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7 greatest women’s tennis players of all time

Making a list of ‘best of all time’ is a highly subjective proposition, especially in women’s tennis where we have been spoiled with a plethora of great champions. Since women were first allowed to participate in Grand Slam tennis at Wimbledon in 1884, the sport has seen 135 different Grand Slam champions – from Maud Watson in 1884 to Sofia Kenin at the Australian Open 2020.30 different women have won at least five Grand Slam singles titles. And out of those, 10 have managed to complete the ‘Career Grand Slam’, that is, winning all four Majors at least once.

Billie Jean King, despite being only seventh on this list, is perhaps the most influential tennis player of all time – among both men and women.Along with being a feminist icon of the 20th century, Billie Jean King also dominated women’s tennis in the 1960s and 70s. Without King, women’s tennis would have been at least two decades behind where it is today, and perhaps still serving as a backdrop to the men’s category.King is the founder of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), the governing body of women’s tennis today. Even if it meant risking her own tennis career, the American stood up for the betterment and unity of female tennis players.However, that is not to say that Billie Jean King didn’t have an illustrious tennis career. King is one of just 10 female tennis players to have completed the Career Grand Slam, and her 12 singles titles places her sixth in the all-time list.Between 1966 to 1975, Billie Jean King won six titles at Wimbledon, four at the US Open and a title apiece at Roland Garros and the Australian Open.Billie Jean King, despite being only seventh on this list, is perhaps the most influential tennis player of all time – among both men and women.Along with being a feminist icon of the 20th century, Billie Jean King also dominated women’s tennis in the 1960s and 70s. Without King, women’s tennis would have been at least two decades behind where it is today, and perhaps still serving as a backdrop to the men’s category.King is the founder of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), the governing body of women’s tennis today.

Even if it meant risking her own tennis career, the American stood up for the betterment and unity of female tennis players.However, that is not to say that Billie Jean King didn’t have an illustrious tennis career. King is one of just 10 female tennis players to have completed the Career Grand Slam, and her 12 singles titles places her sixth in the all-time list.When a 15-year-old Monica Seles burst on to the scene in 1989, she stunned almost everyone in the tennis world – including a certain Steffi Graf.Seles played with an unconventional two-handed forehand and possessed amazing retrieving skills, fitness and speed.

She was an all-out aggressive player, who hit winners at will while standing inside the baseline to return serves.By the end of 1989 (her first year on tour), Monica Seles was ranked as high as number six in the world.The next year, Seles went on a 36-match winning streak. Her win at 1990 Roland Garros made her the youngest Grand Slam singles winner (16 years, six months) in the Open Era, before Martina Hingis broke that record seven years later.By the 1993 Australian Open, Seles had a total of eight Grand Slam titles – only three behind that of the then 23-year-old Steffi Graf. And this was even before Seles had turned 20.Margaret Court was among the earliest players to incorporate fitness and weight training into tennis. And it paid rich dividends for her on the tennis court, as she enjoyed a long career unhindered by injuries.

Court holds the all-time record for most Grand Slam singles titles (24) by a player, male or female. In addition, Court also won 19 doubles Grand Slam titles and 21 in mixed doubles, taking her total Slam haul to a record 64 titles – again, the most by any player in the history of tennis.Court is one of only three players to complete the Career Grand Slam in all three categories (singles, doubles and mixed doubles), a term known as the ‘Boxed Set’. Moreover, she is the only one to achieve the Boxed Set on multiple occasions.The Australian won a title in alThe Yugoslav phenom had the opportunity to complete the coveted ‘Calendar Slam’ (winning all four Majors in the same calendar year) in 1992 at the age of 18, but fell to Graf in a lopsided Wimbledon final.Despite winning eight Grand Slam titles as a teenager, Monica Seles remains one of the most poignant stories in the history of tennis. It’s a story of what might have been if not for a deranged idiot named Gunter Parche attacking her at Hamburg in 1993.Seles was leading in her quarterfinal match against Magdalena Maleeva, when Parche rushed on to the court from the stands and stabbed her in the back. The World No. 1 was rushed to hospital, where she received extensive treatment.Seles’ physical injuries healed in a few weeks, but the mental scars lingered for a long time. She was never the same player again.The perpetrator had a sick obsession over Steffi Graf, whom Seles had beaten in the the Australian Open final earlier that year. Parche attacked Seles because he wanted his favorite to return to the No. 1 position, but he didn’t spend a day of jail-time as courts in Germany deemed him to be psychoPlayers we could not leave out…
I didn’t want to do an ‘Honorable Mentions’ section in this article. But I cannot, in my right sense, leave out certain players without giving them a mention. The most notable and deserving candidates who just missed the top seven are Justine Henin, Maria Sharapova, Martina Hingis and Venus Williams.Of course it had to be THE Serena Williams at the top.Many experts believe it’s a toss-up between Williams and Graf for the numero uno spot in the all-time list. But Williams might have put the debate to bed by winning the Australian Open title in 2017 at the age of 35.Serena Williams possesses a powerful serve – the best ever seen in the women’s game, rivaled only by her sister Venus. Her game is all about the first strike; Serena likes to take immediate control of a rally, and force her opponents into submission with consistent and aggressive groundstrokes off both wings.She also boasts strong volleying skills, and has handy touch at the net.In her career that has now spanned across four decades, Serena has won a total of 23 Grand slam singles titles – the most by any tennis player in the Open Era. Perhaps more importantly, she is only one short of Margaret Court’s all-time record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles.

With at least three titles at each of the four Majors, Serena is also just one Roland Garros win away from equaling Graf’s record of four ‘Career Grand Slams’ in singles.Although she hasn’t accomplished the calendar-year Grand Slam, Serena Williams has on two different occasions held all four Grand Slams at the same time. She also holds the Open Era record in women’s tennis for the most singles titles won at the Australian Open (7) and the US Open (6).Williams, however, has not been the epitome of consistency during her career. She is one of those players whose c