Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Theme Specific Stamps - Great Tennis Players

The game of tennis is perhaps the most liked sport after football around the world. Each year tennis is watched whenever or wherever it is played by a vast majority of sports spectators and fans.

The major tennis events are the four Grand Slam tournaments: The Australian Open, the French Open, also called Roland Garros, the Wimbledon and the US Open. In between these four tournaments which are spread all over the year, there are many smaller events that act as a chain to connect one Grand Slam to another. 

Over a period of time, the game of tennis has produced some of the most honoured and remembered players that cling to the memories of the tennis lovers all over the world. When I first got exposed to tennis and started playing it in the 70s, names like Rod Laver, Ilie Năstase, John Newcombe, Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe and Stan Smith were in the air. The names like Jimmy Connors, who along with Chris Everet made headlines when the duo won the Wimbledon. Later names like Andre Agassi, Pete Sampress, Boris Becker and many others got added. Now names like Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Roddick, Andy Murray and others are on the top table positions.



On the women side great names like Margaret Court, Tracy Austin, Virginia Wade, Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert, Steffi Graf,  and now names like Azarenka, Sharapova, Serena Williams, Na Li are on everyone's list. 

To honour these great players, many countries have published postage stamps bearing the portraits of some of these players and am sharing some of these stamps from countries across the globe:






































If you have some stamps related to tennis, do share with me so I could add these here to make the list more comprehensive - worthy of honour the great tennis players of history so rightly deserve.



Theme Specific Stamps - Great Tennis Players

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