Leander Paes

Leander Paes is an Indian tennis player whose career as a doubles and mixed doubles specialist produced eighteen Grand Slam titles and one of the longest Davis Cup runs in the history of the sport. Born in 1973 in Calcutta to Olympic athletes Vece Paes and Jennifer Paes, he attended the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Academy in Madras and turned professional in 1991.

In 1996 he won the bronze medal in singles at the Atlanta Olympics, India's first individual Olympic medal in forty-four years. From the late 1990s he concentrated on doubles, partnering Mahesh Bhupathi to win the French Open and Wimbledon men's doubles in 1999 and reach all four Grand Slam finals that year, an achievement no other men's pair has matched in the Open era.

Paes went on to collect eight men's doubles majors with partners including Bhupathi, Lukáš Dlouhý, and Radek Štěpánek, and ten mixed doubles majors with Martina Navratilova, Lisa Raymond, Cara Black, and Martina Hingis. His 2015 Australian Open mixed doubles title with Hingis came at age forty-one, and he completed the career Grand Slam in mixed doubles that year.

He represented India in seven Olympics, a tennis record, and held the world record for Davis Cup doubles wins. Off court he received the Padma Bhushan in 2014 and the Padma Shri in 2001, and he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2024.

The name Leander comes from the Greek Leandros, meaning lion-man, borne by the youth in the legend of Hero and Leander. He carries it as a masculine given name uncommon in India and chosen by his Christian family.