition, he lost that battle to emerging fashion companies.
In the Conde de Godó Trophy, this new era of tennis was mainly represented by the names of Manuel Orantes, champion in 1969, 1971 and 1976 and finalist in 1973, 1974 and 1977, by the Romanian Ilie Nastase, champion in 1973 and 1974 and finalist in 1978, the Swede Bjorn Borg, winner in 1977, the Czechoslovak Ivan Lendl, winner in 1980 and 1981, the Argentine Guillermo Vilas, four times finalist in Barcelona, the Italian Adriano Panatta, finalist in 1975 or the Hungarian Balasz Taroczy, champion in 1978.
And also in those years, tennis changed its way of playing. Without losing the then dominant game of wrist and strategy, the topspin game began to appear, the two-handed backhand, the arrival of the tie-break, the improvement of the athletes' athletic capacity, the importance of nutrition, and, something that until that date had not been seen: the player traveling with a coach at his side.
