After this tour ends there'll be no doubt who's the better man between me and Perry". Vines won the series 49–35. In November, Vines and Perry toured South and Central America and won four matches each. Vines was ranked World No. 1 pro by Bowers. 1939 In 1939 Vines lost his world pro crown to Don Budge but narrowly: in their first pro tour against each other, Vines trailed Budge 17–22. The tour proved that at his best Vines was unbeatable, but also that Budge's consistency would prevail a majority of the time, making the latter the best player of the time. Touring Europe with Tilden and Stoefen in the summer, Budge won the tour and beat Vines more comfortably than he had done in the World Series. Vines lost in the final at Roland Garros to Budge. At the knock-out event at Southport, Vines lost in the semi finals to Nusslein. Vines, by now, was losing interest in tennis and was turning his attention more and more to golf. His final title came at the US Pro, where he beat Perry in the final in four sets. 1940 In April 1940 Vines, at 28 years old, played his last tennis competition at the West Coast professional tennis tournament in Los Angeles. His physical problems, his desire to enjoy family life, his loss of the world crown, and above all his increasing passion for golf drove him to retire from tennis. Vines' career earnings as of May 1938 were reported to be $185,000. Abilities Comparing Vines and Fred Perry after the 1939 tours, Don Budge wrote, In 1975, Budge ranked his top five players of all-time and rated Vines number one. He also said Vines had the best serve. In 1983, Fred Perry ranked the greatest male players of all time and put them in to two categories, before World War 2 and after. Perry's pre-WWII nominees all below Tilden and excluding himself "Budge, Cochet, Ellsworth Vines 'so powerful!', Gottfried von Cramm, Jack Crawford, Jari Sato, Jean Borotra, Bunny Austin, Roderick Menzel, Baron Umberto de Morpurgo". In the opinion of Jack Kramer, Vines was, along with Don Budge, one of the two greatest players who ever lived. Budge was consistently the best, according to Kramer's 1979 autobiography, but, at the very top of his game, Vines was unbeatable by anyone: Tall and thin, Vines possessed a game with no noticeable