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What: “Kings of the Court: The Ten Greatest Tennis Players of All Time” video tape.

Price: $39.95 (1-800-881-2527)

Tennis aficionado Ed Atkinson was planning a coffee table book in 1992 when he went combing through archives stored under the grandstands at UCLA, searching for photos he remembered from his childhood of Cary Grant, Clark Gable and Greta Garbo watching tennis. Instead, Atkinson stumbled on rusted cans of deteriorating film of many of the greatest stars in tennis history practicing at the Los Angeles Tennis Club. After some restoration work that included re-sprocketing the film, it became one of the unique elements of this video Atkinson produced in cooperation with the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

It is an elegant video, narrated by John Forsythe with a nostalgic score that includes lots of Cole Porter as well as the handsome Pancho Gonzalez hitting balls to “Too Marvelous for Words” and Jack Kramer to “There Will Never Be Another You.”

Interviews with Kramer, Don Budge, Pancho Segura, Rod Laver and Bobby Riggs, late in life before cancer claimed him, add immeasurably to the storytelling.

But there is a flaw in the video, namely its subtitle. By Atkinson’s estimation, the 10 greatest players of all time are Bill Tilden, Ellsworth Vines, Fred Perry, Budge, Riggs, Kramer, Gonzalez, Frank Sedgman, Lew Hoad and Rod Laver. Omitting Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors and Pete Sampras is no oversight. Atkinson, 60, doesn’t think the whippersnappers belong.

“These guys, it didn’t matter what surface--clay, grass, hard court. Sampras, I’ll bet, will never win the French. . . . These other guys, there wasn’t a weakness.”

If you’re charmed by the days when tennis was played in long pants and everyone took a boat to the Australian championships, this video is for you. It closes to strains of “What a Wonderful World.” It was, but thanks to players such as Sampras, it still is.