Rodney George Laver was born on 9 August 1938 in Rockhampton, Queensland, a little more than a month before Don Budge completed the first Grand Slam. He was a scrawny, sickly child in the Australian bush, and nobody guessed that he would become one of the greatest players the game has seen; he grew strong and tough on his father's cattle property. In Queensland he was coached by Charlie Hollis, and later by Australia's Davis Cup captain Harry Hopman, who gave him the nickname "Rocket".
Between 1960 and 1962 he won 47 tournaments, and in 1962, as an amateur, he won all four majors in the same year, the second man after Budge to complete the Grand Slam. He then turned professional, signing a contract reported at $100,000, and the rules of the day shut him out of the majors. For five years, from 1963 to 1967, he played the professional circuit while the biggest tournaments went on without him. There he was the best player in the world: he was the No. 1 professional without dispute from 1965 to 1969, and in 1967 he won the three professional majors, Wembley, the French Pro and the US Pro, in a single year.
When the Open Era began in 1968 and amateurs and professionals could meet at last, he won Wimbledon again, beating Tony Roche in the final. In 1969, playing in tournaments open to everyone, he won all four majors once more, beating John Newcombe in the Wimbledon final. It made him the only player to win the Grand Slam twice, and it remains the only calendar Grand Slam by a man in the Open Era.
He won 11 major singles titles in all: three Australian, two French, four Wimbledon and two US titles, and with doubles and mixed his major titles reach 20, despite five years in which he could not enter the majors at all. In 1998 he suffered a massive stroke that could have killed him. He worked through his rehabilitation with the same drive that made him a champion and went back to playing tennis and golf with friends.