Grand Slam Titles of the greatest players (in colours)

[Vieira151]

My statement is purely because of the rivalry - they won 18 slam titles each at the same time period. Nobody even gets close to that amount during Serena's years, except maybe Henin and Venus.

It should be noted that they would think she was the greatest, because tennis has advanced immensely, especially on the womans side, since then. Serena plays at a higher level than them, purely because that's where the sport is. In 10-15 years there will be plenty female players who play at a higher level than Serena. So Evert and Navratilova claiming such doesn't surprise me.

Serena has 23 wins and 6 finals losses (2 vs Venus, 1 vs Sharapova, then 3 against one or two time winners). Martina has 18 wins and 14 finals losses, 8 of which were to Evert and Graf, two of the greatest players of all time, and 1 to Seles, who won 8 slams in 3 years before the unfortunate event. Evert won 18 slams and lost 10 finals to Martina alone. She lost another 6 finals, including losses to Graf, Margeret Court and Billie Jean King.

Serena has not had to deal with a rivalry anywhere near as comparatively good. And this is shown by the fact that the woman's game is very shallow and unpredictable for the past 10 years or so - random players pop up to have the odd good tournament or two, but nobody has consistently been a threat to Serena, despite the huge amounts of slams that Serena hasn't won in the past decade (as mentioned before, 17 haven't been won by Serena in the past decade).

As for the records, Navratilova won 4 US Opens, and apparently that isn't close to Steffi's 5. Unfortunately the Australian Open was grass until 1988, when she was entering the twilight of her singles career. She still made 2 finals at the US Open after, where she was defeated by a prime Graf. She wasn't great on clay, but she still won it twice and made the final 3 more times to be defeated by Evert.

To be fair, this discussion is moot until Serena retires. She has plenty time to pull well clear of the others...

[Corbon]

We're only talking about Grand Slam Singles here which is only one criteria to determine the greatest though it may be the most important one. But there are still other criteria like weeks at No. 1, Year-end No. 1's, Year-end Championships won, Masters titles won, etc.

All the top male players listed here are unremarkable Doubles players, Gold medal or not. Some female players on the other hand have also won a crapload of Doubles titles. Of course, Doubles shouldn't be worth as much as Singles titles but they should be factored in somehow.

S/D/M
Navratilova 18/31/10 (won Calendar Slam in Doubles in 1984, won every Slam in S/D/M at least once)
Serena 23/13/2
Graf 22/1/0

So Serena got the Grand Slam and Olympic edge over Graf while the German is still ahead in weeks at No. 1 and overall tournaments won. But then Serena might still have a good 2017.

As for the Men, Federer is way ahead of the pack. Next comes Sampras, then Nadal, then Nole.

[Saarbrigga]

Women:
A total package of Singles, Doubles and Mixed of course Navratilova, no doubt about it.
But to me doubles and mixed (playing 2 players on each side) is like a different sport. There are so many great double players which are just average in singles (Todd Woodbringe, Mark Woodforde, the Bryan brothers, etc.) so it s difficult to compare.

Men:
I don t know who it would be if you vote on SDM all together, but certainly not Federer, Sampras or anyone of them.

[Saarbrigga]

I just updated the first page.

Federer now 20, Nadal 16.

[malik123]

Federer will get pulverized. I feel it. His mind hindrance against Nadal will go to the front except if he chooses to simply **** it and faces all the challenges. Not even Dimitrov could beat Nadal and his development is at present boundlessly better than Feds.