Manuel Santana

Manuel Santana, also known as Manolo Santana, was a Spanish tennis player born in Madrid in 1938 who began as a ball boy at a tennis club and rose to the top of the amateur game. He was ranked amateur world number one in 1965 by Ned Potter and in 1966 by Lance Tingay and Sport in the USSR. Santana won the French Championships in 1961 and 1964, the U.S. Championships in 1965 and Wimbledon in 1966, where he beat sixth seed Dennis Ralston in straight sets despite having said that grass was only for cows. In 1965 he led Spain to an unexpected Davis Cup victory over the United States, and he later captained the Spanish team twice. He won the singles gold medal at the 1968 Olympic demonstration event in Mexico City, was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1984, and received the ITF Philippe Chatrier Award in 2020.