Ashley Cooper

Ashley Cooper was an Australian tennis player who competed between 1953 and 1968 and was ranked the world number one amateur in both 1957 and 1958. He won four Grand Slam singles titles and four doubles titles, and in 1958 he took the Australian, Wimbledon and U.S. championships, becoming one of only eleven men to win three of the four majors in a single year. A five-set semifinal loss at the French Championship stopped him from completing the Grand Slam. He was part of the Australian Davis Cup team that won the cup in 1957 and reached the final in 1958. In January 1959 he turned professional on a contract from Jack Kramer, won the Slazenger Professional Championships that year and won professional tours of Europe in 1960 and 1962 before nerve damage in his arm forced him to retire. Afterwards he spent decades in player development with Tennis Queensland, joined the board of Tennis Australia and entered the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1991.