Rod Laver

Rod "Rocket" Laver (born 1938) is arguably the best tennis player ever. The Australian ace twice won the Grand Slam of tennis, one of the most elusive goals in sports, and paved the way for future generations of agile, powerful lefties like John McEnroe and Pete Sampras. Laver's two Grand Slams, in 1962 and 1969, were separated by a five year period in which his professional status rendered him ineligible for the tournaments that make up the Slam. Over the course of his career, Laver won four Wimbledon titles, and likely would have captured more had the "Open" era—which opened the major tournaments to professional players—begun a few years earlier. In all, he won 11 major singles titles, and 9 more in doubles and mixed doubles.

Rodney George Laver was born on August 9, 1938, in Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia. Everyone in the Laver clan played tennis. Laver's father, Roy, was one of 13 children, all of whom played tennis. His mother, Melba Roffey, was also a tournament–caliber player. Roy and Melba frequently played mixed doubles together, as well as singles individually, in Rockhampton–area tournaments, often emerging as champions. Every home the family lived in had a tennis court on the premises, and the Laver children all began playing competitively at early ages. The family was soon a local tennis institution. At the tender age of 13, Laver took on his older brother Bob in the finals of the junior division of the Central Queensland Championship. Naturally, the match took place on the Laver home court.

Discovered by Aussie Davis Cup Captain

At a tennis camp sponsored by an Australian newspaper, Laver caught the attention of Harry Hopman, longtime captain of the Australian Davis Cup team and a legendary coach and developer of young talent. Hopman tagged Laver with the nickname "Rocket," which stuck with him for the rest of his career. The moniker was actually ironic; Laver was not particularly fast on his feet. In fact, he was a short, scrawny, freckle–faced kid that looked like anything but a top–caliber athlete. He turned out, however, to have a rare combination of natural ability and fierce determination.

Laver burst onto the international scene in 1956, when he triumphed in the U.S. Junior Championship at the age of 17. He put his career on brief hold to serve for a year in the Australian Army in 1957, then hopped back onto the fast track to tennis fame. By 1958, Laver was ranked eighth in Australia, and the following year he was named to the Australian Davis Cup team, joining established stars Neale Fraser and Roy Emerson. He gained further notice that year when he made it to the finals at Wimbledon, where he was defeated by Alex Olmedo. This was the first in an amazing string of six straight appearances in the finals at Wimbledon, beginning before and ending after his five–year banishment from the tournament, which remained closed to professionals until 1968.

1960 was something of a breakout year for Laver. He won his first major tournament, the Australian Open, defeating fellow Aussie Neal Fraser in a five–set thriller. Fraser got his revenge later that year at the U.S. Open in Forest Hills, but by this time Laver was practically a fixture in the final round of major tournaments. In 1960 he was a finalist at Wimbledon in both singles and mixed doubles, and in addition to his match–up with Fraser at the U.S. open, he also appeared in the doubles final at that event.

Captured First Grand Slam Since Budge

Laver thoroughly dominated men's tennis in the early 1960s. He captured his first Wimbledon championship in 1961, dispatching Chuck McKinley in straight sets in a final that lasted less than an hour. The following year, he again won the Wimbledon final in straight sets, this time over Martin Mulligan. That victory followed earlier victories in the Italian, French and German championships.

Having claimed three of the four Grand Slam events for the year, Laver entered the 1962 U.S. championships with the eyes of the entire tennis world upon him. Nobody had won the Grand Slam since Don Budge became the first player to accomplish the feat in 1938. Laver waltzed through the early rounds of the tournament, leading to a face–off with countryman Roy Emerson in the final. Laver prevailed in four sets, completing the first Grand Slam in tennis in 24 years. No other male singles player has won a Grand Slam since.

In December of 1962, Laver announced that he was abandoning the amateur tour to join the International Professional Tennis Players Association. He was guaranteed earnings of $110,000 for a three–year period, good money for a tennis player at the time, but a far cry from the vast sums earned by top players today. While the money was attractive and the tennis was good—Laver enjoyed a lively rivalry with fellow Australian Kenny Rosewall during this period—Laver's decision barred him for all of the major tournaments. It is, of course, impossible to know how he would have fared in those tournaments had he remained eligible; but there is little doubt that Laver's record at the game's biggest events would have been even more impressive had he been able to participate in them during what were probably his peak physical years, between the ages of 24 and 29.

In 1964, Laver met his future wife, Mary, at fellow tennis giant Jack Kramer's country club in Los Angeles. Mary was there to watch a swimming exhibition, and had no idea that this fellow, who was so shy he needed an intermediary to ask her to join them for a drink, was a superstar. The pair married in 1966. In August of 1967, Laver defeated Rosewall in a weeklong, eight–man professional tournament on Centre Court at Wimbledon. The success of this tournament helped set the stage for a decision later that year by the Lawn Tennis Association to delete the language referring to amateur and professional players from its rulebook. This move paved the way for the dawn of the open era in tennis in 1968, a change the British tennis community had been clamoring for as a way of dealing with the steady exodus of name players from the big tournaments. This meant that major tournaments were now open to professional players. Approaching the age of 30, it appeared to many in the tennis community that Laver's best days were behind him. He managed to win the 1968 Wimbledon singles crown, knocking off Tony Roche in under an hour in the final, but that was his only major tournament championship that year.

Second Grand Slam Silenced Doubters

In 1969, however, Laver proved that his tennis obituary had been written prematurely. He was not only competitive, but he was as dominant as he had been seven years earlier. In fact, 1969 may have been the greatest season of his entire career. That year, he won 106 singles matches against only 16 defeats, and won 17 of the 32 singles championships in which he competed. Early in the Grand Slam cycle, Laver had to survive a marathon 80–game, four–hour semifinal match against Roche to survive in the Australian Open. He had another scare against yet another Aussie compatriot, Dick Crealy, in the second round of the French Open. After triumphing once again at Wimbledon, all that remained between Laver and his second Grand Slam was the U.S. Open. He prevailed in four sets against Roche to capture the $16,000 championship and become the only player in history to win the Grand Slam twice. In many ways, the second time around was more impressive, since it was accomplished against all of the world's top players, both pro and amateur, while his 1962 feat came at a time when many of the best players had already turned pro and were therefore ineligible to compete in the tournaments that make up the Grand Slam. One additional major event of 1969 in the lives of the Lavers was the birth of their son Rick.

While Laver was not able to repeat his glory of 1969 in the new decade, he remained among the game's top players into the 1970s. While he did not manage to successfully defend any of his Grand Slam tournament titles in 1970, Laver nevertheless earned more than $200,000 in prize money that year, the first player to reach that mark. In 1971, Laver claimed the Italian Open title and six lesser tournaments. The $292,717 in prize money he won that year made him the first tennis player to break the million dollar barrier in career earnings.

When professionals were allowed to play in Davis Cup competition for the first time in 1973, Laver answered the call to play for the Australian team. He teamed up with John Newcombe to end a five–year period of Davis Cup domination by the United States. Laver also helped Australia to three World Cup championships during this period, in 1972, 1974 and 1975. As his tournament career began to wind down, Laver signed on with the San Diego squad in World Team Tennis in 1976, and was named the league's rookie of the year at the un–rookie–like age of 38.

Laver retired from competitive tennis in 1978, leaving a career record unmatched at the time: two Grand Slams, 11 major singles titles, 20 major championships in all (including doubles and mixed doubles), 47 total pro singles titles, 21 times runner–up. He was ranked in the top 10 in the world during 13 years between 1959 and 1975, and collected career earnings of more than $1.5 million. Laver was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame in 1981. At 5 foot 8 and 145 pounds, Laver was hardly the prototypical power player. But so thick and strong was his left arm that it appeared to some that it had been nabbed from a much larger man and grafted onto his body. Laver played an attacking style of tennis that often overwhelmed less aggressive opponents. He applied topspin to a much greater degree than other players of his time, a style that did not become popular until the 1970s, as exemplified by such champions of that decade as Bjorn Borg and Guillermo Vilas.

In July of 1998, the 59–year–old Laver was taping an interview for ESPN at a Los Angeles hotel when he suddenly felt his legs and fingers go numb. What he thought was a dizzy spell turned out to be a major stroke. Laver spent 13 days in intensive care, during which at one point his temperature rose to 106 degrees and the prognosis was grim. He began physical therapy two weeks after the stroke, and had to relearn how to speak, walk, write, and even dress himself. Gradually, he regained use of the right side of his body. Laver left UCLA Medical Center after seven weeks, and within a couple more weeks he was puttering around the golf course using a club as a cane. Soon after, he began to reacquaint himself with tennis, assisted by local pro Tommy Tucker. By May of 1999, Laver's recovery was thorough enough to allow him to present Andre Agassi with the trophy for his victory in the French Open, a triumph that made Agassi the first player since Laver—and only the fifth male player in history—to win all four Grand Slam events in his career.

Books

Collins, Bud and Zander Hollander, editors, Bud Collins' Modern Encyclopedia of Tennis, Visible Ink, 1994.

Periodicals

People Weekly, October 26, 1998.

Sports Illustrated, April 5, 1999.

Tennis, September 1999.

Online

Newcombe, Barry, "Great Champions: Rod Laver," Wimbledon 2004 Official Web Site,http://championships.wimbledon.org (December 13, 2004).

"Rod Laver, Class of 1981" International Tennis Hall of Fame, http://www.tennisfame.com/enshrinees/rod–laver.html (December 13, 2004).

Rod Laver (Rodney George Laver) , 1938–, Australian tennis player. He left school at age 15 to pursue tennis and in 1962 became the first male grand-slam winner in tennis since Don Budge in 1938. Noted for his extraordinarily powerful serve, Laver turned professional in 1962. He won the grand slam again in 1969, the only person ever to do so twice. In 1971 he became the first professional tennis player to pass the $1 million mark in total earnings.

Laver, Rod ( Rodney George) (1938– ) Australian tennis player. Laver's major singles titles included the US (1962, 1969), French (1962, 1969) and Australian (1960, 1962, 1969) opens, and Wimbledon (1961, 1962, 1968, 1969). He was the first man to win the ‘Grand Slam’ twice (1962, 1969).