The Rocket blazes into tennis immortality

The world of tennis has seen several great champions during the 20th century when it grew from a genteel Victorian sport to its present status as one of the most popular and lucrative sports. But few great champions might compare favourably with Rod Laver, who twice swept all the four major events to complete the Grand Slam, and Martina Navratilova, who dominated the women's game in the first half of the 1980s. PAUL FEIN pays tribute to the peerless champions.

FROM THE very beginning the competition was always Laver, Pete Sampras once said. Sampras yearned to play like, behave like, and eventually, surpass the feats of his boyhood idol, Rod Laver.

After practices, Sampras spent hours watching films of the Australian legend duelling archrival Ken Rosewall in the dramatic 1971 and 72 World Championship of Tennis finals.

I loved the way Laver played, recalled Sampras. He had no holes in his game, had every shot and could win on all surfaces. Indeed, Laver exemplified the aggressive, all-court game that Dr. Pete Fischer, who coached Sampras from age 9 to 18, wanted his immensely talented student to emulate. Equally important, Laver also represented the gold standard for gentlemanly conduct that Fischer was inculcating.

I've always looked up to the older guys like Laver and Rosewall, 19-year-old Sampras said after his stunning 1990 U.S. Open triumph. I really enjoyed that era. I think a lot of guys, especially my age, forget the Lavers and Rosewalls.

All those were class individuals, and I would like to be in that category. Until Sampras dominated the 1990s and put up dazzling numbers like six Wimbledon and 12 overall Grand Slam titles and six straight year- end No. 1 rankings - Laver was recognised as the greatest ever by many experts. Laver won the Grand Slam of tennis twice - capturing the Australian, French, Wimbledon and United States championships in a calendar year - something only one man, Don Budge in 1938, had ever achieved before and none has done since.

As an amateur in 1962 Laver pulled off his Slam against fields diluted by the loss of several stars to the pro ranks. But no one questioned his supremacy when the lefty shotmaker, then 31, repeated the record-breaking Slam in 1969 against an Open draw filled with all the world's premier players. To understand how prodigious this accomplishment is, consider that since then only Jimmy Connors in 1974 and Mats Wilander in 1988 have won three major titles in any given year.

And consider this intriguing question: How many more Slam crowns might Laver, who joined the pros in 1963, have amassed had he not been barred from those prestigious still-amateur tournaments and Davis Cup during his 1963-67 prime?

Rodney George Laver was born on August 9, 1938, into a tennis- loving family in the Queensland cow country. His father, Roy, built an antbed tennis court and a rough backboard and had amibitions for his three boys to excel as tournament players. Papa Roy's family joke was always, Well send one of the family to Wimbledon one day. He wasn't really joking. But I thought it would be the oldest boy, Trevor. He was the one who looked good in those days.

He didn't think much of my chances because I was so small, but soon after Charlie Hollis took over coaching us in Rockey, Charlie told Dad that I'd be the best, Laver wrote in his 1971 autobiography, The Education of a Tennis Player.

Hollis sees potential

Hollis believed Rod's two older brothers were too quick-tempered whereas Rod was more easygoing. If we can build the killer instinct in him, then it will be the perfect blend, said Hollis, who later presciently advised Roy, Rodney's got the eye of a hawk. I believe we can make a champion out of him.

His semi-retired father drove him to tournaments, sometimes as far as 450 dusty miles away over dirt roads, and Rod played tennis morning - getting up at five o'clock and bicycling five miles to the town courts - afternoon following schools, and night with his father after finishing his homework.

Rod thrived on the hard training sessions with Hollis, who like Fischer, required his protege to cultivate a sense of tennis history and good manners. Hollis regaled the Laver boys with stories about the great players of yesteryear like Budges and Gentleman Jack Crawford, and quizzed them frequently. He also drilled Rod on dress and table etiquette when they ate together. We want to be proud of you when you are becoming a champion, Hollis would often say. You have to know how to act the part. You are representing the people of Rockhampton and Queensland and Australia.

Laver also felt a sense of responsibility to maintain another important Aussie tradition: winning. From Norman Brookes, Gerald Patterson and J.O. Anderson early in the century to 1930s stars Crawford, John Bromwich and Adrian quist to 1950s-60s champions Frank Sedgman, Lew Hoad and Rosewall, sparsely populated but sports-crazy Australia was second only to America in capturing Grand Slam titles and Davis Cups. I didn't want to be the one to let the dynasty down, recalled Laver.

Hollis, much like Fischer a generation later, possessed the vision to mould a game for the ages. Fischer realised that no two-handed player had ever become a formidable serve-and- volleyer, so he revamped 14- year-old Sampras backhand into a classical Eastern one-hander. Similarly, Laver recalls how Hollis made a crucial stroke change when he was 12 or 13. Charlie Hollis told me lefthanders always had a little slice backhand and didn't do much other than keep it in play and were aggressive with the forehand. He said, You'll never win Wimbledon with a slice backhand. You've got to hit a topspin backhand.

Laver's game developed enough so that he won the state 14-and- under championship at age 13, and a year later he attended clinics in Brisbane directed by Harry Hopman, the renowned Davis Cup captain. Hopman, a physical fitness fanatic, saw the scrawny and then-slow and somewhat lethargic boy and, with irony, nicknamed him The Rocket.

Laver became remarkably strong thanks in part to squeezing a tennis ball every chance he could and perhaps even from going kangaroo hunting with his friends. His massive 12 left forearm - that Arthur Ashe quipped was a two-by-four with freckles - equalled heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marcinaos and his 7 wrist was an inch bigger than that of another heavyweight champion, Floyd Patterson.

At 15 Laver became really serious about a tennis career, so he quit school, moved to Brisbane and started work the Dunlop Sporting Goods Company. Many times I regard my lack of education, he knew a full-time commitment to tennis was the best way to reach the top. At 17 he gained valuable experience when Hopman took him and Bob Mark on a world tour.

Breakthrough year

In his breakthrough year of 1959, Laver reached his first Slam final at Wimbledon but lost decisively to Alex Olmedo. The Peruvian was allowed to play Davis Cup for the U.S. and later that year dealt Laver a four-set Davis Cup defeat, which Laver said stands as the biggest disappointment of my career, even though Australia pulled out a 3-2 victory in the Challenge Round. It was the first of four straight Davis Cups Laver won with Roy Emerson and Neale Fraser.

Fittingly, Laver grabbed his first Grand Slam singles title at the 1960 Australian Championships in Brisbane. After trailing Emerson 5-2 in the fifth set, The Rocket showed his incomparable talent for raising his game when it counted most by firing a fusillade of winners to take the last five games to reach the final. There, in another supreme test of skill and will in searing heat, Laver survived a match point and outlasted a cramping Fraser on the seventh title point to prevail 8-6 in the fifth set. Hopman's brutal training methods had paid off, as they would for the rest of super- fit Laver's career.

Fraser turned the tables on Laver in the 1960 Wimbledon and U.S. finals, while Emerson, who matched Laver in athleticism if not spectacular shots, beat him in the 1961 Australian and U.S. finals. But sandwiched between those 1961 setbacks, Laver crushed American Chuck McKinley in an astounding 57 minutes for his first Wimbledon title.

After taking the New South Wales Championships shortly before Christmas, Laver became a man with a plan for 1962. I want to win the Australian, French, Wimbledon and United States championships in one year, he declared. Only one player has ever achieved the feat - America's Don Budge.

For the next 10 months, the reserved Laver let his racquet do the talking and history-making. Lady Luck inevitably plays a role in any Grand Slam, and Laver was fortunate to face a weary Emerson in the 1962 Australian final. Emmo had played 16 sets and 184 games in the previous two days due to a backlog caused by inclement weather, and the fresher Laver prevailed in a close four-setter.

On Roland Garros clay, his weakest surface, Laver narrowly escaped defeat thrice. Unheralded countryman Marty Mulligan came within a match point of ending Laver's dream of a Slam; then Fraser served for the match at 5-4 in the fifth set; and in the French final, Laver rallied from two sets down to beat good friend Emerson again. At Wimbledon - where Laver says, its what the atmosphere instills here.... You play your best tennis - his booming serve and volley game overwhelmed Mulligan in the final to nail down the critical third leg of the Slam.

The gracious Budge practiced with Laver before the U.S. Championship at Forest Hills and predicted, I am afraid that at long last my record is going to be toppled. He was right. Laver breezed through the outclassed field and outplayed Emerson in four sets to gain his coveted Slam.

But Laver knew he hadn't beaten the world's best players, namely pro's Rosewall, Hoad, Pancho Gonzales, Butch Buchholz, Barry MacKay and Andres Gimeno. So he signed a $10,000 pro contract following the 1962 Davis Cup Challenge Round.

Rocky start for Rookie pro

Laver found the pro tour, where he once played matches in 150 cities (including Khartoum, which had a revolution in progress) in 250 days, more gruelling than anticipated and the competition far more difficult. Hoad and Rosewall humbled the young former amateur hotshot 21 of the first 23 times they played. ``I didn't find out who were the best (players) until I turned pro and had my brains beaten out for six months at the start of 1963,'' admitted Laver. By 1965, he regained his status as king of the hill but was tired of the barmstorming life and longed to compete again at the prestigious tournaments.

Laver, like nearly everyone in the tennis world expect for a few reactionary national association leaders, was thrilled when Open Tennis finally arrived in 1968. Those who doubted that the aging pros were any good were promptly served notice when Rosewall, 34, won the first French Open and Laver, 30, won his third Wimbledon.

I can remember in 1963 when I was asked to give my Wimbledon tie back because I had turned professional, said Laver, whose membership in the All England Club was revoked then. So, playing Wimbledon and beating Tony Roche in the final of the first Open was really exciting for me. I could walk around, hold my head up, and have my Wimbledon tie back on.

Now that Laver was legitimised - even though being an honest pro was always better than being a sham amateur accepting under-the- table payments - he aspired to the first open Grand Slam in 1969. I was determined to do it again to prove to myself that I could make it against all the best.

At the 1969 Australian Open, Roche, a husky lefty with a similar game, battled him in 100-degree heat in what Laver called the longest match I ever played - 90 games - and by far the hardest in a sensational 7-5, 22- 20, 9-11, 1-6, 6-3 semifinal that Laver somehow won. He then knocked off Gimeno in the final.

After overcoming a two-set deficit against 66 slugger Dick Crealy at Roland Garros, Laver faced Rosewall for the title. The only way for me to beat `Muscles' is to have a really super day, acknowledged Laver. And he did, winning 6-4, 6-3, 6-4. India's Premjit Lall took the opening two sets at Wimbledon before Laver recovered; then he topped stellar grass- counter John Newcombe in a tough and dramatic four-set final.

Three down and one to go, Rocket exploded throughout the summer, winning every match going into Forest Hills. There he started the final slowly but then crushed Roche 7-9, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2 for the U.S. crown and his unprecedented second career Grand Slam.

Laver would win no more major titles. But he gained in stature nonetheless in defeat for his memorable 1972 WCT Final in Dallas against nemesis Rosewall.

The match provided a spectacular advertisement for tennis. When the climactic fifth-set tiebreaker arrived, after three hours of live national coverage, NBC had pre-empted three regularly scheduled programmes and the tennis had spilled into prime time. A record tennis audience of 23 million people watched spellbound as two terrific, exhausted athletes displayed superb skills in a thrilling finish that Rosewall won after trailing 5-3 in the tiebreaker.

After his glory days Laver played World Team Tennis during 1976- 78 - hilariously copping Rookie of the Year honours at 38 - entertained clients at his Laver-Emerson Tennis Holidays, served as a goodwill ambassador for five years on the Nabisco Grand Prix and did clinics at corporate outings at hotels and resorts.

More recently, while doing promotional work for Mercedes and taping an interview for ESPN, Laver suffered a life-threatening stroke on his 60th birthday. He says he still doesn't have full use of his right side, but you'd never know it from his busy schedule of tennis, golf and fishing trips. I've been pretty fortunate. I've done well, he says about his splendid recovery.

Laver still enjoys talking tennis and remains as modest and judicious as ever on the burning issues. While noting that records are made to be broken, he says, I don't see anyone on the horizon who's going to win the Grand Slam even once.

The greatest ever

Should Sampras be accorded greatest ever status? To be recognised as the best ever, he probably should be proficient on all surfaces, asserts Laver. He's won the Italian Championships, so at least he can play on clay. But the French (Open) is an important event. To be recognised as No. 1 in history, then I'd say that's a very big part of the record.

Where does Laver rank himself among the pantheon of greats? Pride of performance is what matters. you don't worry about your place in history, but you're very happy with your career, he says. I don't want to be recognised as the best player in the world. I just feel like I played as hard as I could, and I enjoyed playing.

Laver has no regrets at all that his heyday came at the dawn of the Open Era before he could become fabulously rich and famous like Sampras and Andre Agassi.

But he is confounded by Mats Wilander's recent statement that John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl and Jimmy Connors weren't the nicest people in the world, they were the most selfish players, but they were great for the game. Tennis needs players who don't care about pleasing the sponsors, who don't care about being nice.

That's close to blasphemy for Laver who learned right and wrong from his father, Charlie Hollis and Harry Hopman. That's not the right attitude, he says.

Tennis doesn't have to be (like) a wrestling match. Maybe that's where Mats is getting his idea - being spectacular and angry and throwing people out of the ring or something.

Tennis isn't that type of sport, Laver says. Members of a club would like to see their sons and daughters grow up and enjoy the sport and not be thrown to the wolves, so to speak. You're trying to get some etiquette into the game of tennis for youngsters. But at the same time Mats is saying the top players have to be angry. Those are conflicting signals.

Nowadays when players question line calls and they have to call in the referee, they're calling that personality, says Laver. I don't see that as being right.

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