Youngest tennis player to be ranked world No.1

Thirteen-time Grand Slam winner Lew Hoad (Australia, b. 23 November 1934) was 19 years 38 days old when he topped the year-end Tennis de France magazine rankings for 1953. Long before reliable points-based ATP and WTA rankings were introduced for professionals, the only contemporary full-season world rankings were published by tennis player and journalist Philippe Chatrier and his editorial team at the magazine Chatrier founded in 1953. After a strong end to the season in Australia, Tennis de France confirmed Hoad as the world’s leading amateur player and the man to beat in 1954 – a year that was later described as “almost disastrous” for the young Australian right-hander.

Hoad would bounce back in style in 1956 by winning three of the four Grand Slams (beating fellow Aussie Ken Rosewall in two finals) and reaching the final of the fourth major (US Open), when Rosewall exacted his revenge. In the same year, Hoad won the men’s doubles at the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the US Open, partnering Rosewall to all three titles. In 1957 he turned professional, which made him ineligible for the amateur-only Grand Slams until the dawn of the open era in 1968. By then in his mid-thirties, Hoad never recaptured his best form and his run to the fourth round of the French Open in 1970 proved to be his greatest open era success.

Hoad retired in 1972. He ran a tennis resort with his wife in Fuengirola in Spain, where he died of leukaemia on 3 July 1994, aged 59.