James Scott Connors is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. He held the top Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) ranking for a then-record 160 consecutive weeks from 1974 to 1977 and a career total of 268 weeks. By virtue of his long and prolific career, Connors still holds three prominent Open Era men's singles records: 109 titles, 1,557 matches played, and 1,274 match wins. His titles include eight major singles titles and three year-end championships. In 1974, he became the second man in the Open Era to win three major titles in a calendar year, and was not permitted to participate in the fourth, the French Open. Connors finished year end number one in the ATP rankings from 1974 to 1978. In 1982, he won both Wimbledon and the US Open and was ATP Player of the Year and ITF World Champion. He retired in 1996 at the age of 43.
Rodney George Laver is an Australian former tennis player. Laver was ranked the world number 1 professional player indisputably for five years from 1965 to 1969 and by some sources also in 1964 and 1970. He was also ranked as the number 1 amateur in 1961 and 1962. Laver won 198 singles titles which is the most won by a player in history.
Christine Marie Evert, known as Chris Evert Lloyd from 1979 to 1987, is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. Evert won 18 major singles titles, including a record seven French Open titles and a joint-record six US Open titles. Evert was ranked world No. 1 for 260 weeks, and was the year-end world No. 1 singles player seven times. Alongside Martina Navratilova, her greatest rival, Evert dominated women's tennis for much of the 1970s and 1980s.
Hana Mandlíková is a former professional tennis player from Czechoslovakia who later obtained Australian citizenship. During her career, she won four Grand Slam singles titles - the 1980 Australian Open, 1981 French Open, 1985 US Open and 1987 Australian Open. She was also runner-up in four Grand Slam singles events - twice at Wimbledon and twice at the US Open. The graceful right-hander secured one Grand Slam women's doubles title, at the 1989 US Open with Martina Navratilova. Inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1994, Mandlíková was one of the brightest stars of her generation and is considered one of the greatest female players of the Open Era.
Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. was an American professional tennis player. He won three Grand Slam titles in singles and two in doubles. Ashe was the first black player selected to the United States Davis Cup team, and the only black man ever to win the singles titles at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open. He retired in 1980.
Althea Neale Gibson was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the color line of international tennis. In 1956, she became the first African American to win a Grand Slam event. The following year she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals, then won both again in 1958 and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years. In all, she won 11 Grand Slam tournaments: five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title. "She is one of the greatest players who ever lived", said Bob Ryland, a tennis contemporary and former coach of Venus and Serena Williams. "Martina [Navratilova] couldn't touch her. I think she'd beat the Williams sisters." Gibson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. In the early 1960s she also became the first Black player to compete on the Women's Professional Golf Tour.
Roy Stanley Emerson is an Australian former tennis player who won 12 Grand Slam singles titles and 16 Grand Slam doubles titles, for a total of 28 Grand Slam titles. All of his singles Grand Slam victories and 14 of his Grand Slam doubles victories were achieved before the open era began in 1968. He is the only male player to have completed a career Grand Slam in both singles and doubles, and the first of four male players to complete a double career Grand Slam in singles. His 28 major titles are the all-time record for a male player. He was ranked world No. 1 amateur in 1961 by Ned Potter, 1964 by Potter, Lance Tingay and an Ulrich Kaiser panel of 14 experts and 1965 by Tingay, Joseph McCauley, Sport za Rubezhom and an Ulrich Kaiser panel of 16 experts.
Clark Graebner is a retired American professional tennis player.
Earl Henry "Butch" Buchholz, Jr. is a former professional tennis player from the United States who was one of the game's top players in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Thomas Samuel Okker is a Dutch former tennis player who was active from the mid-1960s until 1980. He won the 1973 French Open Doubles, the 1976 US Open Doubles, and two gold medals at the 1965 Maccabiah Games in Israel. He was ranked among the world's top-ten singles players for seven consecutive years, 1968–74, reaching a career high of world No. 3 in 1974. He also was ranked world No. 1 in doubles in 1969.
James Arias is a retired tennis touring professional player from the United States.
Kerry Melville Reid is a former professional tennis player from Australia. During her 17-year career, Reid won one Grand Slam singles title and 26 other singles titles and was the runner-up in 40 singles tournaments. Reid was included in the year-end world top-ten rankings for 12 consecutive years (1968–1979). She won at least one tournament annually from 1966 through 1979, except for 1975. Her career-high ranking was world No. 5 in 1971, behind Margaret Court, Billie Jean King, Evonne Goolagong, and Rosie Casals.
Dorothea Lambert Chambers was a British tennis player. She won seven Wimbledon women's singles titles and a gold medal at the 1908 Summer Olympics.
Brian David Teacher is a former American professional male tennis player. He reached a career-high ranking World No. 7 in 1981.
Ronald "Ronnie" E. Holmberg is a former American tennis player who competed during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He was ranked World No. 7 in 1959 and was ranked in the U.S. Top 10 for nine years. He is currently one of the USTA's select "Master Professionals" and devotes most of his time coaching, participating and directing charity events and clinics and other tennis related projects.
Charles Manuel Pasarell Jr. is a Puerto Rican former tennis player, tennis administrator and founder of the current Indian Wells tournament. He has also commented for the Tennis Channel and with Arthur Ashe and Sheridan Snyder formed the National Junior Tennis League. He was ten times ranked in the top ten of the U.S. and No. 1 in 1967 and world No. 11 in 1966. Representing the United States as a player, he has been heavily engaged in the administration of the professional game from the inception of the ATP in 1972 and has been Vice President when he was still playing and until recently on the Board of Directors representing the Americas tournaments. In 2013, Pasarell was elected into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
Gladys Medalie Heldman was an American tennis player, manager and magazine publisher. She was the founder of World Tennis magazine. As a manager, she supported and represented Billie Jean King and eight other female tennis players: Rosie Casals, Judy Dalton, Julie Heldman, Kerry Melville, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon, Nancy Richey, and Valerie Ziegenfuss. They were called the Houston Nine and formed the Virginia Slims Tour in the early 1970s. She is a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
Ora Belle Washington was an American athlete from the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Washington excelled in both tennis and basketball, and she was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018. Black newspapers referred to her as "Queen Ora" and the "Queen of Two Courts." According to Arthur Ashe, she may have been one of best tennis players of all time.
Joaquim Rasgado Jr., also known as Joe Rasgado, is a Brazilian former professional tennis player active on tour in the 1970s.
Larry Nagler is an American former college and professional tennis player. In college, Nagler played on the UCLA Bruins men's basketball team for Hall of Fame coach John Wooden in 1958 and 1959. In tennis, he was the 1960 NCAA Tennis Singles Champion, and a 1960 NCAA Tennis Doubles Champion, with teammate Allen Fox. He also played doubles with Arthur Ashe, winning the 1962 Pennsylvania Lawn Tennis Championships. Nagler was a three-time Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) First-Team All-American (1960-62), and was the only player to ever win three Pac-10 men's singles titles (1960-62). In 1962 he was ranked 11th in the United States in singles. He played singles in the 1964 Wimbledon Championships and played doubles in the 1964 Wimbledon Championships with Allen Fox. At the 1977 Maccabiah Games in Israel, he and Steve Krulevitz won gold medals in doubles for the United States, and he won a silver medal in men's singles. Nagler was inducted into the ITA Hall of Fame and the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame.
United States