René Lacoste

Biography

René Lacoste was a top-tier French tennis player in the late 1920s. As one of the formidable Four Musketeers (the others being Jean Borotra, Henri Cochet, and Jacques Brugnon), he helped France win its first Davis Cup in 1927, kicking off a six-year dominance of the trophy. Later, he became well recognized for his successful clothing brand. Known as "the crocodile," Lacoste was the first foreigner to win the U.S. championship twice (1926-27), and he also won the French singles in 1925, 1927, and 1929, as well as the Wimbledon singles in 1925 and 1928. He won the French doubles in 1924, 1925, and 1929 alongside Borotra, as well as the British doubles in 1925. Lacoste, a disciplined player, would study every facet of tennis before a match and then wait for his opponent to weaken. His most well-known game was the 1927 U.S. championship, in which he exhausted Bill Tilden in a two-hour final. After winning the French championship in 1929, Lacoste decided to retire. Decades later, sports shirts and other clothes using his "crocodile" insignia were popular all over the world. He and his fellow "musketeers" were inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1976.