Vocation : Sports : Tennis

Helen Newington Wills (October 6, 1905 – January 1, 1998), also known by her married names Helen Wills Moody and Helen Wills Roark, was an American tennis player. She won 31 Grand Slam tournament titles (singles, doubles, and mixed doubles) during her career, including 19 singles titles.
Wills was the first American woman athlete to become a global celebrity, making friends with royalty and film stars despite her preference for staying out of the limelight. She was admired for her graceful physique and for her fluid motion. She was part of a new tennis fashion, playing in knee-length pleated skirts rather than the longer ones of her predecessors, and was known for wearing her hallmark white visor. Unusually, she practiced against men to hone her craft, and she played a relentless predominantly baseline game, wearing down her female opponents with power and accuracy. In February 1926 she played a high-profile and widely publicised match against Suzanne Lenglen which was called the Match of the Century.
Wills had a 180-match win streak from 1927 until 1933. In 1933, she beat the eighth-ranked US male player in an exhibition match. Her record of eight wins at Wimbledon was not surpassed until 1990 when Martina Navratilova won her ninth. She was said to be "arguably the most dominant tennis player of the 20th century", and has been called by some (including Jack Kramer, Harry Hopman, Mercer Beasley, Don Budge, and AP News) the greatest female player in history.

Michael Te-pei Chang (born February 22, 1972) is an American former professional tennis player and coach. He is the youngest man in history to win a singles major, winning the 1989 French Open at 17 years and 109 days old. Chang won a total of 34 top-level professional singles titles, (including seven Masters titles) was a three-time major runner-up, and reached a career-best ranking of world No. 2 in 1996. Since he was shorter than virtually all of his opponents, he played a dogged defensive style utilizing his quickness and speed.
In 2008, Chang was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. He began coaching Kei Nishikori in 2014.

Gustavo "Guga" Kuerten (Portuguese pronunciation: [ɡusˈtavu ˈkiʁtẽ]; born 10 September 1976) is a Brazilian former world No. 1 tennis player. He won the French Open singles title three times (1997, 2000, 2001), and was the Tennis Masters Cup champion in 2000. During his career he won 20 singles and eight doubles titles.

Kuerten suffered from injuries that limited his attendances at tournaments in 2002 and from 2004 and 2008. After two hip surgeries and a few attempted comebacks, he retired from top-level tennis in May 2008. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2012. In 2016, Kuerten was asked to be a torch bearer for the Rio Olympics.

John Donald Budge (June 13, 1915 – January 26, 2000) was an American tennis player. He is most famous as the first tennis player — male or female, and still the only American male — to win the Grand Slam, and to win all four Grand Slam events consecutively overall. Budge was the second man to complete the career Grand Slam after Fred Perry, and remains the youngest to achieve the feat. He won ten majors, of which six were Grand Slam events (consecutively, a men's record) and four Pro Slams, the latter achieved on three different surfaces. Budge is considered to have one of the best backhands in the history of tennis, with most observers rating it better than that of later player Ken Rosewall.Budge is also the only man to have achieved the Triple Crown (winning singles, men's doubles and mixed doubles at the same tournament) on three separate occasions (Wimbledon in 1937 and 1938, and the US Championships in 1938), and the only man to have achieved it twice in one year. Budge was the world Number 1 amateur in 1937 and 1938 and world Number 1 professional in 1939, 1940 and 1942.

Jean René Lacoste (2 July 1904 – 12 October 1996) was a French tennis player and businessman. He was nicknamed "the Crocodile" because of how he dealt with his opponents; he is also known worldwide as the creator of the Lacoste tennis shirt, which he introduced in 1929, and eventually founded the brand and its logo in 1933.Lacoste was one of The Four Musketeers with Jean Borotra, Jacques Brugnon, and Henri Cochet, French tennis stars who dominated the game in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He won seven Grand Slam singles titles at the French, American, and British championships and was an eminent baseline player and tactician of the pre-war period. As a member of the French team, Lacoste won the Davis Cup in 1927 and 1928. Lacoste was the World No. 1 player for both 1926 and 1927. He also won a bronze medal at the 1924 Summer Olympics.

Nátalia Mayara Azevedo da Costa (born 3 April 1994) is a former Brazilian wheelchair tennis player who competed in international level events. She is a double gold medalist at the 2015 Parapan American Games and competed at the Paralympic Games twice.Mayara lost her legs after she was hit by a bus that went onto a sidewalk. She began playing tennis and swimming aged eleven and she pursued a career in wheelchair tennis when she participated at a youth world championship as a junior tennis player in 2011.

João Lucas Reis da Silva (born 26 March 2000) is a Brazilian tennis player.
Reis da Silva has a career high ATP singles ranking of 259 achieved on 8 May 2023. He also has a career high doubles ranking of 204 achieved on 13 November 2023.Reis da Silva has won 1 ATP Challenger doubles title at the 2023 Challenger de Santiago with Pedro Boscardin Dias.

Jonkheer Roelof van Lennep (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈrulɔfɑn ˈlɛnɛp]; 3 October 1876 – 13 September 1951) was a Dutch male tennis player. He competed for the Netherlands in the tennis event at the 1908 Summer Olympics where he took part in the men's singles and men's doubles competitions (partnering with his brother Christiaan).

Ian Glen Collins (23 April 1903 – 20 March 1975) was a Scottish tennis player who represented Great Britain in the Davis Cup.
Collins, primarily a doubles player, never fully recovered from a broken leg in his youth but still had a lengthy tennis career. It was said that due to the contortion he made when he served he looked like a "monkey mounting a pole". He had broken his leg soon after arriving at Magdalen College, Oxford, from Harrow School. Prior to Harrow, he was educated at Sandroyd School. While at Harrow he had appeared in every Eton v Harrow cricket match from 1919 to 1922. He played cricket for the university as a batsman and in 1925 appeared in a first-class match against Middlesex. Two years later he represented Scotland in a first-class match against Ireland.In 1927 he made his Wimbledon debut, the first of 12 Wimbledon Championships that he entered. He missed the Championship in 1933 after injuring himself riding, but appeared in the event every other time until 1939.
His Davis Cup partnership with Colin Gregory proved successful as they were undefeated in their six matches together, in 1929 and 1930. They also combined in major tournaments and made the finals of both the Australian Championship and Wimbledon in 1929. Collins and Gregory lost to Jack Crawford and Harry Hopman in the Australian final in five sets, but beat them in the 1930 Davis Cup. They narrowly lost the Wimbledon final in another five setter, to Wilmer Allison and John Van Ryn. Collins was also a mixed doubles finalist in the 1929 Wimbledon Championship and again in 1931.
As a singles player, Collins had his best showing in 1930 when he reached the fourth round, before being eliminated by Bunny Austin. The following year he had the best win of his career when he defeated number one seed Henri Cochet in the second round of the 1931 Wimbledon Championship in four sets.
He won the Scottish Championships three consecutive times between 1926 and 1928, he was a finalist on six occasions between 1926 and 1936.

Pierre Eugène Alfred Bouillin (22 December 1905 – 11 June 1955) was a French sportsman and racing driver. He took the racing name Pierre Levegh [ləvɛk] in memory of his uncle Alfred Velghe, a pioneering driver who died in 1904. Levegh died in the 1955 Le Mans disaster which also killed 83 spectators during the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans automobile race.