At the start of the 2006 Wimbledon Championships last June, tennis great Andre Agassi announced that he was retiring from professional tennis. The curtain was about to come down on one of the most successful and popular careers the sport had ever seen, a career that spanned two decades, eight Grand Slam championships and a host of unforgettable moments on the tennis court.
Born on February 10, 1883, American William Tilden II or “Big Bill” Tilden, as he was more popularly known, was the first great tennis superstar. He was the number one player in the world for seven years and reigned the courts until the age of 38.
If there’s one tennis player today who exhibits the stuff that legends are made of, it has to be the current men’s world number one player, Roger Federer of Switzerland. Since gaining the top spot in the men’s tennis rankings in February 2004, Federer has been an immovable force and now holds the distinction of staying at number one for the third-longest time behind only Ivan Lendl and Jimmy Connors.
When one talks about the greatest tennis players of all time, only a handful of names come to mind. In terms of sheer number of championships won, perhaps no one is more deserving of the tag “the greatest ever” than Pete Sampras.
A recent informal poll asked several top-ranked tennis professionals, both men and women: “what’s the best tennis tournament in the world?” The answer was nearly unanimous: Wimbledon.