Tennis.com's 25 Greatest male Players of the Open Era

[timnz]

Wilander should be below Becker and Edberg

It should be this order:

Becker - 6 Slams, 5 Season end finals (3 WTF, 1 WCT Final, 1 Grand Slam Cup), 49 Titles overall
Edberg - 6 Slams, 1 Season end final (1 WTF), 41 Titles overall
Wilander - 7 Slams, 0 Season end finals, 33 Titles

People tend to forget that in the 80's and 90's indoor tennis was a big deal - winning the season end finals was a really big deal. Becker was hugely dominant over Edberg. Yes he was 1-2 at Wimbledon, but his overall H2H over Edberg was 25-10, and in best of 5 set matches Becker was equally dominant (WCT Finals, Davis Cup, Finals matches at Masters 1000 equivalents etc).

 

[JoelSandwich]

Hope borg will be above Novak

 

[Sudacafan]

McEnroe and Lendl above Connors? Lmao no way.

I agree (not with you).

 

[Sudacafan]

16. GUILLERMO VILAS
Years played: 1969–1992
Titles: 62
Major titles: 4

When Vilas burst onto the pro tour in 1974 at age 21, he was like a ray of brilliant sunshine. The outfits he wore were bright yellow. But that wasn’t all that was exotic about this sensitive youth. His hair was long, and he came from a country, Argentina, that was new to tennis fans of an Anglo-dominated era. Vilas recited poetry, studied Buddhism, dropped out of law school and wore a bracelet to honor the fallen in Vietnam. With his arrival, the counterculture of the 1960s finally invaded the clubby world of pro tennis.

“I liked the creativity of the game,” Vilas told Sports Illustrated. “When someone said, ‘Come to the court,’ it was like saying, ‘Come paint,’ only better.”

Yet this soulful athlete succeeded with a style based not on aesthetic beauty, but brute physical prowess. Nicknamed the Young Bull of the Pampas, Vilas bludgeoned opponents with his tree-trunk left arm and used his iron-man stamina to grind them into his beloved red clay. Eight-hour practice sessions helped Vilas put together a season in 1977 that was unrivaled in its combination of excellence and endurance. That year, he won 17 events, including two majors, and his 145-15 record included a men’s-record 46 straight wins.

Vilas’ career statistics were suitably Herculean: 23 years on tour, 929 wins, 62 titles (49 on clay), four majors. But one number would elude him: 1. “The Eternal Second,” as he was dubbed by the Argentine press, was always a half-step behind his more famous colleagues Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors—somehow, Vilas would even finish 1977 ranked No. 2 behind the American. Looking back, though, this poet-player’s mix of the physical and philosophical remains what it was when he made his debut: something unique and exotic under the sporting sun. Vilas may have been eternally second, but he never played second-fiddle.

Defining Moment: At Forest Hills in 1975, Vilas led eventual champion Manuel Orantes by two sets to one and 5-0 in the fourth set—before somehow losing. So it was poetic justice that this sometime-poet returned to the scene of that disaster in 1977, and became the first South American man to win the US Open.

Watch: Guillermo Vilas wins the 1977 US Open

Vilas not being #1 even for a single week during that mighty 1977 is one of the most terrible injustices of the ATP rankings.