John Donald Budge was an American tennis player. He is most famous as the first tennis player — male or female, and still the only American male — to win the Grand Slam, and to win all four Grand Slam events consecutively overall. Budge was the second man to complete the career Grand Slam after Fred Perry, and remains the youngest to achieve the feat. He won ten majors, of which six were Grand Slam events and four Pro Slams, the latter achieved on three different surfaces. Budge is considered to have one of the best backhands in the history of tennis, with most observers rating it better than that of later player Ken Rosewall.
Lewis Alan Hoad was an Australian tennis player whose career ran from 1950 to 1973. Hoad won four Major singles tournaments as an amateur. He was a member of the Australian team that won the Davis Cup four times between 1952 and 1956. Hoad turned professional in July 1957. He won the Kooyong Tournament of Champions in 1958 and the Forest Hills Tournament of Champions in 1959. He won the Ampol Open Trophy world series of tournaments in 1959, which included the Kooyong tournament that concluded in early January 1960. Hoad's men's singles tournament victories spanned from 1951 to 1971.
Kenneth Robert Rosewall is an Australian former world top-ranking amateur and professional tennis player. He won a record 23 tennis Majors in singles, including 8 Grand Slam singles titles and, before the Open Era, a record 15 Pro Slam titles; overall, he reached a record 35 Major finals. He won the Pro Grand Slam in 1963. Rosewall won a record 24 major men's doubles titles. He won 9 Grand Slam titles in men's doubles with a career men's doubles Grand Slam and also won 15 Pro Slam men's doubles titles.
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. Gonzales was a prominent professional champion in the 1950s and 1960s, winning world professional championship tours between 1954 and 1961; he was ranked world No. 1 professional in some rankings between 1952 and 1961.
Francisco Olegario Segura, better known as Pancho "Segoo" Segura, was a leading tennis player of the 1940s and 1950s, both as an amateur and as a professional. He was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, but moved to the United States in the late 1930s. Throughout his amateur career he was listed by the USTA as a "foreign" player resident in the U.S. As a professional player, he was referred to as the "Ecuadorian champ who now lives in New York City". After acquiring U.S. citizenship in 1991 at the age of seventy, Segura was a citizen of both countries, although he never represented the U.S. in tennis competition.
Francis "Frank" Arthur Sedgman is an Australian former world No. 1 tennis player. Over the course of a three-decade career, Sedgman won five Grand Slam singles tournaments as an amateur as well as 22 Grand Slam doubles tournaments. He is one of only five tennis players all-time to win multiple career Grand Slams in two disciplines, alongside Margaret Court, Roy Emerson, Martina Navratilova and Serena Williams. In 1951, he and Ken McGregor won the Grand Slam in men's doubles. Sedgman turned professional in 1953, and won the Wembley World Professional Indoor singles title in 1953 and 1958. He also won the Sydney Masters tournament in 1958, and the Melbourne Professional singles title in 1959. He won the Grand Prix de Europe Professional Tour in 1959.
John Albert Kramer was an American tennis player of the 1940s and 1950s. He won three Grand Slam tournaments. He led the U.S. Davis Cup tennis team to victory in the 1946 and 1947 Davis Cup finals. Kramer won the U.S. Pro Championship at Forest Hills in 1948 and the Wembley Pro Championships in 1949. He won world professional championship 2-man tours in 1948, 1949/50, 1950/51, and 1953. He was ranked world No. 1 amateur player for 1946 by Pierre Gillou, Harry Hopman and Ned Potter. He was ranked World No. 1 amateur player for 1947 by John Olliff, Pierre Gillou and Ned Potter. In 1948 he was ranked the U.S. No. 1 professional in the USPLTA contemporary rankings for U.S. pro tennis play.
Before the advent of the Open era of tennis competitions in April 1968, only amateurs were allowed to compete in established tournaments, including the four majors. There was no prize money and players were compensated for travel expenses only. However many top tennis players turned professional to play legally for prize money in the years before the open era. They played in separate professional events, mostly on tours involving head-to-head competition, but also in professional tournaments as the biggest events on the pro tour. Professional tournaments, in particular the professional majors, usually only had a men's draw.
Marion Anthony Trabert was an American amateur world No. 1 tennis champion and long-time tennis author, TV commentator, instructor, and motivational speaker.
Henry Christian Hopman CBE was an Australian tennis player and coach.
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.
Andrés Gimeno Tolaguera was a Spanish tennis player. His greatest achievement came in 1972, when he won the French Open and became the oldest first-time Grand Slam champion in the Open era at 34 years of age.
Malcolm James Anderson MBE is a former tennis player from Australia who was active from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s. He won the singles title at the 1957 U.S. National Championships and achieved his highest amateur ranking of No. 2 in 1957. He became a professional after the 1958 season and won the Wembley World Professional Tennis Championships in the 1959 season. He was runner-up at the 1972 Australian Open championships.
Kenneth Bruce McGregor was an Australian tennis player from Adelaide who won the Men's Singles title at the Australian Championships in 1952. He and his longtime doubles partner, Frank Sedgman, are generally considered one of the greatest men's doubles teams of all time and won the doubles Grand Slam in 1951. McGregor was also a member of three Australian Davis Cup winning teams in 1950–1952. In 1953, Jack Kramer induced both Sedgman and McGregor to turn professional. He was ranked as high as World No. 3 in 1952.
World number 1 ranked male tennis players is a year-by-year listing of the male tennis players who were ranked as world No. 1 by various contemporary and modern sources. The annual source rankings from which the No. 1 players are drawn are cited for each player's name, with a summary of the most important tennis events of each year also included. If world rankings are not available, recent rankings by tennis writers for historical years are accessed, with the dates of the recent rankings identified. In the period 1948–1953, when contemporary professional world rankings were not created, the U.S. professional rankings are cited.
In 1930 the "Association Française des Professeurs de Tennis (AFPT)" held its first pro tournament, titled "Championnat International de France Professionnel" June 18–22, 1930, and is considered as a part of the professional major from 1927 to 1967 till the advent of Open Era. The tournament only had a men's draw.
The Tournament of Champions was a prominent professional tennis tournament series held at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, N.Y. and at Kooyong Stadium, Melbourne and White City Stadium, Sydney in Australia in 1957, 1958, and 1959.
The Victorian Championships its original name until 1968 it was then known as the Victorian Open Grass Court Championships or Victorian Open was a tennis event held from 1879 through 1971 it was originally played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground Lawn Tennis Club, until 1933 the venue changed to Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club Australia for the remainder of its run.
For many years before the Open Era of tennis in 1968, the usual format for the handful of touring tennis professionals was a series of two-man one-night stands across the United States and often in other countries as well. The most notable of these tours were the "World Series" or "World Professional Championships", in which the reigning world champion went head-to-head against a challenger, most often the leading amateur of the previous year who had just turned pro. Promoters would attempt to sign the leading amateur to a contract with a minimum guarantee against a percentage of gate receipts, making a similar type of deal with the reigning professional champion and sometimes giving smaller percentages to undercard players. The winners of the tours were described as being the "world champion".
This article presents top ten lists of male singles tennis players, as ranked by various official and non-official ranking authorities throughout the history of the sport. Rankings of U.S.-only professionals pre-Open Era, and U.S.-only amateurs during World War II are also included.
Frank Sedgman 
Pancho Segura 
Tony Trabert 
Andrés Gimeno 
Pierre Barthès