Portal:Tennis/Selected biography/16

Rod Laver MBE (born 9 August 1938) is an Australian former tennis player and was the World No. 1 player for seven consecutive years, from 1964 to 1970. He is the only tennis player to have twice won the Grand Slam (all four major singles titles in the same year) — first as an amateur in 1962 and second as a professional in 1969. He is also the only male player and first player, male or female, to have won the Grand Slam during the open era. He is the 3rd male player to win all four Grand Slams in his career after Fred Perry and Don Budge.

Laver was ranked as the best professional player in the world during the five-year period he was excluded from the Grand Slam tournaments. Rod Laver is the second and last male player to win each major title twice in his career. Only Roy Emerson and Margaret Court had won all four Grand Slam tournaments twice before Laver in the history of tennis. In 1967 he also won the Professional Grand Slam (only Ken Rosewall did the same in 1963). Laver is universally regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time.