Don Budge is well-recognised as one of the most decorated players in American tennis history, having won 14 Grand Slam titles.
The American, who competed in the same era as Fred Perry and Bill Tilden, won the majority of his Grand Slam titles from 1937 to 1938.
He became the first player to achieve the career Grand Slam, and in 1968, he won all four Grand Slam events.
Budge [pictured above, left] is an iconic figure, one who was named the greatest of all time by fellow Hall of Famer Sidney Wood.
Budge was one of the greatest players of his generation, perhaps the greatest, and to this day, he is the sole owner of an unbelievable sporting feat.
Don Budge won six consecutive Grand Slam titles
Don Budge is the only player in tennis history to have won six consecutive Grand Slam titles.
Budge won the six events from 1937 to 1938, picking up two titles at both Wimbledon and the US Open, and titles at the Australian Open and French Open.
Furthermore, he remains the only man in tennis history to have won the Triple Crown – the singles, men’s doubles, and mixed doubles at the same tournament.
Remarkably, Budge achieved this feat on three occasions: Wimbledon in 1937 and 1938, and the 1938 US Open.
Budge [pictured above, right] did not win another Grand Slam after 1938, retiring from the sport in 1962. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1964.
Don Budge’s backhand
Budge’s backhand is recognised as one of the best of his era, not least by 1931 Wimbledon champion Sidney Wood, who called Budge the greatest player of all time in his book The Wimbledon Final That Never Was.
Wood said: “In 1938, Don was the first winner of a Grand Slam and for six decades he has been recognized by his peers as the one player to have commanded not only every shot in the book for every surface, but also to have been blessed with the single most destructive weapon ever—a bludgeon backhand struck with a sixteen ounce Paul Bunyan bat.”
Bill Tilden, a winner of 18 Grand Slam titles, also noted the greatness of Budge.
Spare just three minutes to take on this A to Z tennis trivia challenge! How many did you get right?
As per the International Tennis Hall of Fame, Tilden said: “I consider him the finest player 365 days a year who ever lived.”
Budge passed away on January 26, 2000, at the age of 84.
