Who Is the Best Tennis Player of All Time: Female Edition
Contents
In this blog post, we will take a look at some of the greatest female tennis players of all time and try to determine who is the best of the best.
Serena Williams
Serena Williams is not only the best female tennis player of all time, but some would say she is the best tennis player of all time, period. She has won more Grand Slam singles titles than any other player in the Open Era, and many believe she is only getting better with age.
Grand Slam titles
Serena Williams has won 23 Grand Slam titles, the most of any woman in the Open Era.
Overall record
Serena Williams has been considered the best female tennis player of all time for years now, and with good reason. She has an impressive overall record of 849-146, which puts her at a win percentage of .853. In contrast, her sister Venus has a win percentage of .717. Serena also holds the record for the most Grand Slam singles titles of any woman in history with 23 titles, as well as the most Grand Slam doubles titles with 13. What’s more, she has won more prize money than any other woman in tennis history, with a total of $84 million.
Margaret Court
Grand Slam titles
Court holds the record for the most Grand Slam singles titles with 24, a record she established in 1970 by winning her third consecutive Wimbledon title. This is also the record for most Grand Slam singles titles won in the Open Era and, tied with Emily Renshaw’s three Wimbledon titles and Dora Boothby’s three U.S. Championships titles, Court also holds the joint-record for most consecutive women’s Major singles titles. In 1970, Court became the first woman in tennis history to win all four Majors in a calendar year. She followed this up by winning all four Majors again in 1973, and remains the only player to date to achieve this incredible feat twice or more.(Wikipedia, “Margaret Court”)
Overall record
As of today, Margaret Court holds the record for the most Grand Slam singles titles of any player—male or female—with 24. She also has more combined men’s and women’s Grand Slam singles titles than any other player in history, with 38. In 1970, she became the first and only tennis player—male or female—to win all four Grand Slam tournaments in a single calendar year. No other player has come close to matching her achievements.
Steffi Graf
When it comes to Tennis, the conversation about who the best player of all time is, is always a heated one. But when it comes to the female side of the sport, there can be only one name that comes to mind and that is the legendary Steffi Graf.
Grand Slam titles
Graf is one of only five tennis players of either gender (along with Margaret Court, Serena Williams, Martina Navratilova, and Roy Emerson) to have won all four Grand Slam singles titles (the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open) and all four Grand Slam doubles titles; she is also the only singles player to have achieved this distinction. Furthermore, Graf is the only tennis player to have won each major title at least four times.
Overall record
Steffi Graf is a former World No. 1 tennis player from Germany. She won 22 Grand Slam singles titles, which ranks her second on the all-time list behind Margaret Court (24). In 1988, she became the only tennis player to achieve the Golden Grand Slam by winning all four Grand Slam singles titles and the Olympic gold medal in the same calendar year. She is also the only person to have won each Grand Slam event at least four times.
Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King is often considered one of the best tennis players of all time. She was born in Long Beach, California, on November 22, 1943. She started playing tennis at the age of 11 and quickly rose to prominence in the sport. She won her first major tournament, the Women’s Singles at Wimbledon, in 1966. She would go on to win a total of 39 Grand Slam titles, including 12 singles titles, 16 women’s doubles titles, and 11 mixed doubles titles. She was also a successful businesswoman, co-founding the Women’s Tennis Association and the Women’s Sports Foundation.
Grand Slam titles
King has won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, including six Wimbledon Championships and four consecutive US Open titles. She is also the first and only player to have won all four Slams in a single year on three occasions: 1966, 1967 and 1972. Overall, King has 26 Grand Slam tournament victories to her name, which is more than any other female player in history.
Overall record
In her career, King won 39 Grand Slam titles, which is more than any other female player in history. She also won a record 20 Wimbledon titles, including six singles, 10 women’s doubles, and four mixed doubles titles. She is one of only five women (and the only American woman) to have won all four major tennis singles titles in her career, known as the Career Golden Slam, and was the only one of those women to have done so twice. King won 12 slams in doubles with Joan Austin and 96 in mixed doubles with various partners.
Undoubtedly, one of the best tennis players of all time is Martina Navratilova. Born in Czechoslovakia, Navratilova defected to the United States in 1975 and became a US citizen in 1981. She is a former world No. 1 in both singles and doubles, and is considered one of the greatest players in tennis history.
Grand Slam titles
Martina Navratilova is a former Czech and American professional tennis player. She is a nine-time Wimbledon singles champion, three-time US Open singles champion, and a three-time French Open singles champion. Navratilova also won the women’s doubles title at Wimbledon on six occasions and the mixed doubles title there four times. In total, she won 167 career singles titles and 177 doubles titles.
Overall record
In total, Navratilova played 1,442 matches, winning 1,313 and losing 129 for a career winning percentage of .908 four solid Grand Slam victories. In 1983 alone, she won a record-setting $2 million in prize money. Her actual playing years were from 1978 to 2006, but she was effectively finished as a top singles player after 1991 due to age and injury. In doubles, though, she kept on going until 2006 before finally calling it quits for good at the age of 50.
