Guillermo Vilas (born August 17, 1952 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a former Argentine professional tennis player. Career Raised in the sea resort of Mar del Plata, Vilas was a southpaw and played his first tour event in 1969. He was in the year-ending top ten from 1974 through 1982. He was a clay-court specialist, but also played well on hard, grass, and carpet surfaces. Vilas was the first South American male player to win a Grand Slam singles title. He won four of them: the 1977 French Open and the 1977 U.S. Open (both played on clay) and the 1978 and 1979 Australian Open (both played on grass). Guillermo Vilas was also the runner-up at the French Open three times (1975, 1978, and 1982) and at the Australian Open once (January 1977). Vilas got his first big break in the 1974 Masters tournament (played in grass), where he defeated Ilie Nastase in the final. 1977 A left-handed baseliner, Vilas' best season on tour was 1977 when he not only won two of the four majors but also 16 of the 31 ATP tournaments he entered (absolute record in the Open Era), a record which at the time had only ever been equalled by the legendary Rod Laver. His playing record for that season was an amazing 145 wins against 14 losses (ATP win-loss record was 128-14). The season climax was winning the last U.S. Open played at Forest Hills against Jimmy Connors 26, 63, 76(4), 60 in a match where Guillermo Vilas surprised his American rival by attacking the net.
He has a 46 match winning streak on any surfaces (still unrivaled) and consecutively won seven titles -Kitzbόhel (Clay), Washington (Clay), Louisville (Hard), South Orange (Hard), Columbus (Hard), U.S. Open (Clay) and Paris (Clay) after Wimbledon in 1977. He also had 53 winning streak in claycourt (including both ATP and unofficial tournaments, record broken by Rafael Nadal in 2006). Both his winning streaks were terminated on October 1977 by Ilie Năstase in the final of Aix-en-Provence tournament. In that five-set final, Guillermo Vilasdropped the first two sets by 16, 57 and then retired from the competition in protest of Ilie Năstase using "the spaghetti string" racquet. The spaghetti string racquet was banned by ATP shortly after. Even though he won 16 ATP singles titles, including the French Open and the U.S. Open and was the runner-up at the January edition of the Australian Open in 1977, he was never World No. 1 in the 1977 ATP rankings. He was instead year-end World No. 2 in the ATP rankings, below Jimmy Connors (who won the Masters and 6 other titles and was the runner-up at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 1977). However, the magazine World Tennis and Michel Sutter gave Vilas the World No. 1 ranking. Retirement Guillermo Vilas retired from the ATP tour in 1989, but still played ATP Challenger Series until 1992.
* His highest tour ranking was World No. 2. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1991. 1977 * In 1977, Guillermo Vilas played 31 ATP Tour singles tournaments, entered 22 finals (including 3 Grand Slam Tournaments) and won 16 titles - the Record of number of singles titles won by one player in a year in the Open Era (including 2 Grand Slam titles). Grand Slam singles finals Wins (4)Year Championship Opponent in Final Score in Final Runner-ups (4)
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