Rod Laver

S. He quickly establiRod Laverd himself among the leading professional players such as Ken Rosewall Lew Hoad and Andrés Gimeno and also Pancho Gonzales when Gonzales returned to a full–time schedule in 1964. He had to learn to control his adventurous shotmaking and integrate percentage tennis into his game when he turned professional.

Laver won and excelled on all the surfaces of his time (grass clay and wood/parquet) and was ranked as the best professional player in the world during the five-year period he was excluded from the Grand Slam tournaments. He is the only male player and was the first player male or female to have won the Grand Slam during the open era (Margaret Court achieving this same feat the very next year in 1970; and in 1988 Steffi Graf also achieved this feat).