ONE is the swarthy, flashing-eyed Antonio Banderas, the other a more rugged Robert Redford, but both reached the No 1 spot in world tennis on the back of their sex appeal, serve and status as quintessential Aussie good blokes.

Today, 25 years after the then 30-year-old John Newcombe became the first Australian to reach No 1 on the ATP computer, 26-year-old Pat Rafter follows in his footsteps.

No matter that the honour may only last seven days because, due to the quirks of the ATP points system, Pete Sampras can overtake the Queenslander if he reaches this week's final of the Los Angeles Open.

As Newcombe pointed out yesterday, when Rafter finally wipes off his zinc cream warpaint, "it will be nice to know that once in his life he was No 1".

Their serve was what excited the purists, but their bodies were what excited the female fans who attached themselves to tennis in the 1970s as it made the transition from sport to showbiz and from pocket money to small fortunes.

In 1968, Newcombe joined Lamar Hunt's WCT tour of professional players – known as "the handsome eight".

"Pat enjoys the popularity, and I enjoyed it, but he's far from being a womaniser," Newcombe said. "He's pretty much a one-woman man.

"It's nice to have people say you're attractive, but that doesn't mean you want to go to bed with a different woman every night."

Newcombe wore polite white, while Rafter wears dazzlingly loud and multicoloured tops and boardshorts. Newcombe, with his trademark moustache, was one of the professional tour's trailblazers in exploiting his commercial potential through sponsorship deals, but the sight of a rugged, moustachioed Newcombe posing for Canon camera commercials in the US in the 1970s was tame stuff compared with the bare-chested Rafter in his ad for Ray-Ban sunglasses.

Newcombe came from a comfortable dentist's family on Sydney's north shore, while Rafter came from a large, struggling accountant's family in Mount Isa.

Newcombe, the smart city kid, was born to rule the tennis world from the time he was a champion junior and was first unofficially ranked No 1 in 1967 (in pre-computer days), when he was 23.

Rafter, the easygoing country boy, struggled all through his teens and when he was 19 couldn't put a serve in court on a tour of England.

His father Jim had modelled Pat's serve on Newcombe's, but it fell apart and was eventually reassembled in South America. The second- serve kicker is now considered one of the most feared weapons in world tennis.

Both are gregarious with a liking for a beer. Rafter blotted an untainted copybook after an early Davis Cup tie in Adelaide when he admitted he played a dead rubber on the final morning still suffering from the after-effects of the celebratory alcohol consumed the night before.

Newcombe, his Davis Cup captain, and a legendary party-goer in his day, might have done exactly the same thing in his own Cup career, but he would have been too smart to admit it publicly.

Newcombe was relentlessly aggressive, while Rafter has to be riled to overcome his basic niceness. Only then will he go for the killer knockout punch.

But make no mistake, says Newcombe, the killer is there.

It takes one ladykiller to recognise another.