RE: Margaret Smith Court's career record
In evaluating Court's Grand Slam career against other all-time greats (I consider Evert, Navratilova, Graf, and Serena the other members of that group, at least among the women who played in the Open Era), I think there are various factors, both for and against her, that need to be considered:
PROS:
*She won 24 Grand Slam titles
*She won a career boxed set twice, the only person to do so more than once (and one of only three people, all women, to do so at all, Martina Navratilova being one of the other two), and did so both before and after the beginning of the Open Era
*Won a calendar year Grand Slam in singles in 1970, one of only three women to ever do so (Steffi Graf being one of the other two)
*Most women prior to the Open Era did not turn professional, so her pre-Open Era record is not diminished and her total career accomplishments can be fairly evaluated against women who played entirely in the Open Era
*She had a 24-5 record in Grand Slam singles finals
*She had a dominant record against the her biggest and best rival, fellow great and 12 time Grand Slam singles winner Billie Jean Moffit/King (22-10); King was a little less than 1 1/2 years younger than Court, so they were true contemporaries
*Won her 24 Grand Slam titles despite retiring and then returning to tennis multiple times in her career (after she got married, after she had the first three of her four children) and could have won even more Slams and other tournaments without those retirements
*Won a calendar year Grand Slam after her first retirement, and three out of four Slams in 1973 at ages 30-31 after her second retirement and the birth of her first child
*She played in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the depth of quality in the women's game was likely better than it was before her playing career (relative to eras earlier all-time greats like Suzanne Lenglen, Helen Wills Moody, and Maureen Connolly played in)
*May hold the record for most women's singles tournaments won (192), and won 91.7% of her singles matches, an all-time record for women who played in the Open Era (her record includes both pre-Open Era and post-Open Era accomplishments)
CONS:
*She won nearly half her Grand Slam singles titles at the Australian Open, which generally had weaker fields than the other three Slams in her playing career
*She played in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the depth of quality in the women's game was weaker than it became in later years (relative to eras later all-time greats like Evert, Navratilova, Graf, and Serena Williams played in; in general I believe the quality of depth in women's tennis, and most sports in general, has improved over time)
*She had losing career records against Evert (4-9) and Navratilova (2-5), though to be fair she played those later greats when she was past her prime and they were in or closer to their prime years
To me, Margaret Court clearly belongs in the conversation when discussing the all-time great women's tennis players, along with the other four women I mentioned above and possibly also Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Wills Moody (whose career records were even better than Court's; they almost never lost in their careers). Based purely on overall results, she had a greater career than any of the great players who came after her. Unlike Evert or Graf, she was a top doubles player along with being a top singles player. However, I don't think there's any doubt that the level of overall competition Court played in her career, while greater than the competition faced by Lenglen and Moody, was not as good as the competition faced by Evert and Navratilova, was not nearly as good as the competition faced by Graf, and was significantly less than the competition faced by Serena Williams. In many of Court's matches against most of her opponents, it is likely she could play considerably less than her best and still win, because most of the women she played were not nearly as good as her. That is less true with the women who have played more recently.
I prefer to group the five women (Court, Evert, Navratilova, Graf, and Serena) together and not say any one of them was clearly better than the rest; they were all all-time greats of the game and should be respected as such. All of them have valid cases for and against them as the greatest player of all-time. However, if I were to objectively rank those women on how great they were, based on their career accomplishments, I'd probably rank them this way:
1) Serena Williams (I think the fact she played against a deeper pool of players and was also an excellent doubles player ranks her ahead of the women who came before her, even if they won more singles or doubles titles or total matches)
2) Margaret Court
3) Martina Navratilova (might be willing to flip her with Court; Navratilova was probably an even greater doubles player than Court, when looking at their records and adjusting for era)
4) Steffi Graf
5) Chris Evert (who despite ranking 5th I believe is the greatest women's clay court player of all-time)