Wimbledon uncovered #3: The G.O.A.T Matrix
In which I measure longevity, consistency and performance at SW19 to rank the greatest players to take to the grass in the Open Era
By Nick Harris at The All England Club
There are numerous ways you can rank the greatest players in Wimbledon history. In the Open Era since 1968 - when Grand Slam tennis has been a global game played by professionals in 128-competitor draws - there have arguably been 20 contenders.
Those players, 12 men and eight women, have each won at least two Wimbledon singles titles in that period, with 19 of them having win percentages of more than 80% in their matches on the lawns of the All England Club (AELTC), and most of them going deep into a majority of their SW19 tournaments.
One obvious way to rank them is by number of singles titles, which would put Roger Federer at No.1 among the men, with eight singles titles on the grass here, and Martina Navratilova No.1 among the women, with nine Wimbledon singles titles.
The full contenders in the men’s game would be Federer (8 singles titles at Wimbledon), Pete Sampras and Novak Djokovic (both 7), Bjorn Borg (5), John McEnroe and Boris Becker (3), then Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Jimmy Connors, Stefan Edberg, Rafa Nadal and Andy Murray (two each in the Open Era).
And in the women’s game they would be Navratilova (9), Steffi Graf and Serena Williams (both 7), Venus Williams (5), Billie Jean King (4), Chris Evert (3), Evonne Goolagong and Petra Kvitová (two each).
If you ranked the same players by the longevity of their Wimbledon singles careers, then Martina Navratilova would be clear No.1, with 31 years between her debut in 1973 and her final singles match in 2004 in SW19, aged 47.
Venus Williams would be next, with 26 years between her first Wimbledon in 1997 and her last in 2022, followed by her sister Serena, who made her debut on the grass in 1998 and last played singles here in 2022.
Roger Federer has the greatest longevity among the men mentioned above, with his Wimbledon debut (1999) and last hurrah (2021) being 22 years apart. Jimmy Connors had 20 years between his debut (1972) and last Wimbledon match (1992), a figure Novak Djokovic will equal if he is still here next year.
But is there another way to measure brilliance, by somehow quantifying the consistency of excellence in each of these 20 players’ careers?
I think there might be. First you can look at their win percentage in the Wimbledon singles over the years. Which of these players had wins on more than 90% of the occasions they stepped onto the court, and which had to make do with ‘only’ the high 80s?
And also, what would the stats look like if you graded each year’s result, awarding 128 points for winning in any given year, and half as many for being runner-up, and 32 for being a losing semi-finalist, and so on down to just one point for a first-round exit?
You don’t need to do the number-crunching, because I’ve done it for you. What follows are the best 10 players according to their excellence of consistency in Wimbledon singles tournaments, and then a summary of how all 20 compare.