40 Fun Facts About Rod Laver

In which city is Rod Laver Arena, the main show court of a Grand Slam tournament?

Melbourne's tennis park gave its centre court his name in 2000, so every Australian Open champion since has been crowned in the house of the only man to win the singles Grand Slam twice.

Which Australian matched Laver by winning all four women's majors in 1970?

Margaret Court swept the women's majors in 1970, the year after Laver's second sweep. Laver himself never won another: his 1969 US Open title turned out to be his eleventh and last major.

Who came within one match of repeating Laver's 1969 Grand Slam, at the 2021 US Open?

Novak Djokovic had won the year's first three majors, then lost in straight sets to Daniil Medvedev, weeping in his chair before the last game. As of 2025, Laver's is still the last calendar Grand Slam in men's singles.

Laver won 200 titles; whose 109 was the men's Open Era record in 2025?

Jimmy Connors won the last of his 109 in 1989. Laver's 200 dwarfs it because it reaches back before open tennis began in 1968, to years the Open Era count leaves out.

Why did Laver miss the 1963–67 majors?

A ban on professionals kept him out: until 1968 the four majors admitted amateurs only. Let back in at 29, he won the first open Wimbledon that summer.

In which Queensland city was Laver born?

Rockhampton's most famous son was born to two tournament-playing parents, yet as a boy he was thought too small ever to make a champion.

At which New York venue, then home of the US Open, did Laver complete his 1969 Grand Slam?

Forest Hills was so slick after days of rain that Laver lost the first set of the final 7-9. He then gave up only five more games.

What nickname did Davis Cup captain Harry Hopman give Laver?

Rocket began as a tease, by Hopman's own account. 'He was the Rocket because he wasn't,' he said of a skinny boy he remembered as one of the slowest in his class.

Which part of Rod Laver's otherwise slight frame was famously outsized?

His left forearm was visibly thicker than his right. Its strength gave the small left-hander blazing power without loss of control, even at full stretch and on the run.

Which player won all four women's singles majors in 1988, 19 years after Laver's second Grand Slam?

Steffi Graf did not stop at the four majors: the same year she added Olympic gold in Seoul, completing what was dubbed the Golden Slam.

Which title did Laver win at Wimbledon in 1959, his breakthrough year?

Mixed doubles was the one final he won that fortnight. Unseeded and only 20, he reached all three finals, losing the singles in straight sets and the men's doubles in four.

Which Peruvian beat the unseeded Laver in the 1959 Wimbledon singles final?

Alex Olmedo, born and raised in Peru, had won the Davis Cup for the United States only months earlier, taking both his singles and the doubles in the 1958 final.

Which leg of Laver's 1962 Grand Slam nearly slipped away, with a match point saved and three five-set wins in a row?

The French Championships, on slow clay, were the hard part. He escaped a match point in the quarter-final and then won the final after losing the first two sets.

What marked Laver's 1961 Wimbledon final win over Chuck McKinley?

It lasted under an hour, 53 or 55 minutes depending on the account. Laver had lost the two previous finals there; this time he gave McKinley no chance.

Who was the last man before Laver to win the calendar Grand Slam, in 1938?

Don Budge sealed his sweep by beating his own doubles partner, Gene Mako, in the US final. That summer he had also won all three titles at Wimbledon for the second year running.

Which three cities make up the 'clay court triple' Laver completed in 1962?

Paris, Rome and Hamburg hosted the French, Italian and German championships. Laver swept them in his Grand Slam year, beating Manuel Santana, the previous year's Paris champion, in the Hamburg final.

Whom did Laver beat in the 1962 Australian and US finals to bookend his first Grand Slam?

Roy Emerson lost three of that year's four major finals to Laver, yet he finished with 12 major singles titles, a men's record that stood until Pete Sampras passed it in 2000.

Which American tennis broadcaster co-wrote Laver's 1971 memoir The Education of a Tennis Player?

Bud Collins, an American sportswriter best known for his tennis commentary, built the book around Laver's 1969 season because that was the year of the second Grand Slam.

What did Laver's 1968 Wimbledon title bring that his 1961 and 1962 wins had not?

Prize money arrived at Wimbledon with open tennis in 1968. For winning in 1961 and 1962, Laver recalled, he got a £15 voucher and a firm handshake.

Which American great captained Team World at the first Laver Cup in 2017?

John McEnroe led the World side in Prague, where Europe took the first cup. The format puts a retired great in charge of each team, coaching the players from the bench.

Laver's 90-game semi-final at the 1969 Australian Open was played in fierce heat in which host city?

Brisbane staged the Open that year at its Milton courts. The semi-final ran for more than four hours in the heat, one set alone going to 22-20, before Laver won in the fifth.

Whom did Laver defeat in the 1969 US Open final to clinch his second Grand Slam?

Tony Roche stood at both ends of that Slam: he had dragged Laver through 90 games in the semi-final of the first leg in January, and he took the opening set of this final before fading.

Who broke Laver's record of 31 straight Wimbledon match wins in 1980?

Björn Borg passed it on the way to his fifth straight title and ran his own streak to 41. Laver's had begun in 1961 and ended with a fourth-round upset in 1970.

Laver was the first tennis player to pass which milestone in career earnings, in 1971?

US$1 million fell in 1971, only three years after open tennis began. Laver was in his thirties and had won his last major, yet he was still by far the tour's leading money winner.

What set apart the 1971 Tennis Champions Classic, where Laver won 13 straight matches?

Winner-take-all matches meant the loser of each went home with nothing. Laver won all 13 he played in 1971, though a 41-year-old veteran had beaten him in the opening match of the first Classic a year earlier.

Who beat Laver in the 1971 and 1972 WCT Finals playoffs in Dallas?

Ken Rosewall won the 1972 final in a fifth-set tie-break, watched by more than 20 million Americans on television. Laver later wrote that if one match made tennis in the United States, that was it.

Who partnered the 35-year-old Laver in the doubles win that clinched the 1973 Davis Cup for Australia?

John Newcombe and Laver won in straight sets to seal a 5-0 final. Laver, back in the team after eleven years away, won all six rubbers he played that season.

Whom did Laver beat in the semi-finals of the 1969 US Open on his way to the Grand Slam?

Arthur Ashe had won the first US Open a year earlier while still an amateur. He kept running into Laver: the Australian had also beaten him in the semi-finals of the first open Wimbledon.

Which award did World Team Tennis give the 38-year-old Laver in 1976?

Rookie of the Year went to a man who had been winning titles since the 1950s. He had just stepped back from the main tour when a WTT team signed him.

Three of the four majors Laver won in his 1969 Grand Slam were played on which surface?

Grass was then the surface in Australia and America as well as at Wimbledon; only Paris, on clay, was different. The US Open left it after 1974 and the Australian Open after 1987.

The Laver Cup, launched in 2017 and named in his honour, was modelled on which golf event?

The Ryder Cup sets Europe against the United States; the Laver Cup sets Europe against the rest of the world. Wins are worth more points each day, so nothing can be settled before the last one.

Where is the Tennis Hall of Fame, which inducted Laver in 1981?

Newport, Rhode Island, has the Hall because its casino lawns staged the first US championships in 1881. Laver was inducted exactly a century later.

What happened to Laver during a 1998 ESPN interview?

He suffered a stroke under the studio lights, but luck was with him: the taping was just down the street from a major hospital. He spent a month there and recovered his speech and memory within a year.

In which US state has Laver long made his home?

California became home because he married an American, Mary Benson, there in 1966. The family settled in the south of the state, and Carlsbad, near San Diego, has been his base for many years.

Which player did the 2012 Tennis Channel '100 Greatest of All Time' rank ahead of Laver?

Roger Federer took top spot, with Laver second. The admiration ran the other way too: the Laver Cup grew out of Federer's idea for an event to honour the Australian and his generation.

Which honour did Laver receive in 2016?

Companion of the Order of Australia was the top award in that year's Australia Day list, given for 'eminent service to tennis as a player, representative and mentor'. He had been an MBE since 1970.

Which sport did Laver's relatives Frank and Jack Laver play at state level?

Cricket made the Laver name before tennis did. Frank Laver played 15 Tests for Australia and managed its touring sides in England, and Jack played for Tasmania.

Which Australian lost the 1960 Australian final to Laver from two sets up, then beat him in that year's Wimbledon final?

Neale Fraser held a championship point in the fourth set of the Australian final and still lost. He took his revenge at Wimbledon that summer, and in 1973 he was Laver's Davis Cup captain.

Which kind of spin, rare in the 1960s, did Laver whip onto both his forehand and his backhand?

Topspin was his signature: he drove it off both sides and even turned the lob into an attacking shot. A great rival said nobody else of the era hit the ball that way.

Rod Laver Arena, opened in 1988, was the first Grand Slam stadium to have what?

A retractable roof means neither rain nor extreme heat need stop play, and it made the Australian Open the first of the four majors able to move indoors.