Serena, Graf, Navratilova, Evert, and Court

[Karma Tennis]

Pele in non-American football

Pele in "non-American" football ???

What is "non-American" football ???

Presumably, of course, you mean FOOTBALL! (as in Association Football, as in Soccer). Mainly because I don't recall the great man ever playing Australian Rules Football, Rugby Union, Rugby League, or Gaelic Football.

In any case, there is a case to argue that Diego Maradonna was probably every bit as good as Pele. And perhaps shaded him just a bit.

Michael Phelps in swimming

Phelps certainly achieved a lot in swimming.

But Shane Gould is probably the greater of the two ...

Shane Gould - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Olympic Medals are important. But World Records are more important in swimming. At one point, Gould held every freestyle swimming world record from 100m to 1500m simultaneously for nearly a year. (And she probably would have held the 50m one as well but they didn't stage that event when she was dominating the sport.)

AND, she achieved all that as a 16yo !

 

[Karma Tennis]

I am just saying Considering the vast difference in fields...pre open era and open era players shouldn't be compared. It's a bit difficult in Court's and Laver's case since many of their achievements did cover both eras but the point still stands.

But you seem to also be inferring that smaller fields mean lower standards.

That is not always the case, is it?

The other thing that needs to be considered is that in those days, they played Best of 5 ADVANTAGE Sets. Very different to today where the scoring systems use Tie Breakers to replace Advantage Sets.

 

[aman92]

But you seem to also be inferring that smaller fields mean lower standards.

That is not always the case, is it?

The other thing that needs to be considered is that in those days, they played Best of 5 ADVANTAGE Sets. Very different to today where the scoring systems use Tie Breakers to replace Advantage Sets.

Again I am not a tennis historian so can't do a field by field analysis for all tournaments but one simply can't discount that not only was the Aus open the least prestigious slam so many of the top players did skip it most of the times but also that those pre open era draws had 32 player fields in many of the years. Sorry, although officially it's a major, but I can't compare it to the open era achievements of Evert, Graf, Navratilova and Williams (the big 4 of open era Women's tennis)

 

[netlets]

I also think you should use an age metric. I believe Graf had double digits more Slams than Serena when both were the age that Graf retired. Just because top players teams are so much better now which enables longevity shouldn’t mean you can allow so many more Slams participated in I don’t think.

 

[dadadas]

All these GOAT debates are made up by the media. If you actually spend time reading academic studies about athletes performances (like distance covered), modern day top athletes are simply better than past GOATs. Sports do evolve. If the GOAT of a sport is a guy who played in 1970s or before that, it does not look good for the sport at all.

 

[Karma Tennis]

Again I am not a tennis historian ...

And that's why they keep Tennis Records and statistics so that people don't have to be historians in order to access data which can be used for objective comparison.

And objective comparisons are the only ones that matter because we can all make up subjective ones.

For example, personally I think Evert is probably the best female tennis player that ever lived ... and possible the best tennis player that ever lived full stop. Why? Because she was able to dominate on all surfaces and had incredible mental prowess. But look at her stats and compare with Smith-Court, Martina N., Graf and Serena. On that basis, few people would say she is the female GOAT.

Same with the Men. Laver has two GRAND SLAMS. The Big 3 have 60 Major Titles between them. But Borg was uber dominant at both Roland Garros and Wimbledon. None of the Big 3 have come close to Borg in that regard. Again though, look at the stats and it's clear that Borg cannot be the GOAT with Laver and the Big 3 in the mix.

So, for sure, you can say that Graf is the GOAT.

But the statistics say that Smith-Court is the GOAT. We can argue all we like against the statistics, but they don't lie.

Also, we are discussing this in 2022 when Serena is still playing. It would be interesting to be around in 100 years time to see how these types of discussions have evolved. But I imagine little will change.

All these GOAT debates are made up by media. If you actually spend time reading academic studies about athletes performances (like distance covered), modern athletes are simply better than past GOATs. Sports do evolve.

And here you highlight a very important point. Modern Tennis is more about athleticism than it is about tennis skills (IE shot selection, mental prowess, etc.). As the sport continues to evolve, if the rules don't change, the physically superior specimens will become more dominant at the expense of the more highly skilled tennis players.

Smith-Court was an uber athlete in her time. But she had wonderful tennis skills. As did BJK, Evert, Martina N and Graf. Imho, the last true female TENNIS player was Henin - although Barty could put up a strong case.

Tennis is being ruined by the physicality. And if it doesn't rein that in, the sport will become less and less popular over time.

 

[BorgTheGOAT]

Bill Russell's size and build would be ordinary in today's NBA. That's why swimming records and track records keep getting broken over and over again. So that's not how to evaluate athletes across different eras.

Russel‘s size might be ordinary in today‘s NBA but his athleticism and skill is light years above average in any era. That was a guy who was an Olympic level high jumper and track and field Star in general. He would be a superstar in any era. As @NonP has pointed out he could go toe to toe with Wilt Chamberlain who at the age of 45 repeatedly blocked and shut down Magic freakin Johnson in practice games. People get a false impression of the abilities of players from older generations, maybe because of the improving world records in swimming or some track and field disciplines. This is mostly due to better shoes, faster lanes etc., if you look at some less popular disciplines where technological advancements are not so important you will see tons of records from the 80s that still stand.

Babe Ruth in baseball
Michael Jordan in basketball
Muhammad Ali in boxing
Tom Brady in American football
Pele in non-American football
Jack Nicklaus in golf
Wayne Gretzky in hockey
Michael Phelps in swimming
Usain Bolt in track

You are right on most of these but please never refer to the most popular sport in the world as non-American football, this is even dumber than calling it soccer. The name is football and it is played by more than 2 billion people worldwide while American football is hardly played at all outside of the US.

 

[dadadas]

Tennis is being ruined by the physicality. And if it doesn't reign that in, the sport will become less and less popular over time.

said by the guy whose signature is !!! I'D RATHER BE PLAYING BASKETBALL !!!. Isnt basketball dominated by giants?

 

[Technology Ruined Tennis]

There was no Hard Court when she played!!

AO only changed to HC in 1988, while USO changed in 1978.

It was all Grass Court

Something tells me tennis historian Sport-O falls into the category of experts that didn't know the AO used to be the final slam of the season.

 

[Wander]

By 1993 Graf had won 3 of the last 5 matches against Seles, 2 of them easy 2-setters.
Whereas Seles had to fight through tough 3-setters for her 2 wins.
And has it been mentioned already that Graf lost many, many matches to players like Sabatini and Novotna during that time (players she usually dominated)?

Steffi had enough „ifs“ during her career to justify a hypothetical plus in her slam count.
So no „counting back“ by cherry-picking a convenient „if“.

It is curious that many people who extrapolate the hypothetical career of Seles that didn't get stabbed from her brief period of dominance never talk about the fact that that period of dominance corresponded with Graf's dip in form in 91 and 92. For most of those Slams Seles won she didn't even have to beat Graf since Steffi was losing to all sorts of players she usually beat both before and after this period.

The real shame about Seles' interrupted career is that we didn't get to see more matches between her and the resurgent Graf of 93 onwards and the likely battle for the #1 spot that would've ensued.

 

[dadadas]

non American football is better known as soccer. It is where grown men roll in the grass crying and holding it their shin.

Its a tragedy that the likes of American multinationals Nike, EA & Mastercard make profits out of football, advertise their products/services through football matches and thus were able to hire more American employees. Football jerseys, games and other football related products should have been made by multinationals from Europe.

 

[Poisoned Slice]

Right now, I'm on the Zidane bandwagon again. That was while I was on Ronaldo(9) bandwagon. Yeah, my best I've seen changes regularly. I feel they all have a case so no problem. Maradona would still be the gun held to head choice, but his greatness was before my time. I'm only really comfortable with careers I've lived through.

Zidane does give the best answer to the question.

''Why is Ronaldo the best you've ever played with?''

''Why?'' It was just the perfect response. haha His wee nod of approval as he imagines Ronaldo doing a running elastico. Then he goes to explain why. To hear somebody as great as Zidane being mesmerized every day in training like that. Each day, Ronaldo would do something new. It's nice to hear and seems like another time, even though it was. I'm just not used to hearing such praise today. Maybe football has me jaded and it's more about me me me. Or maybe it's because United suck.

 

[dadadas]

Being the darlings of American/British media =/= GOAT
Being record holders from past eras (before 1980s) =/= GOAT

Until we have concrete scientific studies about the physical attributes of record holders, Goat debate is not gonna be objective. In fact GOAT debate is meant to create more disagreements.

 

[Gizo]

Serena has the most tier 1 titles, that is an important metric I think. They didn't exist in the 80s/90s, so many of the events played back then didn't have a lot of top 10/20 players in the field. Serena has played more top 10 players than any other player you list, crunch the numbers. Sort of like how so many here mock Connors 109 titles when comparing to Fed's total - if you do a deep dive you will see the same with quality of field with Chris and Martina. Yes they were each other's great rival, but the rest of the field was pretty weak. "Premier" events you list for Graf/Martina were not required events like they are today. Not to mention 16 player field were pretty common in 70s/80s(again the sport was not that deep). And you can see byes or 32 player fields for Chris and Martina at some majors they won.

There is a clear bias here(or people are just ignorant) when so many posters here repeatedly say Connors and Vilas won a ton of Mickey Mouse events, then later pretend that Martina and Chris titles can be compared to Serena's titles with no further analysis.

I attended the USO a lot in the 80s, the quality of play in the average first week women's match at a major was atrocious. Martina was grilled about the lack of depth in women's tennis by the press constantly. Now when I go see a first round match between Wang or Bouzkova at IW, I can't believe what I'm seeing(and no the same doesn't go for the men - they had great depth in 80s/90s, so many battles from round 1)

You should look at the scores at every major in say 1984 or 1994, not just the matches involving Martina, Graf etc. Lopsided scores, lack of close sets was the norm. You can factually prove there are more competitive matches on the WTA in the last 15 years or so than there were in the 80s/90s, even early 2000s. So that is a big factor to me, this isn't about recency bias. The women's game evolved so much more than the women in the Open Era.

@Gizo

I couldn't agree more. Re the Connors / Vilas point, I have laughed when over the years some of the same posters that the derided the title counts of Connors (or even Lendl when Federer was closing in / overtaking his 'official' mark of 94) or Vilas when it came to comparing clay court records on the men's side, have simultaneously hyped up the importance of Navratilova or Evert's on the women's. It goes without saying that the title counts of male players in the 70s and 80s hold up far better in comparisons against modern day players, and those of female players during those decades.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Evert-Goolagong matches on faster surfaces, Navratilova, Mandlikova etc., but it was blatant (and frequently mentioned in newspaper articles or brought up in interviews etc.) that there was simply no depth in women's tennis at that time. It was very easy to simultaneously enjoy the 1984 US Open final between Navratilova and Evert or the one a year later between Mandlikova and Navratilova for example, while also acknowledging that the overall field and that the standard of the early round matches was incredibly weak. And in the 90s there was still pretty much zero depth outside the top 20 and the standard of early round matches at grand slams was still a joke. In the books written by John Feinstein in 1991 (covering the 1990 season for both the men and women) and Jon Wertheim in 2001 (covering the 2000 season for the women), they both quickly pointed out even from the early chapters focused on the respective Australian Opens that that was no depth in the field. In the UK, I remember reading newspaper articles bringing up that at Wimbledon-time each year during the 90s.

I watch plenty of 1st round matches at tournaments like Miami, i.e. before the 32 seeded players even join the party, tournaments such as Monterrey or Lausanne or even Bogota which is arguably the weakest tournament on the WTA tour, and like you I think that it cannot be emphasised enough how much better the overall standard is has been in recent times and than it was in all eras before the 21st century. Nowadays you can watch high-quality WTA tournaments without a single top 20 or 30 player in draw (I remember a week last year with 2 excellent tournaments held in Monterrey and St Petersburg and 0 top 30 players in attendance). That would have simply been impossible in the past. Also the idea that women's tennis was stronger in eras when 128 player draws at grand slams either didn't exist across the board or if they did were clearly excessive (in fact 64 player draws would have been excessive as well), than it is nowadays when 128 player draws are clearly merited, also has never made sense to me.

Clearly as men's tennis had a big head start in terms of development, money, coverage, recognition etc., there was always established depth on the men's side through the open era including when Laver won the grand slam in 1969. But on the flip women's tennis was essentially a gradually forming division depth-wise for a long time, understandably so. It was really only properly formed in terms of serious depth from the 21st century.

When it comes to analysing depth and the strength of fields, I've always thought that just looking at the top 10 or grand slam semi-final line-ups has never been remotely adequate. There's no doubt to me that, even when factoring in 16 seeds vs. 32 seeds, Serena has typically faced far stronger opponents in the first couple of rounds of big tournaments, than those previous legends were typically facing in the 3rd, 4th or even quarter-final rounds.

 

[Karma Tennis]

said by the guy whose signature is !!! I'D RATHER BE PLAYING BASKETBALL !!!. Isnt basketball dominated by giants?

That is a reference to Nick Kyrgios.

Depends what you define as a "giant".

There are plenty of opportunities for players who are around 180cms to play Pro. Basketball successfully ... even in the NBA. That's because Basketball IS a physical sport and always has been a physical sport.

Of course, skilled taller players will always dominate because Basketball is primarily about making baskets. And taller players can usually make shots easier than shorter ones. But someone has to feed those guys the ball. And it is usually the more nimble shorter players that do that.

BTW, my definition of a "Giant" in Pro. Bball would be someone who is 6foot 10inches or taller.

 

[aman92]

And that's why they keep Tennis Records and statistics so that people don't have to be historians in order to access data which can be used for objective comparison.

And objective comparisons are the only ones that matter because we can all make up subjective ones.

For example, personally I think Evert is probably the best female tennis player that ever lived ... and possible the best tennis player that ever lived full stop. Why? Because she was able to dominate on all surfaces and had incredible mental prowess. But look at her stats and compare with Smith-Court, Martina N., Graf and Serena. On that basis, few people would say she is the female GOAT.

Same with the Men. Laver has two GRAND SLAMS. The Big 3 have 60 Major Titles between them. But Borg was uber dominant at both Roland Garros and Wimbledon. None of the Big 3 have come close to Borg in that regard. Again though, look at the stats and it's clear that Borg cannot be the GOAT with Laver and the Big 3 in the mix.

So, for sure, you can say that Graf is the GOAT.

But the statistics say that Smith-Court is the GOAT. We can argue all we like against the statistics, but they don't lie.

Also, we are discussing this in 2022 when Serena is still playing. It would be interesting to be around in 100 years time to see how these types of discussions have evolved. But I imagine little will change.



And here you highlight a very important point. Modern Tennis is more about athleticism than it is about tennis skills (IE shot selection, mental prowess, etc.). As the sport continues to evolve, if the rules don't change, the physically superior specimens will become more dominant at the expense of the more highly skilled tennis players.

Smith-Court was an uber athlete in her time. But she had wonderful tennis skills. As did BJK, Evert, Martina N and Graf. Imho, the last true female TENNIS player was Henin - although Barty could put up a strong case.

Tennis is being ruined by the physicality. And if it doesn't rein that in, the sport will become less and less popular over time.

I disagree, if the sport was purely about physicality then you would always have the young gen and big guys like Taylor Fritz dominating. Djokodal continue to win slams not because of their physicality but because their of their tactical and mental prowess. In the women's game, it's partially true that post Williams sisters, physicality became the dominant aspect but I see that changing currently first with the dominance of Barty and now with Swiatek with flair players like Jabeur also doing quite well

 

[puppybutts]

Serena Williams:
She has the second most grand slam titles with 23, but the qualification is that virtually all her greatest rivals retired early, half-way through Serena’s career leaving her with a weak, inconsistent field in the second half of her career in terms of competition. Hingis mostly retired in 2003 (at age 22!), Capriati retired in 2004 (at age 28), Davenport basically played singles tennis part time after 2006 due to motherhood and retired in 2008, Henin retired in early 2008 (at age 26 while she was ranked #1), and Mauresmo retired in 2009. Clijsters retired in 2007 (at the age of 23!), a year in which she barely played. She came back in late 2009 and retired again in 2012 though she played a light schedule this entire period back. That a Clijsters who wasn't putting her full focus on tennis won 3 majors during that time speaks to how weak the women's field was after 2007. And add to that, Venus was revealed to have Sjögrens Syndrome in 2011 and didn't reach another major final until 2017. In my opinion, 2008-present is one of the weakest eras of women’s tennis that has introduced no new all-time great players (Sharapova is arguably the last ATG in women’s tennis and some probably wouldn’t even count her as an ATG; Osaka and Swiatek could still get there). This was an era when players like Dinara Safina, Caroline Wozniacki, Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic, and Karolina Pliskova reached #1. Serena dominated from 2008-2017, winning 15 slams in an extremely unusual era of women's tennis with virtually zero great players to counter her (an argument could be made that Azarenka was great for 2 years but that was it). Still, Serena did have very tough competition through 2007 and during that period, she was still able to win her first Serena slam and was able to hold all 4 grand slam titles simultaneously again in 2014-2015.

Steffi Graf:
She has the third most grand slam titles with 22, but the qualification is that her biggest rival, Monica Seles, got stabbed when Seles was age 19 at a point in which Seles had won 8 of the last 9 grand slam tournaments she played. Arguably, when Seles came back to the game 3 years later, having missed her peak years, she was never quite the same with her biggest strength, her mental game, diminished. For the 2½ years while Seles was out, Graf won 6 of the 9 slams she played. Who benefitted most between Graf getting her rivalry with Seles interrupted for 2½ years or Serena having her combined rivalries with Hingis, Henin, and Clijsters disappear half-way through her career? I think that is highly debatable. Graf, however, won the Grand Slam, actually a Golden Slam, and that’s got to be worth the equivalent of at least one slam to place her roughly even Serena. Not often noted is that Graf’s Grand Slam was actually part of a run winning 5 majors in a row, which Serena has never managed.

I like how Serena led H2Hs across several matches against Davenport, Capriati, Clijsters, Muresmo, Hingis, Henin, Azarenka, Sharapova, etc. across 4 decades before they retired, and people say she benefitted from a weak era while listing all these great players she had to face with several details about these players' conditions with Serena outlasting them all. Why is it that only Serena's competitors' failures, burnout, or genetics only reflect badly on Serena instead of being tribute to her longevity? Meanwhile Graf is never given the weak era argument even though 1 stab took out her only hypothetical competition, at a time when mostly white people were playing the game from few countries, and not many coaches knew what they were doing, and hundreds of girls across the globe weren't raised from the womb to play tennis.

 

[jl809]

Navratilova is unquestionably the GOAT of “women’s tennis”. The “women’s singles” GOAT is more debatable.

 

[Hoi Polloi]

I couldn't agree more. Re the Connors / Vilas point, I have laughed when over the years some of the same posters that the derided the title counts of Connors (or even Lendl when Federer was closing in / overtaking his 'official' mark of 94) or Vilas when it came to comparing clay court records on the men's side, have simultaneously hyped up the importance of Navratilova or Evert's on the women's. It goes without saying that the title counts of male players in the 70s and 80s hold up far better in comparisons against modern day players, and those of female players during those decades.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Evert-Goolagong matches on faster surfaces, Navratilova, Mandlikova etc., but it was blatant (and frequently mentioned in newspaper articles or brought up in interviews etc.) that there was simply no depth in women's tennis at that time. It was very easy to simultaneously enjoy the 1984 US Open final between Navratilova and Evert or the one a year later between Mandlikova and Navratilova for example, while also acknowledging that the overall field and that the standard of the early round matches was incredibly weak. And in the 90s there was still pretty much zero depth outside the top 20 and the standard of early round matches at grand slams was still a joke. In the books written by John Feinstein in 1991 (covering the 1990 season for both the men and women) and Jon Wertheim in 2001 (covering the 2000 season for the women), they both quickly pointed out even from the early chapters focused on the respective Australian Opens that that was no depth in the field. In the UK, I remember reading newspaper articles bringing up that at Wimbledon-time each year during the 90s.

I watch plenty of 1st round matches at tournaments like Miami, i.e. before the 32 seeded players even join the party, tournaments such as Monterrey or Lausanne or even Bogota which is arguably the weakest tournament on the WTA tour, and like you I think that it cannot be emphasised enough how much better the overall standard is has been in recent times and than it was in all eras before the 21st century. Nowadays you can watch high-quality WTA tournaments without a single top 20 or 30 player in draw (I remember a week last year with 2 excellent tournaments held in Monterrey and St Petersburg and 0 top 30 players in attendance). That would have simply been impossible in the past. Also the idea that women's tennis was stronger in eras when 128 player draws at grand slams either didn't exist across the board or if they did were clearly excessive (in fact 64 player draws would have been excessive as well), than it is nowadays when 128 player draws are clearly merited, also has never made sense to me.

Clearly as men's tennis had a big head start in terms of development, money, coverage, recognition etc., there was always established depth on the men's side through the open era including when Laver won the grand slam in 1969. But on the flip women's tennis was essentially a gradually forming division depth-wise for a long time, understandably so. It was really only properly formed in terms of serious depth from the 21st century.

When it comes to analysing depth and the strength of fields, I've always thought that just looking at the top 10 or grand slam semi-final line-ups has never been remotely adequate. There's no doubt to me that, even when factoring in 16 seedsvs. 32 seeds, Serena has typically faced far stronger opponents in the first couple of rounds of big tournaments, than those previous legends were typically facing in the 3rd, 4th or even quarter-final rounds.

If Evert, Navratilova, Graf, Seles, Hingis had never existed there would have a very deep depth in women‘s tennis according to your logic.

Because the other top players of that era (Shriver, Kohde, Sabatini, Sanchez, Novotna etc.) had no better winning percentages against the rest of the field than today‘s top players have.

 

[ScentOfDefeat]

Navratilova is unquestionably the GOAT of “women’s tennis”. The “women’s singles” GOAT is more debatable.

Agreed. She is synonymous with tennis.

 

[Hoi Polloi]

Navratilova is unquestionably the GOAT of “women’s tennis”. The “women’s singles” GOAT is more debatable.

Why Navratilova ahead of Court?

BTW, the emphasis some put on doubles seems desperate.
In the old times you played doubles for fun, for a bit more money and to avoid having to pay hitting partners.
Today you play doubles when you have a sister who also can play tennis.

 

[Hoi Polloi]

Agreed. She is synonymous with tennis.

Not in Continental Europe or Asia.
Maybe in the USA and even in the UK.

 

[Hoi Polloi]

I like how Serena led H2Hs across several matches against Davenport, Capriati, Clijsters, Muresmo, Hingis, Henin, Azarenka, Sharapova, etc. across 4 decades before they retired, and people say she benefitted from a weak era while listing all these great players she had to face with several details about these players' conditions with Serena outlasting them all. Why is it that only Serena's competitors' failures, burnout, or genetics only reflect badly on Serena instead of being tribute to her longevity? Meanwhile Graf is never given the weak era argument even though 1 stab took out her only hypothetical competition, at a time when mostly white people were playing the game from few countries, and not many coaches knew what they were doing, and hundreds of girls across the globe weren't raised from the womb to play tennis.

Hingis: last slam win in January 1999
Davenport: last slam win January 2000
Capriati: last slam win January 2002
Serena had won only 1 of her 23 slams then.

Mauresmo: last slam win in July 2006
Henin: last slam win in September 2007
Serena had won only 8 of her 23 slams then.

Clijsters: last slam win in January 2011 (had a 2-year break before)
Serena had won only 13 of her 23 slams then.

Azarenka never was a great player.
Sharapova was Serena‘s pigeon.
Serena beat them plus Safina, Zvonareva, Safarova, Radwanska, Wozniacki, Muguruza, Kerber in slams for the major part of her career.


Steffi did indeed have better competition.
Her last 8 slam wins came against Sanchez, Seles, Hingis.
She beat several top-10 ATGs in slam finals.
Serena not even one.

 

[WYK]

Navratilova was awesome during a time when it was very difficult to be awesome, especially considering her roots. Unlike modern players like Rafa(who has a center court literally designed around his game), or all the special treatment and huge sponsorships top pros get - Navratilova had to play doubles simply to make enough winnings in order to afford to play singles. She literally became awesome at doubles because she was basically forced to in order to survive. She had to fight and scrap for everything she got. Evert was always the media darling for so many reasons, and her accomplishments are nothing to be laughed at. She is one of my favourites to this day. But Navratilova will always be the absolute goat in my heart.

Martina Navratilova - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[ScentOfDefeat]

Not in Continental Europe or Asia.
Maybe in the USA and even in the UK.

I'm a Continental European and grew up knowing that Navratilova was tennis: she played singles, doubles and mixed doubles, and was the best or one of the best at every single aspect of the sport. I think my favourite thing about Navratilova is that you can tell she loves the game of tennis, which isn't always clear when you watch other players. A Continental European who doesn't know the Navratilova story is either very young or can't really be a tennis fan.

 

[thrust]

My thoughts on Greatest of All Time or GOAT in a particular sport is sometimes that there can’t be one and sometimes that there can be one. Of course, there is no official title of GOAT or formal criteria for it. Statistics can confer some objectivity to it, but because sports evolve so much across different eras, a lot of subjectivity inherently enters into these debates. So there is no official GOAT. There is however often general consensus as to who is GOAT in a certain sport. That is arguably the case for all of these athletes:

Babe Ruth in baseball
Michael Jordan in basketball
Muhammad Ali in boxing
Tom Brady in American football
Pele in non-American football
Jack Nicklaus in golf
Wayne Gretzky in hockey
Michael Phelps in swimming
Usain Bolt in track

I mean sure, some of these are in dispute. Cases could be made for Willie Mays or Ty Cobb or Hank Aaron, Lebron James or Kareem Abdul Jabbar or Bill Russell, Messi or Ronaldo or Maradona, and many others. My personal opinion doesn’t align with the general consensus for all of the above, but despite some dispute, these consensus exists. With Serena Williams’ pending retirement, I’m seeing lots of claims being made for Serena as the GOAT in tennis, not even just on the female side, but the GOAT for both men and women or even the GOAT among all female athletes. I definitely do not think though that there is a consensus GOAT in even just women’s tennis. Serena, Graf, Navratilova, Evert, and Court’s achievements are all enormously high and those achievements are specific to the eras in which they played and qualifications are needed to clarify what their numbers mean.

Serena Williams:
She has the second most grand slam titles with 23, but the qualification is that virtually all her greatest rivals retired early, half-way through Serena’s career leaving her with a weak, inconsistent field in the second half of her career in terms of competition. Hingis mostly retired in 2003 (at age 22!), Capriati retired in 2004 (at age 28), Davenport basically played singles tennis part time after 2006 due to motherhood and retired in 2008, Henin retired in early 2008 (at age 26 while she was ranked #1), and Mauresmo retired in 2009. Clijsters retired in 2007 (at the age of 23!), a year in which she barely played. She came back in late 2009 and retired again in 2012 though she played a light schedule this entire period back. That a Clijsters who wasn't putting her full focus on tennis won 3 majors during that time speaks to how weak the women's field was after 2007. And add to that, Venus was revealed to have Sjögrens Syndrome in 2011 and didn't reach another major final until 2017. In my opinion, 2008-present is one of the weakest eras of women’s tennis that has introduced no new all-time great players (Sharapova is arguably the last ATG in women’s tennis and some probably wouldn’t even count her as an ATG; Osaka and Swiatek could still get there). This was an era when players like Dinara Safina, Caroline Wozniacki, Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic, and Karolina Pliskova reached #1. Serena dominated from 2008-2017, winning 15 slams in an extremely unusual era of women's tennis with virtually zero great players to counter her (an argument could be made that Azarenka was great for 2 years but that was it). Still, Serena did have very tough competition through 2007 and during that period, she was still able to win her first Serena slam and was able to hold all 4 grand slam titles simultaneously again in 2014-2015.

Steffi Graf:
She has the third most grand slam titles with 22, but the qualification is that her biggest rival, Monica Seles, got stabbed when Seles was age 19 at a point in which Seles had won 8 of the last 9 grand slam tournaments she played. Arguably, when Seles came back to the game 3 years later, having missed her peak years, she was never quite the same with her biggest strength, her mental game, diminished. For the 2½ years while Seles was out, Graf won 6 of the 9 slams she played. Who benefitted most between Graf getting her rivalry with Seles interrupted for 2½ years or Serena having her combined rivalries with Hingis, Henin, and Clijsters disappear half-way through her career? I think that is highly debatable. Graf, however, won the Grand Slam, actually a Golden Slam, and that’s got to be worth the equivalent of at least one slam to place her roughly even Serena. Not often noted is that Graf’s Grand Slam was actually part of a run winning 5 majors in a row, which Serena has never managed.

Margaret Court:
She has the record for most grand slam titles with 24, but the qualification is that her 11 Australian Open wins often had weak draws in which many of the world’s top players did not attend, every draw of which was smaller than 1000-level tournaments of today, and Court also often had byes and so would only need to play 4 or 5 matches to win these slams. Court even won the 1966 AO title match in a walkover. This analysis (http://www.tennisabstract.com/blog/2021/02/07/serenas-23-vs-margarets-24/) handicaps Court’s slam wins to 20, not 24, based on estimated adjusted difficulty, albeit Serena’s 23 is downgraded to 22, also due to easier draws. All that said, Court did win the calendar-year Grand Slam, which was actually part of a run of 6 majors in a row, which no other player except Navratilova has achieved on the women’s side and Don Budge on the men’s.

Chris Evert: She won 18 grand slam titles, but the qualification is that she skipped the Australian for 2/3 of her career. She skipped it 7 times in her prime and would have been the favorite to win it at least 4 of those times. She skipped the AO 11 total times in her career. Of the 5 times she did play the Australian, she won it twice and reached the final the other 3. So Evert's major count of 18 is a major victim of the unpopular AO era. Evert was a monster on clay and she also missed 3 French Opens at her peak and would have been the favorite to win all 3 had she played. In other words, if slams mattered more in the 70s when the AO and FO had weak draws, Evert could very well have had 23 major wins.

Martina Navratilova: She won 18 grand slam titles, but the qualification, like Evert, is that she skipped the Australian Open 10 times and the French Open 10 times during her career, half of those times in years she either won other slams or at least reached slam finals. Like Evert, if slams mattered more in the 70s when the AO and FO had weak draws, Navratilova could very well have had 23 major wins.

The other thing about Evert and Navratilova is that, unlike these other GOAT-contenders, they had each other as their biggest rivals throughout the primes of their career. They played each other 80 times, 60 times were in finals, and 14 times in slam finals. Yes, their era did not have as much depth as later on, but they had to deal with waning but still strong Margaret Court, Billie Jean King, and Virginia Wade early on, a very competitive Evonne Goolagong, Tracy Austin, and Hana Mandlikova in the middle, and an ascendant Graf and Seles at the end.

It’s one thing to have to play another good player many times. It’s another to have to play another GOAT-contender 80 times in their prime. Any weaker competition in the early rounds for Evert and Navratilova were compensated for by far stronger competition in the later rounds. Between Evert (80 times), Graf (18 times), and Seles (17 times), Navratilova played them 115 times. Between Davenport (14), Hingis (13), Venus (30), Henin (14), Clijsters (9), and Sharapova (20), Serena played them 100 times, and prime Graf, Evert, and Seles are better than ALL of Serena’s strongest competition, some by a significant margin. Navratilova played a pre-stabbing Seles more times than Serena has played anyone other than Venus, Azarenka, and Sharapova.

The only area in which Serena surpasses Navratilova is with majors, but Navratilova played Evert in 14 major finals and Graf in 6. That’s 20 times against a fellow GOAT-contender. Evert played Navratilova 14 times, Graf once (in the year Graf won her Golden Slam), and Court once (in a year Court won 3 majors) in slam finals. Serena has never had to play another GOAT-contender at any stage of a slam, much less a final.

Here are some numbers:

Major wins:
Court 24
Williams 23
Graf 22
Evert 18
Navratilova 18

Major finals:
Evert 34
Williams 33
Navratilova 32
Graf 31
Court 29

Weeks at #1
Graf 377
Navratilova 332
Williams 319
Evert 260 (but this should be higher as official rankings only began when Evert was already the current #1)
Court – not applicable

Career winning percentage:
Court 91%
Evert 90%
Graf 89%
Navratilova 87%
Williams 85%

Year-end championships:
Navratilova 8
Graf 5
Williams 5
Evert 4
Court – not applicable

Premier titles won:
Navratilova 32
Graf 31
Evert 25
Williams 22
Court 3, but really not applicable

Titles won:
Court 192
Navratilova 167
Evert 157
Graf 107
Williams 73

Longest winning streaks:
Navratilova 74
Graf 66
Court 57
Evert 55
Williams 34

My conclusion: There is no GOAT in women's tennis, not because there aren't supremely great players, but because their achievements are too close to differentiate one as clearly superior.

I AGREE!

 

[THUNDERVOLLEY]

Many of Court's Aus Open achievements were pre open era in weak fields and 32 player draws...her major count is vastly inflated because of these

Nonsense. Tennis is one sport, with one history, hence the recognition of players before the open era such as Budge, Gibson, Perry, et al.

Yes. Non fans of the sport keep trundling out that same old chestnut.

So, pray tell, why is that Margaret's fault? She played who she played and beat them when it counted.

Record books tell the truth of the statistics no matter what people say.

Agreed--so-called "tennis fans" habitually attempt to remove players from history in order to bolster the status and records of those they champion. For examples, look to those attempting to elevate Evert to GOAT status, the "Seles was going to be the GOAT" little group, the "Navratilova is GOAT, not Graf" group, the "Laver am not GOAT--it am Federer" cult, and on and on. Court is the unquestioned GOAT by history. Navratilova, Evert, Seles, Serena, Federer and anyone else never winning the Grand Slam are not, nor did they ever raise the level of their game to reach that peak of mastering the sport.

 

[Hoi Polloi]

I'm a Continental European and grew up knowing that Navratilova was tennis: she played singles, doubles and mixed doubles, and was the best or one of the best at every single aspect of the sport. I think my favourite thing about Navratilova is that you can tell she loves the game of tennis, which isn't always clear when you watch other players. A Continental European who doesn't know the Navratilova story is either very young or can't really be a tennis fan.

A Continental European for whom „Navratilova is tennis“ is definitely very old.

 

[Hoi Polloi]

Nonsense. Tennis is one sport, with one history, hence the recognition of players before the open era such as Budge, Gibson, Perry, et al.







Agreed--so-called "tennis fans" habitually attempt to remove players from history in order to bolster the status and records of those they champion. For examples, look to those attempting to elevate Evert to GOAT status, the "Seles was going to be the GOAT" little group, the "Navratilova is GOAT, not Graf" group, the "Laver am not GOAT--it am Federer" cult, and on and on. Court is the unquestioned GOAT by history. Navratilova, Evert, Seles, Serena, Federer and anyone else never winning the Grand Slam are not, nor did the ever raise the level of their game to reach that peak of mastering the sport.

Yes, it is between Court and Graf.
But Court conceded to Graf not long ago.
So it is Graf.

 

[Entername]

To me:

- Court is the 'winningest' player
- Graf/Navratilova were the most dominant
- Serena is the BOAT because at her peak, no one beats her imo
- Evert is the most consistent

I agree, can't really pick a GOAT in WTA

In men's it's quite hard too:

- Federer had the most dominant stretch
- Djokovic is the BOAT
- Nadal is the 'winningest' player

 

[Tennfan123]

Consensus will go with Graf and Federer.
But the nitty gritty will show it's Serena and Rafa.

 

[ScentOfDefeat]

A Continental European for whom „Navratilova is tennis“ is definitely very old.

Not that old.
People forget she was in a Wimbledon final in 1994.
Most people would be aware of the players that existed one generation before they started watching.

 

[thrust]

Consensus will go with Graf and Federer.
But the nitty gritty will show it's Serena and Rafa.

Serena and Novak- nitty-gritti

 

[RS]

Sugar Ray Robinson in Boxing

 

[Tennfan123]

Serena and Novak- nitty-gritti

I can see a case for it, yes. But 23-21, bud, is going to be hard to counter.

 

[catskillthunder]

Walker Smith Jr. in boxing

Fixed

 

[CHIP72]

I also think you should use an age metric. I believe Graf had double digits more Slams than Serena when both were the age that Graf retired. Just because top players teams are so much better now which enables longevity shouldn’t mean you can allow so many more Slams participated in I don’t think.

Graf's early retirement also meant she largely avoided the down phase of her career when her career record would have gotten worse due to aging. Also, it is probably unlikely Graf would have competed at a similar level as the standout players of the early to mid-2000s (the Williams sisters in particular) when she would have been in her early to mid-30s and they would have been in their early to mid-20s.

Some of my comments in this thread may sound like I'm trying to put down Steffi Graf a bit. Believe me, that is not my intent. However, she did not have to deal with some of the obstacles that players like Court (multiple temporary retirements), Evert, or Navratilova (both missing the French Open and Australian Open a few times) had to deal with, and she didn't play for an extended period during her post-prime years like Court, Navratilova, S. Williams, and to a lesser degree Evert did, knocking down her career win-loss record. As I noted previously, in the middle of her career Graf also had her greatest rival (Monica Seles) knocked out by a non-tennis playing injury, something that didn't happen with Court (Billie Jean King), Evert, Navratilova (each other), or Serena (Venus, Henin). These factors need to be weighed along with her considerable positive factors in her favor (along them being her 22 Grand Slam titles by age 30, CY Golden Slam in 1988, at least 3 Slam wins in four other years, and excellence across all surfaces to a greater degree than the other four women being discussed in this thread).

 

[martinezownsclay]

There is no indication at all Graf likely have a lot of success left when she retired in 1999. Keep in mind she had won only 1 slam in the past 3 years, and was past her prime early relative to players like Navratilova and Evert, moreso due to a career of injuries catching up to her than age. Maybe she would have won 1 or 2 more slams had she continued, but definitely not much more than that. And even if you disagree with that she chose to retire, so it is a pointless what if. If Graf is not degraded much by most people for the benefit she possibly gained from the Seles stabbing (and to be clear I am not one of those koo koo Selestials who thinks she was a future 30+ slam winner without the stabbing, but Graf likely gained a couple extra slams atleast by the stabbing all the same) then no what does she get any benefit from simply choosing to retire, at a time her total dominance was nearly 3 years dead already to boot. Most people, myself included, give Bjorn Borg almost no extra benefit for retiring at 26 as well, so Graf certainly gets none for retiring at 30 per her own choice.

 

[martinezownsclay]

To me:

- Court is the 'winningest' player
- Graf/Navratilova were the most dominant
- Serena is the BOAT because at her peak, no one beats her imo
- Evert is the most consistent

I actually agree with all of those.

 

[martinezownsclay]

Graf's early retirement also meant she largely avoided the down phase of her career when her career record would have gotten worse due to aging. Also, it is probably unlikely Graf would have competed at a similar level as the standout players of the early to mid-2000s (the Williams sisters in particular) when she would have been in her early to mid-30s and they would have been in their early to mid-20s.

Some of my comments in this thread may sound like I'm trying to put down Steffi Graf a bit. Believe me, that is not my intent. However, she did not have to deal with some of the obstacles that players like Court (multiple temporary retirements), Evert, or Navratilova (both missing the French Open and Australian Open a few times) had to deal with, and she didn't play for an extended period during her post-prime years like Court, Navratilova, S. Williams, and to a lesser degree Evert did, knocking down her career win-loss record. As I noted previously, in the middle of her career Graf also had her greatest rival (Monica Seles) knocked out by a non-tennis playing injury, something that didn't happen with Court (Billie Jean King), Evert, Navratilova (each other), or Serena (Venus, Henin). These factors need to be weighed along with her considerable positive factors in her favor (along them being her 22 Grand Slam titles by age 30, CY Golden Slam in 1988, at least 3 Slam wins in four other years, and excellence across all surfaces to a greater degree than the other four women being discussed in this thread).

Regarding Navratilova that is a myth often brought up to elevate her and it is just that, a myth. Navratilova definitely would have won 0 French Opens from 76-79 (the years she missed) had it been a normal slam. Heck she probably does not even win the actual depleted ones won by people like Ruzica and Jaousovec, who were still better than Martina at that stage on clay, never mind theoretical ones the likes of Evert and Goolagong play. As for the Austrlaian Open, well in the years she missed from 76-79,her 2 Wimbledon titles in 78 and 79 were the only 2 Wimbledon finals she reached between 75-81, and Wimbledon is by far her better grass slam (compare her career results in Australia to Wimbledon). So if we are being generous she wins 1 there lets say. Navratilova gains almost no slams if Australia and the French were normal slams those years.

However Evert is the one who gains bigtime and Navratilova is far worse off since Evert now likely has around 24 slams. Safe to say Evert wins the French in all of 76, 77, and 78 if she played, and probably wins atleast 2 or 3 Australians atleast from 75-80 (all years she missed) even if we assume a full field as well. And Evert with her 23-25 slams is now not only possibly considered the GOAT today but by almost everyone ranked above Navratilova now, even if Navratilova still has her 82-86 dominance, and 83-84 13 match win streak of a primeish Chris.

So Navratilova is not a victim of this situation at all. In fact considering how much poorer she would compare to Chris, a beneficiary of it.

 

[CHIP72]

I couldn't agree more. Re the Connors / Vilas point, I have laughed when over the years some of the same posters that the derided the title counts of Connors (or even Lendl when Federer was closing in / overtaking his 'official' mark of 94) or Vilas when it came to comparing clay court records on the men's side, have simultaneously hyped up the importance of Navratilova or Evert's on the women's. It goes without saying that the title counts of male players in the 70s and 80s hold up far better in comparisons against modern day players, and those of female players during those decades.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Evert-Goolagong matches on faster surfaces, Navratilova, Mandlikova etc., but it was blatant (and frequently mentioned in newspaper articles or brought up in interviews etc.) that there was simply no depth in women's tennis at that time. It was very easy to simultaneously enjoy the 1984 US Open final between Navratilova and Evert or the one a year later between Mandlikova and Navratilova for example, while also acknowledging that the overall field and that the standard of the early round matches was incredibly weak. And in the 90s there was still pretty much zero depth outside the top 20 and the standard of early round matches at grand slams was still a joke. In the books written by John Feinstein in 1991 (covering the 1990 season for both the men and women) and Jon Wertheim in 2001 (covering the 2000 season for the women), they both quickly pointed out even from the early chapters focused on the respective Australian Opens that that was no depth in the field. In the UK, I remember reading newspaper articles bringing up that at Wimbledon-time each year during the 90s.

I watch plenty of 1st round matches at tournaments like Miami, i.e. before the 32 seeded players even join the party, tournaments such as Monterrey or Lausanne or even Bogota which is arguably the weakest tournament on the WTA tour, and like you I think that it cannot be emphasised enough how much better the overall standard is has been in recent times and than it was in all eras before the 21st century. Nowadays you can watch high-quality WTA tournaments without a single top 20 or 30 player in draw (I remember a week last year with 2 excellent tournaments held in Monterrey and St Petersburg and 0 top 30 players in attendance). That would have simply been impossible in the past. Also the idea that women's tennis was stronger in eras when 128 player draws at grand slams either didn't exist across the board or if they did were clearly excessive (in fact 64 player draws would have been excessive as well), than it is nowadays when 128 player draws are clearly merited, also has never made sense to me.

Clearly as men's tennis had a big head start in terms of development, money, coverage, recognition etc., there was always established depth on the men's side through the open era including when Laver won the grand slam in 1969. But on the flip women's tennis was essentially a gradually forming division depth-wise for a long time, understandably so. It was really only properly formed in terms of serious depth from the 21st century.

When it comes to analysing depth and the strength of fields, I've always thought that just looking at the top 10 or grand slam semi-final line-ups has never been remotely adequate. There's no doubt to me that, even when factoring in 16 seeds vs. 32 seeds, Serena has typically faced far stronger opponents in the first couple of rounds of big tournaments, than those previous legends were typically facing in the 3rd, 4th or even quarter-final rounds.

I don't think there's any doubt the general point made above - that the overall quality and depth in women's tennis has increased over time - is definitely true. This is the primary reason why players like Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Wills Moody, who were more dominant in their eras than ANY woman has been since 1960, likely should not be ranked ahead of (in chronological order) Court, Evert, Navratilova, Graf, or S. Williams, though their accomplishments should be recognized and not glossed over. Similarly, it is almost definite the overall field of players Margaret Court played wasn't as strong as the player field Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova played, which wasn't as strong as the field Steffi Graf played, which wasn't as strong as the field Serena Williams played. The quality of play in ALL sports generally gradually increases over time, with some minor but temporary dips here and there.

I would also agree with the idea that the increase in player quality has probably been greater over time in the women's game than it has been in the men's game (though the quality has also gradually improved in the men's game over time), mainly because the number of women who play tennis and the prestige/visibility of women's tennis has grown more significantly since say World War II than those factors have grown in the men's game (where a greater number of men were already playing the game decades ago relative to women, meaning its increased quality in the last 75 years has been from a bigger initial base).

 

[CHIP72]

Regarding Navratilova that is a myth often brought up to elevate her and it is just that, a myth. Navratilova definitely would have won 0 French Opens from 76-79 (the years she missed) had it been a normal slam. Heck she probably does not even win the actual depleted ones won by people like Ruzica and Jaousovec, who were still better than Martina at that stage on clay, never mind theoretical ones the likes of Evert and Goolagong play. As for the Austrlaian Open, well in the years she missed from 76-79,her 2 Wimbledon titles in 78 and 79 were the only 2 Wimbledon finals she reached between 75-81, and Wimbledon is by far her better grass slam (compare her career results in Australia to Wimbledon). So if we are being generous she wins 1 there lets say. Navratilova gains almost no slams if Australia and the French were normal slams those years.

However Evert is the one who gains bigtime and Navratilova is far worse off since Evert now likely has around 24 slams. Safe to say Evert wins the French in all of 76, 77, and 78 if she played, and probably wins atleast 2 or 3 Australians atleast from 75-80 (all years she missed) even if we assume a full field as well. And Evert with her 23-25 slams is now not only possibly considered the GOAT today but by almost everyone ranked above Navratilova now, even if Navratilova still has her 82-86 dominance, and 83-84 13 match win streak of a primeish Chris.

So Navratilova is not a victim of this situation at all. In fact considering how much poorer she would compare to Chris, a beneficiary of it.

I agree that Martina Navratilova probably would not have won many more singles Grand Slams in her career had she played the Australian Open or (especially) the French Open every year or most years she was able. Her game was not well-suited to clay, and clay was her biggest rival's (Chris Evert's) best surface. I don't think Martina wins any additional French Opens in those years (1976 to 1980). I DO think Martina may have won an additional 1-2 Australian Opens had she played the event in years she skipped it (1976 to 1979, with 1978 and/or 1979 being the most likely years), considering it was played on grass, her best surface. Having said that, the Australian Opens she missed generally occurred before her peak, so it is possible she doesn't win them. I think she splits some of them with Chris Evert (who was at/near her career peak during the years she missed the AO, even if grass wasn't her best surface), and other players who either actually won the event (like Evonne Goolagong, a native Australian who would have had the travel advantage over non-Australians Evert and Navratilova) or also missed it.

By contrast, and I said this in an earlier post in this thread, I think Chris Evert wins all three French Opens she missed (1976 to 1978) due to her involvement in World Team Tennis, and I think she probably also wins at least 1-2 Australian Opens (most likely in the 1975 to 1980 timeframe). If Evert plays and wins 4-5 additional Grand Slam events, she's perceived differently today relative to Martina Navratilova especially and to a lesser degree her fellow inner tier of the inner tier all-time great women's tennis players (the other players being discussed in this thread).

 

[martinezownsclay]

I agree that Martina Navratilova probably would not have won many more singles Grand Slams in her career had she played the Australian Open or (especially) the French Open every year or most years she was able. Her game was not well-suited to clay, and clay was her biggest rival's (Chris Evert's) best surface. I don't think Martina wins any additional French Opens in those years (1976 to 1980). I DO think Martina may have won an additional 1-2 Australian Opens had she played the event in years she skipped it (1976 to 1979, with 1978 and/or 1979 being the most likely years), considering it was played on grass, her best surface. Having said that, the Australian Opens she missed generally occurred before her peak, so it is possible she doesn't win them. I think she splits some of them with Chris Evert (who was at/near her career peak during the years she missed the AO, even if grass wasn't her best surface), and other players who either actually won the event (like Evonne Goolagong, a native Australian who would have had the travel advantage over non-Australians Evert and Navratilova) or also missed it.

By contrast, and I said this in an earlier post in this thread, I think Chris Evert wins all three French Opens she missed (1976 to 1978) due to her involvement in World Team Tennis, and I think she probably also wins at least 1-2 Australian Opens (most likely in the 1975 to 1980 timeframe). If Evert plays and wins 4-5 additional Grand Slam events, she's perceived differently today relative to Martina Navratilova especially and to a lesser degree her fellow inner tier of the inner tier all-time great women's tennis players (the other players being discussed in this thread).

Yes I agree with all of that. The thing that just annoys me is people, particularly Navratilova fans, potray Martina as the biggest victim of this situation, when it is really CHRIS by far who is. And it is not neccessarily a preferable situation at all for Navratilova, considering she would now compare much more unfavorably with Chris than she generally does today. That is my only beef with how most potray it. Not downplaying Martina in anyway, and she does deserve to be a GOAT candidate IMO even with "only" 18 singles majors, but just pointing out the context of that situation.

And as I said Martina did win 2 Wimbledons in 78 and 79, but they were the only 2 Wimbledon finals she reached at all from 75-81, and Wimbledon was far and away a better grass slam for her than the Australian in the 81-87 period (her peak years) where she won 6 Wimbledons to only 3 Australians. I would argue if anything it would be a better event for Chris than Wimbledon would be, considering it was slower grass wasn't it? Chris did win the Australian more often (2 times) than WImbledon (1 time) in the years she was regularly playing both from 81-onwards. And Chris overall even had better Wimbledon results than Martina from 74-81. Either way Chris for sure wins a lot more combined slams at the Australian/French in the years both were missing them than Martina ever does, that is a no brainer.

 

[dadadas]

This guy says Serena is far away from being a GOAT

 

[PMChambers]

This guy says Serena is far away from being a GOAT

I can prove he's wrong. Nearly every post, newspaper, or sports article puts her in "That discussion", so she's in " That discussion". Whether she's GOAT is a nearly personal choice as these five are very close. Usually, I only include Steffi, Martina and Serena in the discussion. However, some sports include GOAT based on records regardless of strength. So maybe fair to put all 5 in. He's not wrong as GOAT is based upon personal criteria but it's just another opinion.

 

[BTURNER]

I was trying to figure out which rounds were strengths and which were weaknesses but I got a little lazy/ tired in the middle of all this work and decided to rush to the final chapters.
*Notice how Graf inexplicably drops low between 13% of slam losses rd's 1-3, and 74.1 % of majors where she reached the QF's. Thats because Graf's troublesome rd was the 4th rd which I did not isolate it at all. Graf lost 5 times in that 4th rd which you are not seeing reflected elsewhere outside the slam win/ loss ratio or that last stat early round losses in blue. I decided it was neither a late rd, or early round that told us a lot, so I could forego a separate analysis, but with Graf it just happened to be the mountain, not a mole.


.
These stats only reflect career singles matches in the four majors.

Slam Career win/loss percentage: 1.Tie Court & Graf 90% 3. Evert 89% 4. Serena 87% 5. Martina 86%

% of majors entered that were won: 1. Court 51.1% 2 .Graf 40.7% 3. Evert 32.1% 4. Martina 29.9% 5. Serena 28.4%

% of majors where final was reached: 1.Court 61.7% 2. Evert 60.7% 3. Graf 55.6% 4. Martina 47.8% 5. Serena 40%

Slam finals conversion rate: 1.Court 83% 2.Graf 73.1% 3.Serena 71.9% 4. Martina 56.3% 5. Evert 52.9%

% of major where sf's were reached: 1. Evert 92.9% 2.Court 83% 3. Graf 66% 4. Martina 65.7% 5. Serena 49.4%

Semifinals conversion rate: 1.Court 86.6% 2.Serena 82.5% 3. Graf 81.1% 4. Martina 72.7% 5. Evert 65.4%

% of major where QF's were reached: 1. Evert 96.4% 2. Court 91.5% 3. Martina 79.1% 4. Graf 74.1% 5. Serena 66.7%

QFinals conversion rate: 1. Evert 96.2 2. Graf 88.1% 3. Court 83.7% 4. Martina 83% 5.Serena 74.1%

*Here a low number is a better number
* % of slams with losses in Rds1, 2 or 3: 1.Evert 3.6% 2. Court 6.4% 3. Graf 13% 4. Martina 13.4% 5. Serena 21%

 

[thrust]

My thoughts on Greatest of All Time or GOAT in a particular sport is sometimes that there can’t be one and sometimes that there can be one. Of course, there is no official title of GOAT or formal criteria for it. Statistics can confer some objectivity to it, but because sports evolve so much across different eras, a lot of subjectivity inherently enters into these debates. So there is no official GOAT. There is however often general consensus as to who is GOAT in a certain sport. That is arguably the case for all of these athletes:

Babe Ruth in baseball
Michael Jordan in basketball
Muhammad Ali in boxing
Tom Brady in American football
Pele in non-American football
Jack Nicklaus in golf
Wayne Gretzky in hockey
Michael Phelps in swimming
Usain Bolt in track

I mean sure, some of these are in dispute. Cases could be made for Willie Mays or Ty Cobb or Hank Aaron, Lebron James or Kareem Abdul Jabbar or Bill Russell, Messi or Ronaldo or Maradona, and many others. My personal opinion doesn’t align with the general consensus for all of the above, but despite some dispute, these consensus exists. With Serena Williams’ pending retirement, I’m seeing lots of claims being made for Serena as the GOAT in tennis, not even just on the female side, but the GOAT for both men and women or even the GOAT among all female athletes. I definitely do not think though that there is a consensus GOAT in even just women’s tennis. Serena, Graf, Navratilova, Evert, and Court’s achievements are all enormously high and those achievements are specific to the eras in which they played and qualifications are needed to clarify what their numbers mean.

Serena Williams:
She has the second most grand slam titles with 23, but the qualification is that virtually all her greatest rivals retired early, half-way through Serena’s career leaving her with a weak, inconsistent field in the second half of her career in terms of competition. Hingis mostly retired in 2003 (at age 22!), Capriati retired in 2004 (at age 28), Davenport basically played singles tennis part time after 2006 due to motherhood and retired in 2008, Henin retired in early 2008 (at age 26 while she was ranked #1), and Mauresmo retired in 2009. Clijsters retired in 2007 (at the age of 23!), a year in which she barely played. She came back in late 2009 and retired again in 2012 though she played a light schedule this entire period back. That a Clijsters who wasn't putting her full focus on tennis won 3 majors during that time speaks to how weak the women's field was after 2007. And add to that, Venus was revealed to have Sjögrens Syndrome in 2011 and didn't reach another major final until 2017. In my opinion, 2008-present is one of the weakest eras of women’s tennis that has introduced no new all-time great players (Sharapova is arguably the last ATG in women’s tennis and some probably wouldn’t even count her as an ATG; Osaka and Swiatek could still get there). This was an era when players like Dinara Safina, Caroline Wozniacki, Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic, and Karolina Pliskova reached #1. Serena dominated from 2008-2017, winning 15 slams in an extremely unusual era of women's tennis with virtually zero great players to counter her (an argument could be made that Azarenka was great for 2 years but that was it). Still, Serena did have very tough competition through 2007 and during that period, she was still able to win her first Serena slam and was able to hold all 4 grand slam titles simultaneously again in 2014-2015.

Steffi Graf:
She has the third most grand slam titles with 22, but the qualification is that her biggest rival, Monica Seles, got stabbed when Seles was age 19 at a point in which Seles had won 8 of the last 9 grand slam tournaments she played. Arguably, when Seles came back to the game 3 years later, having missed her peak years, she was never quite the same with her biggest strength, her mental game, diminished. For the 2½ years while Seles was out, Graf won 6 of the 9 slams she played. Who benefitted most between Graf getting her rivalry with Seles interrupted for 2½ years or Serena having her combined rivalries with Hingis, Henin, and Clijsters disappear half-way through her career? I think that is highly debatable. Graf, however, won the Grand Slam, actually a Golden Slam, and that’s got to be worth the equivalent of at least one slam to place her roughly even Serena. Not often noted is that Graf’s Grand Slam was actually part of a run winning 5 majors in a row, which Serena has never managed.

Margaret Court:
She has the record for most grand slam titles with 24, but the qualification is that her 11 Australian Open wins often had weak draws in which many of the world’s top players did not attend, every draw of which was smaller than 1000-level tournaments of today, and Court also often had byes and so would only need to play 4 or 5 matches to win these slams. Court even won the 1966 AO title match in a walkover. This analysis (http://www.tennisabstract.com/blog/2021/02/07/serenas-23-vs-margarets-24/) handicaps Court’s slam wins to 20, not 24, based on estimated adjusted difficulty, albeit Serena’s 23 is downgraded to 22, also due to easier draws. All that said, Court did win the calendar-year Grand Slam, which was actually part of a run of 6 majors in a row, which no other player except Navratilova has achieved on the women’s side and Don Budge on the men’s.

Chris Evert: She won 18 grand slam titles, but the qualification is that she skipped the Australian for 2/3 of her career. She skipped it 7 times in her prime and would have been the favorite to win it at least 4 of those times. She skipped the AO 11 total times in her career. Of the 5 times she did play the Australian, she won it twice and reached the final the other 3. So Evert's major count of 18 is a major victim of the unpopular AO era. Evert was a monster on clay and she also missed 3 French Opens at her peak and would have been the favorite to win all 3 had she played. In other words, if slams mattered more in the 70s when the AO and FO had weak draws, Evert could very well have had 23 major wins.

Martina Navratilova: She won 18 grand slam titles, but the qualification, like Evert, is that she skipped the Australian Open 10 times and the French Open 10 times during her career, half of those times in years she either won other slams or at least reached slam finals. Like Evert, if slams mattered more in the 70s when the AO and FO had weak draws, Navratilova could very well have had 23 major wins.

The other thing about Evert and Navratilova is that, unlike these other GOAT-contenders, they had each other as their biggest rivals throughout the primes of their career. They played each other 80 times, 60 times were in finals, and 14 times in slam finals. Yes, their era did not have as much depth as later on, but they had to deal with waning but still strong Margaret Court, Billie Jean King, and Virginia Wade early on, a very competitive Evonne Goolagong, Tracy Austin, and Hana Mandlikova in the middle, and an ascendant Graf and Seles at the end.

It’s one thing to have to play another good player many times. It’s another to have to play another GOAT-contender 80 times in their prime. Any weaker competition in the early rounds for Evert and Navratilova were compensated for by far stronger competition in the later rounds. Between Evert (80 times), Graf (18 times), and Seles (17 times), Navratilova played them 115 times. Between Davenport (14), Hingis (13), Venus (30), Henin (14), Clijsters (9), and Sharapova (20), Serena played them 100 times, and prime Graf, Evert, and Seles are better than ALL of Serena’s strongest competition, some by a significant margin. Navratilova played a pre-stabbing Seles more times than Serena has played anyone other than Venus, Azarenka, and Sharapova.

The only area in which Serena surpasses Navratilova is with majors, but Navratilova played Evert in 14 major finals and Graf in 6. That’s 20 times against a fellow GOAT-contender. Evert played Navratilova 14 times, Graf once (in the year Graf won her Golden Slam), and Court once (in a year Court won 3 majors) in slam finals. Serena has never had to play another GOAT-contender at any stage of a slam, much less a final.

Here are some numbers:

Major wins:
Court 24
Williams 23
Graf 22
Evert 18
Navratilova 18

Major finals:
Evert 34
Williams 33
Navratilova 32
Graf 31
Court 29

Weeks at #1
Graf 377
Navratilova 332
Williams 319
Evert 260 (but this should be higher as official rankings only began when Evert was already the current #1)
Court – not applicable

Career winning percentage:
Court 91%
Evert 90%
Graf 89%
Navratilova 87%
Williams 85%

Year-end championships:
Navratilova 8
Graf 5
Williams 5
Evert 4
Court – not applicable

Premier titles won:
Navratilova 32
Graf 31
Evert 25
Williams 22
Court 3, but really not applicable

Titles won:
Court 192
Navratilova 167
Evert 157
Graf 107
Williams 73

Longest winning streaks:
Navratilova 74
Graf 66
Court 57
Evert 55
Williams 34

My conclusion: There is no GOAT in women's tennis, not because there aren't supremelyI great players, but because their achievements are too close to differentiate one as clearly superior.

IF we are talking about ALL-TIME, the Helen Wills was the most dominate player of all time, with Lenglen a close second. Wills won 19 of the 22 or 23 majors she played. I do think Evert would have won the 3 FO titles she did not play because she played WTT instead, a case of choosing money over glory.

 

[thrust]

I am just saying Considering the vast difference in fields...pre open era and open era players shouldn't be compared. It's a bit difficult in Court's and Laver's case since many of their achievements did cover both eras but the point still stands.

AGAIN, open era ONLY applies to men's tennis. Court probably had the toughest competition throughout her entire career, starting with: Bueno, Hard, BJK, Haydon, Richey, Cassals, Goolagong Wade, Evert and Navratilova. Also, she lost at least 2 of her prime years due to a year off in 67 and a pregnancy in the early seventies.