Why they rank here
Laver's 11 majors are the most misleading number in tennis. He won the calendar Grand Slam as an amateur in 1962, turned professional, and was then banned from every major for five full years — 1963 through 1967 — during what should have been his absolute prime, while dominating the pro circuit against Rosewall and Gonzales and collecting 8 Pro Slam titles. When open tennis arrived in 1968 he immediately won Wimbledon, and in 1969 he won the calendar Grand Slam again — the only player ever to complete it twice, and still the last man to do it at all. Reasonable projections of his banned years put his major count in the high teens or twenties. Across amateur, professional and open competition he won roughly 200 tournaments, the most by any man, and he remains the benchmark for left-handed shotmaking — the whipped topspin backhand decades ahead of its time. Ranking him requires imagination; the two Grand Slams seven years apart, either side of exile, tell you what the missing years contained.
Career profile
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