Guillermo Vilas

Guillermo Vilas ( born August 17, 1952 in Buenos Aires ) is a former Argentine tennis player.

Life

The Mar del Plata in Argentina grew up and now lives in Monte Carlo lawyer son won in 1973 in Buenos Aires his first Grand Prix tournament. About 60 more titles followed, including two wins at the Australian Open, and one each at the French Open and the U.S. Open. Furthermore remained Vilas in 1977 in 46 games behind the other undefeated, this record is still valid today. The winning streak ended in the final of the tournament from Aix en Provence, where Vilas gave up against Ilie Nastase. Nastase met for this final game with the so-called spaghetti covering, which was immediately banned after this tournament. Then Vilas won another 30 games in a row. In that year he won 16 tournaments, which is also a record. Another record streak of 53 victories on the Argentinian sand after another was broken by Rafael Nadal at the 2006 French Open at Roland Garros. In 1989, Vilas, who was also successful as a book author and musician, after a first round defeat against the Italian Claudio Pistolesi in Paris (Roland Garros ) announced his retirement from professional tennis.

1991 Vilas was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. He belongs to the seven players who have completed more than a thousand matches on the ATP Tour. Behind Jimmy Connors ( 1,427 Matches) and Ivan Lendl ( 1310 ) demonstrates Vilas ( 1,226 ) for third place. In 2005 it took the American tennis magazine's "List of the 40 best male and female players " of the Open Era to. On the occasion of the Davis Cup final between Spain and Argentina in Mar del Plata in November 2008, the Spain without the former world number one Nadal won 3-1, won the Davis Cup Award of Excellence presented to Guillermo Vilas of the ITF.

Best Merits

1970-73 and 1975-84 he played in the Davis Cup.