Patrick Rafter - Personal Life

Personal Life

Rafter was born in Mount Isa, Queensland, and is third-youngest in a family of nine children. He began playing tennis at the age of five with his father and three older brothers.

In April 2004, Rafter married his girlfriend Lara Feltham (with whom he had a son, Joshua) at a resort in Fiji. Their daughter, India, was born in May 2005.

In 2002, he won the Australian of the Year award. This created some controversy as he had spent much of his career residing in Bermuda for tax purposes.

Rafter donated half of the prize money from his 1997 and 1998 US Open wins to the Starlight Children's Foundation; he attempted to do so anonymously in 1997 but was unsuccessful. He has created his own charity organisation that raises funds for children's causes each year.

He has occasionally played reserve grade Australian rules in the Sydney AFL for the North Shore Bombers.

Since his retirement, Rafter has gone on to become an underwear model for Bonds, and in October 2010 was announced as the next Davis Cup captain for Australia.

Rafter is of Irish descent.

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