In the days leading up to the 1969 United States Open, pressure was mounting on Rod Laver. He had won the Australian Open in grueling fashion and followed it up with victories at the French Open and Wimbledon.
He was within a sniff of another Grand Slam.
With so much at stake, Laver felt he needed assistance navigating the day-to-day aspects of a major tennis tournament in New York, so he reached out to his friend John McDonald, a player from New Zealand who was in London at the time, and asked that he join him in New York as a one-man entourage.