All time women and men top 20

grafrules

Banned
What would be your all time top 20 rankings for both men and women. Mine would be:

Men:

1. Laver
2. Gonzalez
3. Sampras
4. Federer
5. Borg
6. Tilden
7. Budge
8. Rosewall
9. Connors
10. Lendl
11. Kramer
12. Perry
13. McEnroe
14. Cochet
15. LaCoste
16. Agassi
17. Newcombe
18. Hoad
19. Becker
20. Edberg


Women:

1. Graf
2. Navratilova
3. Evert
4. Court
5. Lenglen
6. Wills Moody
7. Jean King
8. Connoly
9. Seles
10. Goolagong
11. Bueno
12. Serena Williams
13. Henin
14. Venus Williams
15. Marble
16. Brough
17. DuPont
18. Hart
19. Gibson
20. Mallorey
 

Wuornos

Professional
What would be your all time top 20 rankings for both men and women. Mine would be:

Men:

1. Laver
2. Gonzalez
3. Sampras
4. Federer
5. Borg
6. Tilden
7. Budge
8. Rosewall
9. Connors
10. Lendl
11. Kramer
12. Perry
13. McEnroe
14. Cochet
15. LaCoste
16. Agassi
17. Newcombe
18. Hoad
19. Becker
20. Edberg


Women:

1. Graf
2. Navratilova
3. Evert
4. Court
5. Lenglen
6. Wills Moody
7. Jean King
8. Connoly
9. Seles
10. Goolagong
11. Bueno
12. Serena Williams
13. Henin
14. Venus Williams
15. Marble
16. Brough
17. DuPont
18. Hart
19. Gibson
20. Mallorey

The following are the peak ELO ratings for players in the open era. ELO ratings measure dominanace with an adjustment for standard of opposition.


Men:

1. Roger Federer 2796
2. Ivan Lendl 2789
3. Rod Laver 2783
4. Pete Sampras 2769
5. Björn Borg 2768
6. Mats Wilander 2759
7. John McEnroe 2756
8. Stefan Edberg 2751
9. Boris Becker 2745
10. Jim Courier 2739
11. Ken Rosewall 2726
12. Jimmy Connors 2723
13. Arthur Ashe 2711
14. Andre Agassi 2707
15. Tony Roche 2701
16. John Newcombe 2693
17. Rafael Nadal 2690
18. Guillermo Vilas 2685
19. Stan Smith 2682
20. Jan Kodeš 2680


Women:

1. Martina Navratilova 2836
2. Steffi Graf 2816
3. Chris Evert 2794
4. Margaret Smith Court 2769
5. Monica Seles 2766
6. Evonne Goolagong 2745
7. Arantxa Sánchez Vicario 2744
8. Serena Williams 2733
9. Billie Jean King 2730
10. Martina Hingis 2729
11. Hana Mandlíková 2723
12. Venus Williams 2720
13. Justine Henin 2716
14. Gabriela Sabatini 2710
15. Lindsay Davenport 2701
16. Ann Jones 2693
17. Maria Sharapova 2684
18. Jennifer Capriati 2681
19. Conchita Martínez 2677
20. Amélie Mauresmo 2673


Men's and Women's ratings are not intercahngable.

For a fuller explanation of how Elo ratings are calculated see the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating

For further discussion on Tennis Elo ratings see the following:

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?t=162345

Many evalutae tennis players by the number of majors won, but Elo adjusts for dominance and quality of opposition therefore the list will not be purely representative of achievements in majors but we would expect to see some correlation between the two.

In the men's game :

the top 5 have won 50 majors in the open era
6-10 won 30
11-15 won 23
16-20 won17


In the womens game:

the top 5 have won 78 majors in the open era
6-10 won 32
11-15 won 21
16-20 won 9

Just thought people might be interested in these statistics which are generated from my own Elo database and are purely evidentially based without interference of human opinion.

I am not recommending ELO as a substitute to the official ranking methodology, but am posting the results purely for information purposes and to provide a different but independent perspective on the evaluation of players.

Take care

Tim
 
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urban

Legend
The lists in the first post are pretty good, i would also put on these names,maybe with one or another different placing (Tilden for instance a bit higher).
 

hoodjem

G.O.A.T.
I do wonder about how this "quality of opposition" is calculated?

It occurs to me that Federer's ELO rankings might be high because the "quality of [his] opposition" is low compared to other players and periods.?

Just a question. Does this involve human opinion?
 

Wuornos

Professional
I do wonder about how this "quality of opposition" is calculated?

It occurs to me that Federer's ELO rankings might be high because the "quality of [his] opposition" is low compared to other players and periods.?

Just a question. Does this involve human opinion?

No it doesn't involve human opinion. The link to Wikipaedia gives a good explanation of how this is calculated.

I understand your point about Federer's rating being high becase of the quality of opposition being low but it actually works the opposite way round to this. If Federer achieves a high level of domination against poor opposition then his rating would be lower had he done this against better quality opposition.

By and large people struggle in calculating the quality of opposition because they tend to only look at the top of the game, e.g. the top dozen players or so. Then it can be confusing, does the top player dominate because he is strong and the rest of the players are weak, it's impossible to say. However if you look at the popiulation as a whole i.e. the top 100 players or so you can see better what is going on and judge and calculate the performances ogf other players in the top 12 more accurately against a higher proportion of their peer group. You are then able to decide how much the top players dominance is made up of their strength or other players weaknesses.

This technique is not something I invented. I wish I had. It was adopted for chess originally by the American Dr Arpad Elo. Since then it has been adopted by a number of other sporting organistions as an accurate measure of sporting performance with a sound basis in statistical probability theory.

I do not quote it as a possible substitute for the official rankings which help to encourage player activity as they are a volume of results based system, but instead post the results from my own calculations and database purely as a matter of interest to forum members and as a way of gaining a slightly new unprejudiced perspective on the who was better than whom debate.

Thanks for your interest.

Take care

Tim
 

akv89

Hall of Fame
I'll try my best to stay objective to history. I don't know too much about the history of the women's tennis game so I will refrain from naming the top 20.
1. Bill Tilden
2. Rod Laver
3. Roger Federer
4. Pete Sampras
5. Pancho Gonzales
6. Bjorn Borg
7. Don Budge
8. Jack Crawford
9. Ivan Lendl
10. Lew Hoad
11. Jack Kramer
12. Fred Perry
13. Jimmy Connors
14. Andre Agassi
15. John Mcenroe
16. Ellsworth Vines
17. Pancho Segura
18. Ken Rosewall
19. Bobby Riggs
20. Roy Emerson
 

urban

Legend
To the Elo- system. Sorry, i still think that the opposition level formula has to be in some kind opinion related, even in the Elo system. And on another thread, you say, that Federer's level of opposition was low. Now here you say quite the opposite. And one remark on chess, and the authenticity of Elo: Who was the greatest chess player, and who had the highest elo? I think, Kaminski or some unknown now has the highest elo in history. But the really great chess players were Emanuel Lasker, Capablanca, Aljechin and Bobby Fischer.Maybe Karpov and Kasparov, too.
 

Wuornos

Professional
To the Elo- system. Sorry, i still think that the opposition level formula has to be in some kind opinion related, even in the Elo system. And on another thread, you say, that Federer's level of opposition was low. Now here you say quite the opposite. And one remark on chess, and the authenticity of Elo: Who was the greatest chess player, and who had the highest elo? I think, Kaminski or some unknown now has the highest elo in history. But the really great chess players were Emanuel Lasker, Capablanca, Aljechin and Bobby Fischer.Maybe Karpov and Kasparov, too.

Hi Urban.

Sorry you feel like this. If you read the article on wikipaedia for which I have posted a link in several of my threads it explains how standard of opposition is calculated and it is not human influenced. Please don't make me type out the entire statistical theory here as it is already a well established statistical rating system and whether or not it has a human input or not something that is really not open for debate. It has been in use in this form for 37 years. It is well documented and accepted as a valid statistical calculation rather than the more abitrary allocation of points in other systems. Please please please read the Wikipaedia entry.

The article also covers the inflation element of elo ratings and sometimes deflation elements, so the point you are making about Kaminski compared with Lasker, Capablanca, Fischer etc is a good one. The Elo ratings for chess were fine while Elo was involved and I believe he had a hand in the adjustment of ratings to ensure a consistent population median. This stops the inflation that you have correctly highlighted. However follwing his death this important task seems to have been neglected and the ratings for chess are now inflated by between 100 and 150 points. Why they can't rectify this I don't know, unless FIDE wish to deliberately misrepresent playing standards as they believe it generates mor revenue to say that the current crop of chess players are by far the best ever. The tennis ratings I have posted do have a stable population median. Good point though.

At the end of the day though your a good member of this forum I enjoy reading your posts, and if you choose to feel that Elo ratings are misrepresentatitive as an indicator of playing standard in tennis then that's up to you, and I respect your opinion. However, you don't need to say that human opinion is involved in such an open and widespread statistical technique when it clearly isn't.

Take care and keep the posts coming.

All the best

Tim

PS. I'm sorry if I was not clear. I was just saying 'had Federer achieved the same level of domination against better opposition' not that he has.
 
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