Rod Laver: Two Grand Slams, Seven Years Apart, and the Five Years Between
The only player to win all four majors in a calendar year twice did it once as an amateur and once as a professional, with the years in between spent barred from all four.
Eight tournaments, four in 1962 and four in 1969, make up the most unusual record in tennis. Rod Laver won all four majors in a calendar year twice. No one else, man or woman, has done it more than once. The International Tennis Hall of Fame counts him as the only player to do it twice.
The more remarkable number is the gap. Between the two Slams Laver played none of the majors, because he was not allowed to.
1962: the amateur's Slam
Laver was 23 and the top-ranked amateur for the second year running. Tennis Australia's figures for the season are 134 wins, 15 losses and 19 titles from 34 tournaments.
The four majors went like this:
- Australian Championships, Sydney. Beat Roy Emerson in the final.
- Roland Garros. The hard one. He needed five sets against Martin
Mulligan in the quarterfinals and Neale Fraser in the semifinals, then came from two sets down to beat Emerson 3–6, 2–6, 6–3, 9–7, 6–2.
- Wimbledon. Beat Mulligan in the final, dropping one set in the whole
tournament.
- US Championships, Forest Hills. Beat Emerson in four sets, two sets
lost in the tournament.
He was the third player to win all four in a season, after Don Budge and Maureen Connolly. "I never felt like I was the best," he told the Hall of Fame years later. "I just happened to have a good year."
The five years he could not play
After 1962 Laver turned professional. In the amateur era that meant he was barred from the majors, and he stayed barred until the Open Era began in
- "I just wanted the chance to play against the best players in the
world," he said, "and that's why I turned pro."
Nobody can say how many majors he lost to the rule, and Laver has never tried. "I don't figure those things out," he told the Hall of Fame.
1969: the professional's Slam
By 1969 amateurs and professionals were playing in the same draws. This time Laver had to beat the professionals as well.
| Major | Final | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Australian Open | Andrés Gimeno | 6–3, 6–4, 7–5 |
| Roland Garros | Ken Rosewall | 6–4, 6–3, 6–4 |
| Wimbledon | John Newcombe | 6–4, 5–7, 6–4, 6–4 |
| US Open | Tony Roche | 7–9, 6–1, 6–2, 6–2 |
The hardest match of the year came before any of those finals. In the Australian Open semifinal, in heavy heat, Laver beat Roche 7–5, 22–20, 9–11, 1–6, 6–3 in a match of about four hours.
The last match was the strangest. Rain delayed the US Open final to Tuesday, 9 September, and the grass was still slippery. Laver lost the first set. The umpire then allowed him to change into spiked shoes, and he lost only five more games. Tennis Majors gives his age that day as 30; on the Hall of Fame's birth date of 9 August 1938 he was 31.
What was in the hand
This is where the record is thinnest. The Hall of Fame describes a wooden racquet strung with blue and white synthetic strings, and it names no brand. No source we read gives a frame model, a weight, a balance or a tension for either Slam year. The spiked shoes at Forest Hills are the only piece of Laver's 1969 equipment that a source describes in detail.
That is worth saying plainly on a site like this one. The greatest calendar year in the history of the sport was won with equipment nobody wrote down.
Why it matters
Laver, a left-hander, remains the last man to win all four in one year. Tennis Australia quotes him in 2011 on why no one has repeated the feat: "It's uncanny that no one has put it all together."
He finished with eleven major singles titles and 200 tournament wins, a record the Hall of Fame still lists. Bud Collins put it more simply: "I remain unconvinced that there was ever a better player than Rod Laver."
Sources
- International Tennis Hall of Fame — Rod Laver — International Tennis Hall of Fame read 30 Oct 2026
- 50 years on: Laver's stunning Slam — Tennis Australia read 30 Oct 2026
- September 9, 1969: The day Rod Laver became the first man to win the coveted calendar-year Grand Slam twice — Tennis Majors read 30 Oct 2026