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Steffi Graf – the first racket of the world for 377 consecutive weeks
German tennis player Steffi Graf won all the Grand Slam tournaments in 1988 and, in addition, became the champion of the XXIV Olympics in Seoul the same year, winning singles. In addition to these great sporting achievements, she also has other tennis records.
The full name of the great tennis player Stephanie Maria Graf, but she went down in the history of sports, like Steffi Graf, – the journalists slightly shortened her name, just like it was with Don Budge and Rod Laver. She was born in 1969 in the German city of Mannheim, and the first who was able to discern her outstanding tennis abilities was Steffi Graf’s father. He became her first coach, having managed to instill in her a selfless love for this difficult sport and fostered a fighting spirit in her – an inalienable quality of a tennis player. Continue reading
Rod Laver
Rod Laver, nicknamed “Rocket” was named the greatest tennis player of the twentieth century, and for good reason. He is the only player (among men and women) in the history of tennis, whose victories in majors have allowed him to become the holder of the Grand Slam in singles twice. He won the first “Grand Slam” in 1962, when he was an amateur, but the next year Rod became a professional, where in 1967 he also won the “Professional Grand Slam”.
With the beginning of the “Open Era” in 1968, Laver, like other professionals, again began to take part in the Grand Slam tournaments.
He got his second “Grand Slam” in 1969. Continue reading
René Lacoste
Rene was born in Paris on July 2, 1904 in the family of the industrialist Jean Lacoste, the owner of a network of factories producing cars “Spanish-Suiza” (La Нispano-Suiza Automobiles). Being not quite a healthy child – he was pestering chronic bronchitis, Rene became interested in tennis.
One day, in 1910, they invited the French journalist Pierre Albarran, a major tennis authority, to the Club de sport, located on Saussure Street in Paris, and showed a thin, pale boy. He held the racket in the middle of the handle, ran around the court like a hare, and hit the balls with the accuracy of a metronome. The guy made an impression on the “examination committee.” Albarran recalls that everyone was of the same opinion: this young man had a good future, but no one had the idea that at 21, Lacoste would be the first racket of the world.
What an amazing path he has come! What will and perseverance this young man showed in exhausting training, to whom his father recommended leaving the sport at the age of fifteen, believing that his son is completely lacking in abilities! At twenty, Lacoste became a real athlete, able to train for three hours in the morning, and fight for another three hours in the afternoon (at that time it was unusual), reminding with his game a perfectly adjusted, non-interruption mechanism. Continue reading
