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Rod Laver: Still the greatest amid all the racket

Roar Guru
16th September, 2014
21

A bronze sculpture of a golfer stands in a club near London. Few fans looking at it will recognise his face, let alone his hands.

However, here stands Harry Vardon, whose way of gripping a club is used by 99 per cent of those who play the game today.

As the years roll by, it is easy to forget the sporting greats of the past. Vardon died more than 70 years ago, and few fans know that he won a record six British Open Championships.

My passion for sports, however, has not withered over the years, helped by the fact that I wasn’t exactly born yesterday.

As a child in short pants, I watched some of all sports’ greatest players, and later as a journalist wrote stories about many of them.

However, still stark in my memories is the time I watched a scrawny, red-headed Australian tennis player deal aces before a delighted crowd in my hometown of East London in South Africa.

His name was Rod Laver, and he was the greatest tennis player the world has ever seen.

Amid all the racket about the current feats of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, and earlier Pete Sampras, Roy Emerson and Bjorn Borg, Laver stands as a beacon. Add to the media mix John McEnroe, whose antics on court were hard to ignore amid the strawberries and screams of Wimbledon.

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Laver is hardly forgotten and regularly watches the modern greats of the game who deal aces before delighted fans. I wonder what he is thinking? A modest man, I am sure Laver will not murmur a word about where he stands in history.

Laver was a member of Jack Kramer’s touring circus and I had the privilege of watching him, Ken Rosewall, Lew Hoad, Pancho Gonzalez and others play.

Who then would have foreseen that Laver would win the game’s Grand Slam – the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open titles – in one year twice, a feat matched only by the queen of women’s lob, compatriot Margaret Court?

Federer leads the list of Slam winners with 17, Sampras and Nadal 14, Roy Emerson 12 and Laver and Bjorn Borg 11.

However, it should be remembered that Laver was banned from 1963 to 1967 when professionals weren’t allowed to compete in the major tournaments. Laver was beating up the opposition in those days and he could have easily added several Slams to his tally. It was no surprise when he served up more of the same in the open era.

I am sure that Laver didn’t have to sleep in the back of his car like some of the golfing greats such as Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson and Sam Snead did.

But he had a grip on the game as good as Vardon’s and his feats linger long in my memory.

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