Björn Rune Borg is a Swedish former world No. 1 tennis player. Between 1974 and 1981, he became the first man in the Open Era to win 11 Grand Slam singles titles with six at the French Open and five consecutively at Wimbledon.
Pete Sampras is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. His professional career began in 1988 and ended at the 2002 US Open, which he won, defeating his longtime rival Andre Agassi in the final. Sampras won 14 major singles titles during his career, which was an all-time record at the time of his retirement: a then-record seven Wimbledon titles, two Australian Opens and a joint Open Era record five US Open titles. He won 64 ATP Tour-level singles titles in total. He first reached the world No. 1 ranking in 1993, and held that position for a total of 286 weeks, including an Open Era record of six consecutive year-end No. 1 rankings from 1993 to 1998. His precise and powerful serve earned him the nickname "Pistol Pete". In 2007, he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
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.
Evonne Fay Goolagong Cawley is an Australian former world No. 1 tennis player. Goolagong was one of the world's leading players in the 1970s and early 1980s.
James Riley Blake is an American former professional tennis player. He won 10 titles on the ATP Tour, reaching a career-high singles ranking of world No. 4. His career highlights included reaching the final of the 2006 Tennis Masters Cup, the semifinals of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the quarterfinals of the 2008 Australian Open and 2005 and 2006 US Opens, two titles at the Hopman Cup and being the American No. 1 in men's singles. Blake was also a key performer for the victorious United States 2007 Davis Cup team, winning both his matches in the championship tie against Russia.
Ilie Theodoriu Năstase is a Romanian former world No. 1 tennis player. He held the top singles spot from 23 August 1973 to 2 June 1974, and was the first man to hold the position on the computerized ATP rankings. Năstase is one of the 10 players in history who have won over 100 total ATP titles, with 64 in singles and 45 in doubles. Năstase won seven major titles: two in singles, three in men's doubles and two in mixed doubles. He also won four Masters Grand Prix year-end championship titles. He was the first professional sports figure to sign an endorsement contract with Nike, doing so in 1972. Năstase wrote several novels in French in the 1980s, and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1991.
Guillermo Sebastián Coria, nicknamed El Mago, is an Argentine former professional tennis player. He reached a career-high ATP world No. 3 singles ranking in May 2004. Coria achieved his best results on clay, where he won eight of his nine ATP singles titles, and during his prime years in 2003 and 2004 was considered "the world's best clay-court player." He reached the final of the 2004 French Open, where he was defeated by Gastón Gaudio despite serving for the match twice and being up two sets to love. In later years, injuries and a lack of confidence affected his game, and he retired in 2009 at the age of 27. Between 2001 and 2002, he served a seven-month suspension for taking the banned substance nandrolone.
Guillermo Vilas is an Argentine former professional tennis player. Vilas was the world No. 1 of the Grand Prix seasons in 1974, 1975 and 1977. He won four major titles and the year-end championships, totalling 62 singles titles alongside 16 doubles titles during his career on the ATP tour. World Tennis, Agence France-Presse and Livre d'or du tennis 1977, among other rankings and publications, rated him as world No. 1 in 1977. In the computerized ATP rankings, he peaked at No. 2 in April 1975, a position he held for a total of 83 weeks, although some have argued that Vilas should have been ranked No. 1 for at least 10 weeks, particularly in 1977 when he won 2 majors. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1991, two years after his first retirement.
Nicolas Kiefer is a German former professional tennis player. He reached the semifinals of the 2006 Australian Open and won a silver medal in men's doubles with partner Rainer Schüttler at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Kiefer's career-high singles ranking was world No. 4, achieved in January 2000.
Taylor Phillip Dent is a retired professional tennis player from the United States. He reached a career-high singles ranking of World No. 21, winning 4 singles titles.
Radek Štěpánek is a Czech former professional tennis player. His career-high singles ranking was world No. 8 and best doubles ranking was world No. 4. Štěpánek's biggest achievements are reaching two Masters 1000 event finals and the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 2006, as well as winning the deciding match for Czech Republic's Davis Cup winning team in 2012 and again in 2013. In doubles, he won his first Grand Slam title at the 2012 Australian Open, along with Indian partner Leander Paes, defeating the Bryan Brothers in the final. Paes and Štěpánek also won the men's doubles title at the 2013 US Open, defeating Bruno Soares and Alexander Peya in the final. In November 2017, he became a coach of Novak Djokovic and in May 2019, he joined Andre Agassi as part of Grigor Dimitrov's coaching staff.
Gerald Leighton PattersonMC was an Australian tennis player.
Brian Edward Gottfried is a retired American tennis player who won 25 singles titles and 54 doubles titles during his professional career. He was the runner-up in singles at the 1977 French Open, won the 1975 and 1977 French Open Doubles as well as the 1976 Wimbledon Doubles. He achieved a career-high singles ranking on the ATP tour on June 19, 1977, when he became world No. 3, and a career-high doubles ranking on December 12, 1976, when he became world No. 2.
Christophe Roger-Vasselin is a French former professional tennis player.
In tennis, the strings are the part of a tennis racquet which make contact with the ball. The strings form a woven network inside the head of the racquet. Strings have been made with a variety of materials and possess varying properties that have been measured, such as dynamic stiffness, tension retention, thickness (gauge), string texture, and rebound efficiency.
The racket sport traditionally named lawn tennis, invented in Edgbaston, Warwickshire, England, now commonly known simply as tennis, is the direct descendant of what is now denoted real tennis or royal tennis, which continues to be played today as a separate sport with more complex rules.
Malek Jaziri is a Tunisian former professional tennis player. Jaziri reached his highest singles ranking on the ATP Tour of World No. 42 in January 2019. He primarily played on the Futures circuit and the Challenger circuit.
Peter Fishbach is an American former professional tennis player.
The 1977 Raquette d'Or was a men's tennis tournament staged in Aix-en-Provence, France that was part of the One star category of the 1977 Grand Prix circuit. The tournament was played on outdoor clay courts and was held from 26 September until 2 October 1977. It was the inaugural edition of the tournament. Ilie Năstase won the singles title. In a five-set final against Guillermo Vilas he had won the first two sets when Vilas retired in protest of Năstase's use of a spaghetti strung racquet.
The "spaghetti" racquet was a type of double-strung tennis racquet that had a brief spike in popularity in the fall of 1977, revolutionizing the sport for about a month before being banned at the top levels of play. It applied far more spin to a tennis ball than conventionally strung racquets, leading to disorienting movements through the air, especially after bounces.
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