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 singles tennis player in history.
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.
Kenneth Robert Rosewall is an Australian former world top-ranking professional tennis player. Rosewall won 147 singles titles, including a record 15 Pro Majors and eight Grand Slam titles for a total 23 titles at pro and amateur majors. He also won 15 Pro Majors in doubles and nine Grand Slam doubles titles. Rosewall achieved a Pro Slam in singles in 1963 by winning the three Pro Majors in one year and he completed the Career Grand Slam in doubles.
Ricardo Alonso "Pancho" González, known sometimes as Richard Gonzales, was an American tennis player. He won 15 major singles titles, including two U.S. National Singles Championships in 1948 and 1949, and 13 Professional Grand Slam titles. He also won three Tournament of Champions professional events in 1957, 1958, and 1959. He was ranked world amateur No. 1 in 1948 by Ned Potter and in 1949 by Potter and John Olliff.
The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) is the governing body of the men's professional tennis circuits – the ATP Tour, the ATP Challenger Tour and the ATP Champions Tour. It was formed in September 1972 by Donald Dell, Jack Kramer, and Cliff Drysdale to protect the interests of professional tennis players, and Drysdale became the first president. Since 1990 the association has organized the ATP Tour, the worldwide tennis tour for men and linked the title of the tour with the organization's name. It is the governing body of men's professional tennis. In 1990 the organization was called the ATP Tour, which was renamed in 2001 as just ATP and the tour being called ATP Tour. In 2009 the name of the tour was changed again and was known as the ATP World Tour, but changed again to the ATP Tour by 2019. It is an evolution of the tour competitions previously known as Grand Prix tennis tournaments and World Championship Tennis (WCT). The ATP's global headquarters are in London. ATP Americas is based in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida; ATP Europe is headquartered in Monaco; and ATP International, which covers Africa, Asia and Australasia, is based in Sydney, Australia.
Stanley Roger Smith is an American former professional tennis player. Smith is best known to non-tennis players as the namesake of a popular brand of tennis shoes. A world No. 1 player and two-time major singles champion, Smith also paired with Bob Lutz to create one of the most successful doubles teams of all-time. In 1970, Smith won the inaugural year-end championships title. In 1972, he was the year-end world No. 1 singles player. In 1973, he won his second and last year end championship title at the Dallas WCT Finals. In addition, he won four Grand Prix Championship Series titles. In his early years he improved his tennis game through lessons from Pancho Segura, the Pasadena Tennis Patrons, and the sponsorship of the Southern California Tennis Association headed by Perry T. Jones. Since 2011, Smith has served as President of the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
Marion Anthony Trabert was an American amateur world No. 1 tennis champion and long-time tennis author, TV commentator, instructor, and motivational speaker.
Eric Clifford Drysdale is a South African former tennis player. After a career as a highly ranked professional player in the 1960s and early 1970s, he became a well-known tennis announcer.
Timothy Mayotte is a former professional tennis player from the United States.
Ashley John Cooper AO was an Australian tennis player who played between 1953 and 1968. He was ranked as the world's No. 1 amateur player during the years of 1957 and 1958. Cooper won four singles and four doubles titles at Grand Slam tournaments. He won three of the four Grand Slam events in 1958. He turned professional in 1959. Cooper won the Slazenger Professional Championships tournament in 1959. He won the Grand Prix de Europe professional tour of Europe in 1960. Cooper won the European Cup professional tour of Europe in 1962. He retired from tennis play at the end of 1962 due to injury.
Mervyn Gordon Rose AM was an Australian male tennis player who won seven Grand Slam titles.
Ion Țiriac, also known as the "Brașov Bulldozer", is a Romanian businessman and former professional tennis and ice hockey player. He has been president of the Romanian Tennis Federation.
Professional Services Inc., (ProServ) was one of the first sports management firms. Initially focused on tennis, the company would grow to become among the world's largest sports marketing, athlete management, event production, and TV companies.
Barry MacKay was an American tennis player, tournament director and broadcaster. He was ranked #1 in the U.S. in 1960.
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.
David B. Falk is an American sports agent who primarily works with basketball players in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He began his career representing professional tennis players for Donald Dell's ProServ and is best known for representing sports icon Michael Jordan for the entirety of Jordan's career. Besides Jordan, Falk has represented more than 100 other NBA players, and is generally considered to be the most influential player agent the NBA has seen. During the peak years of Falk's career in the 1990s, he was often considered the second-most powerful person in the NBA behind Commissioner David Stern, and in 2000 he had at least one client on all but two NBA teams. He was listed among the "100 Most Powerful People in Sports" for 12 straight years from 1990 to 2001 by The Sporting News, and was also named one of the Top 50 Marketers in the United States by Advertising Age in 1995.
This is a list of the main career statistics of Australian former tennis player Rod Laver whose playing career ran from 1956 until 1977. He played as an amateur from 1956 until the end of 1962 when he joined Jack Kramer's professional circuit. As a professional he was banned from playing the Grand Slam tournaments as well as other tournaments organized by the national associations of the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF). In 1968, with the advent of the Open Era, the distinction between amateurs and professionals disappeared and Laver was again able to compete in most Grand Slam events until the end of his career in 1977. During his career he won eleven Grand Slam tournaments, eight Pro Slam tournaments and five Davis Cup titles.
Frank Craighill was one of the founding partners of the sports marketing firm ProServ. ProServ was created in 1970 in Washington, D.C. by attorney and former professional tennis player and U.S. Davis Cup captain Donald Dell and Craighill. Their first clients were Dell’s Davis Cup teammates Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith. At its peak, ProServ represented more than 200 professional athletes and coaches, including Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Stan Smith, Arthur Ashe, and Jimmy Connors. The company also managed and promoted professional sporting events and created ProServ Television to handle sports television production and rights representation.
The Washington Open is an annual professional outdoor hardcourt tennis tournament played at the William H.G. FitzGerald Tennis Center in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. The event is categorized as an ATP 500 event on the ATP Tour and a WTA 500 event on the WTA Tour. The tournament is owned and operated by Mark Ein in partnership with IMG.
Michael Grenfell "Mike" Davies was a Welsh professional tennis player, entrepreneur and administrator. He had a 60-year career in the tennis business, first as an amateur and professional tennis player, including a period as the number one ranked player in Great Britain and a member of the British Davis Cup team, then as an entrepreneur and one of the pioneers of the professional game.
