Ken Rosewall

Ken Rosewall

The nickname was a joke at his expense: fellow pros called him Muscles because he had none to spare, a slight Sydney kid who carried the finest sliced backhand tennis has produced. Ken Rosewall won the Australian title at 18 in 1953 and won it again at 37 in 1972, eight majors spread across nineteen years. The gap in the middle is the sport's great what-if: he turned professional at the end of 1956 and spent eleven prime years barred from the slams entirely.

When the game went open in 1968 he won the first open major at Roland Garros, beating Rod Laver in the final fifteen years after his first Paris title; four of the eight came in the open era, the span these records cover. Only Wimbledon escaped him, four finals lost between 1954 and 1974, the last at 39 to Jimmy Connors, who then routed him 6-1, 6-0, 6-1 in that September's US Open final. Nobody has stayed that good for that long.