Tennis Book 2010_Layout 1 - TIA UK

The Sport of Tennis
The biggest goal of all
Securing a Grand Slam is the pinnacle of a player’s
achievement and one which to date, as Henry Wancke records,
even the great record-breaking Roger Federer has yet to realise!
And what is the Grand Slam? It is simply winning the traditional
four major championships in one calendar year. While a
number of players have won all four over many years and even
consecutively but if not in a calendar year, it is not The Grand
Slam, it is a Career Grand Slam.
It may sound easy but it isn’t for only five players have achieved
that distinction in the 12 months of a year, namely Don Budge
and Rod Laver for the men, and Maureen Connolly, Margaret
Court and Steffi Graf for the women.
To date they are the only players to have won the Australian
Open, French Open, The Championships, Wimbledon and the
US Open consecutively in a season, a feat which is considered
one of the most difficult in the modern game, especially now
that the four majors are played on different surfaces.
The term was first used in tennis by John Kieran, a
correspondent for the New York Times, who coined it in 1933
when speculating on the chances of Australian Jack Crawford,
that year’s winner of the Australian, French and Wimbledon
titles going on to add the US Championships as it was known
then. That achievement, he wrote, ‘would be something like
scoring a grand slam on the courts’, a term he borrowed from
the card game of bridge. Unfortunately Fred Perry got the better
of him in the heat of that final day.
8
The massive Arthur Ashe Stadium which dominates the US
Open at Flushing Meadows. Picture Fotosports International
It was left to Don Budge to become the first to score a ‘Grand
Slam on the courts’ and he did that in 1938. He was
subsequently followed by fellow American Maureen Connolly
who joined him by becoming the first woman to record a
calendar Slam in 1953.
A decade later Aussie Rod Laver scored the first of his Grand
Slams as an amateur in 1962, a feat he was to repeat in 1968
when the sport went Open by accepting professional players.
With Australian tennis still very much to the fore, Margaret
Court brought her nation a second Grand Slam within a couple
of years by dominating the sport in 1970 and it wasn’t until
1988 that Steffi Graf went one better than all of them with what
is now described as a Golden Grand Slam by collecting the
tennis Gold medal at the Seoul Olympics in the same year as
her four majors!
So, what makes these majors so important? They are the
mainstay of the circuit despite all the efforts of the respective
ATP and WTA Tours to establish events that could match them.
While they also provide the biggest pay-cheque, it’s not all
about money. The players know that their personal status is
enhanced if they can include one of those major titles on the
lists which mark their careers.
All four of the championships are steeped in history with
Wimbledon retaining more traditions than the other three who,