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.
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, three year-end championships, and 17 Grand Prix Super Series titles. 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.
The Grand Slam in tennis is the achievement of winning all four major championships in one discipline in the same calendar year, also referred to as the "Calendar-year Grand Slam" or "Calendar Slam". In doubles, a team may accomplish the Grand Slam playing together or a player may achieve it with different partners. Winning all four major championships consecutively but not within the same calendar year is referred to as a "non-calendar-year Grand Slam", while winning the four majors at any point during the course of a career is known as a "Career Grand Slam".
Rodney George Laver is an Australian former tennis player. Laver was the World No. 1 ranked professional in some sources in 1964, in all sources from 1965 to 1969 and in some sources in 1970, spanning four years before and three years after the start of the Open Era in 1968. He also was ranked the world No. 1 amateur in 1961 by Lance Tingay and 1962 by Tingay and Ned Potter.
Evonne Fay Goolagong Cawley is a Australian former world No. 1 tennis player of Wiradjuri descent. Goolagong was one of the world's leading players in the 1970s and early 1980s.
John David Newcombe AO OBE is an Australian former professional tennis player. He is one of the few men to have attained a world No. 1 ranking in both singles and doubles. At the majors, he won seven singles titles, a former record 17 men's doubles titles, and two mixed doubles titles. He also contributed to five Davis Cup titles for Australia during an age when the Davis Cup was deemed as significant as the majors. Tennis magazine rated him the 10th best male player of the period 1965–2005.
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.
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.
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. 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.
William Bowrey is a former Australian tennis player.
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.
Nikola "Niki" Pilić is a Croatian former professional tennis player who competed for SFR Yugoslavia.
Philip Clive Dent is a former professional tennis player. Dent's high water mark as a pro singles player was reaching the Australian Open final in 1974, which he lost to Jimmy Connors in four sets. Dent was also the men's doubles champion at the Australian Open in 1975, and the mixed-doubles champion at the US Open in 1976.
Onny Parun is a former tennis player of Croatian descent from New Zealand, who was among the world's top 20 for five years and who reached the quarterfinals at Wimbledon in 1971 and 1972. He made the final of the Australian Open in 1973, losing to John Newcombe in four sets, and was a US Open quarterfinalist in 1973 and also a quarterfinalist at the French Open in 1975. He eventually went on to coach the Bhatti brothers.
Barry MacKay was an American tennis player, tournament director and broadcaster. He was ranked #1 in the U.S. in 1960.
The racket sport traditionally named lawn tennis, invented in Birmingham, 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. Most rules of (lawn) tennis derive from this precursor and it is reasonable to see both sports as variations of the same game. Most historians believe that tennis was originated in the monastic cloisters in northern France in the 12th century, but the ball was then struck with the palm of the hand; hence, the name jeu de paume. It was not until the 16th century that rackets came into use, and the game began to be called "tennis." It was popular in England and France, and Henry VIII of England was a big fan of the game, now referred to as real tennis.
Grover Eugene "Raz" Reid is a former professional tennis player from the United States. He was born Grover Reid Junior, but is known as Raz Reid, a nickname he has had since he was a young.
Donald Philip Tregonning is a retired professional tennis player and coach. Tregonning, a student of Melbourne coach Mick Sweetnam, was a member of the international amateur and professional tennis communities, reaching the mixed doubles semi finals of the 1953 Australian Open, playing twice in the quarter finals of doubles competitions at the Australian Open and reaching the quarter finals of the Wembley Professional Championships in 1953. Tregonning played in a famous 1953 Australian Championships Round 1 match in which the umpire left the grounds to "go to (his) tea".
Janet Anne Young is a former professional tennis player from Australia.
Australia