Fifty years past last Slam, Laver confident of repeat
MELBOURNE:Fifty years after Rod Laver won the last true Grand Slam in men’s tennis, he’s confident the feat will be replicated one day, unlikely as it may seem. “It’s got to happen again,” the Aussie left-hander said on Wednesday.
While Steffi Graf won all four major tennis tournaments in one season in 1988, no man has done it other than Don Budge in 1938, and Laver in 1962 and 1969.
Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic each managed to collect four major trophies in a row, but spread out over two seasons.
Laver’s first calendar-year Grand Slam came during the amateur era. He then turned pro — “I said, ‘I can’t afford to stay this way. I haven’t made anything out of the game,’” Laver said — and so was barred from entering the majors until the Open era began at Roland Garros in 1968.
The following year was the debut of professional tennis at the Australian Open, and he was eager to compete again.
“You don’t say, ‘I’m going to win the Grand Slam’. It’s a ninemonth title,” said Laver, who turned 80 last year. “I told my wife, ‘I want to enter all four of them.’ And she says, ‘Well, go ahead. It’s your life with tennis.’ And so I arrived down here, and she called me up and said she was pregnant. The due date was the exact date of the U.S. Open final.”
He won the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open — and his son was born three weeks late, so there was no conflict in New York. Completing the second Slam, against professionals, “gave me the satisfaction ... that I could do it with all the players at the tournament.”