3 First time GS winners

[sumithar]

In 2018 three of the GS titles on the women's side were won by players winning their first ever GS title. Surely this has to be pretty unusual, right?

 

[BGod]

Rare yes, doing soft work it only happened on the men's side in 03. But there's been 2 first time winners in a ton of seasons. I mean, you gotta think it's just 4 and there's usually a dominance period by a player at one if not two so that makes it really hard to swing. Obviously in the Big 3 era we've only seen Cilic, del Potro, Murray and Wawrinka win any Slams last 14 years.

 

[Towny]

For the men, it technically happened in 1977 where there were 3 new champions (Vilas, Gerulaitis and Tanner) although it depends how you count the AOs (there were 2 that year). 2003 as well, as already mentioned. For the women, it happened in 1978 (O'Neil, Navratilova and Ruzici), 2004 (Sharapova, Myskina and Kuznetsova) and 2011 (Kvitova, Stosur and Na). Quite a few years on both tours with 2 new champions.

It's not all that surprising given how inconsistent the top players on the women's tour are at the moment. In the last 6 years (2013-18), Serena (8), Kerber (3) and Muguruza (2) are the only players who have managed to win multiple slams and they only won 13/24 slams. Compare that to the men, where you have Djokovic (9), Nadal (6) Wawrinka (3) Federer (3) and Murray (2), who have won 23/24 slams

 

[Towny]

Just looking again at the stats, Kerber is the only player apart from Serena who has actually managed to win more than 2 slams, and she's only won 3. That's crazy! The next lowest slam total for the second best player of the decade is 7, won by both Venus and Henin in the 2000s. Court got 8 in the 70s and Evert and Seles got 9 in the 80s and 90s respectively.

It's a real shame we haven't seen a high calibre ATG player this decade outside of Serena. Hopefully there'll be someone coming up soon. I really hope the men's tour doesn't become like this when the Big 3 are gone

 

[BGod]

Just looking again at the stats, Kerber is the only player apart from Serena who has actually managed to win more than 2 slams, and she's only won 3. That's crazy! The next lowest slam total for the second best player of the decade is 7, won by both Venus and Henin in the 2000s. Court got 8 in the 70s and Evert and Seles got 9 in the 80s and 90s respectively.

It's a real shame we haven't seen a high calibre ATG player this decade outside of Serena. Hopefully there'll be someone coming up soon. I really hope the men's tour doesn't become like this when the Big 3 are gone

It'll be worse. At least Serena put in a ton more seasons and ATG women have a longer shelf life because of Bo3 but unless Novak plays till 40 or even 38 like I have him.

It's gonna be a SS.

 

[sumithar]

For the men, it technically happened in 1977 where there were 3 new champions (Vilas, Gerulaitis and Tanner) although it depends how you count the AOs (there were 2 that year). 2003 as well, as already mentioned. For the women, it happened in 1978 (O'Neil, Navratilova and Ruzici), 2004 (Sharapova, Myskina and Kuznetsova) and 2011 (Kvitova, Stosur and Na). Quite a few years on both tours with 2 new champions.

It's not all that surprising given how inconsistent the top players on the women's tour are at the moment. In the last 6 years (2013-18), Serena (8), Kerber (3) and Muguruza (2) are the only players who have managed to win multiple slams and they only won 13/24 slams. Compare that to the men, where you have Djokovic (9), Nadal (6) Wawrinka (3) Federer (3) and Murray (2), who have won 23/24 slams

As recently as 2011, eh? Kvitova was the young star of those 3- the first person born in the 90's to win a GS title (still waiting for one on the men's side)- despite her second Wimby win, really hasn't lived up. Of course that burglar incident didn't help.