Wimbledon uncovered #4: The best matches of all time in SW19 are ...
Sporting Intelligence readers and followers have nominated their all-time favourite matches at The All England Club, and they contain some absolute classics
Our four-part series on Wimbledon concludes today with a rundown of the five greatest matches ever to have been played on the lawns of The All England Club, as voted by the readers of Sporting Intelligence.
On day one of the series there was a 4,500-word opus about why Wimbledon is the best organised and most democratic event in sport, detailing the 10 secrets of its success.
On day two there was the frankly gob-smacking story of the player who fixed a match in plain sight on Wimbledon’s No.14 Court, and then doubled down on his cheating by getting multiple drugs bans - but not before he had turned into an unreliable snitch for the authorities.
On day three, yesterday, there was an objective performance-based assessment of the 20 greatest players to have graced Wimbledon in the Open era since 1968. My favourite tennis player to watch, ever, was Roger Federer, and the only spoiler I’ll give you about yesterday’s piece is he wasn’t No1. Or No..2. Or No.3. Or No.4. Or No.5.
That is ridiculous, but when you’re using an objective system, you have to go with what the numbers say. And there was an absolutely remarkable top 10.
Back to the greatest ever matches, there were hundreds of nominations for dozens of contests, nominated either in the comments section of a previous article or via X (the artist formerly known as Twitter), or via our Facebook page, or via DMs and email.
“Greatest” is clearly subjective. One of the final top five matches (revealed below) actually left me pretty bored at the time, to be honest, although it impressed lots of people and I can understand why without agreeing.
Two of the final top three are my own two favourite Wimbledon matches ever, and I was lucky enough to watch both of them live. Being there probably influenced me, but they were both absolute crackers.
There is only one women’s match in the top five and it doesn’t even feature Martina Navratilova, who won her maiden Slam singles title in a Wimbledon classic against Chris Evert in 1978. The pair are pictured below.
And the one women’s match that is in the top five isn’t the 1988 women’s final either, the final I mentioned in the first piece in the series, that I listened to on a radio in a collapsing tent at a rainy Calais campsite in 1988. Navratilova had a 7-5, 2-0 lead in that before Steffi Graf won 12 of the last 13 games. It was a classic, and an extraordinary Graf comeback for the ages.
Before we get on to that top five, I’ll quickly rattle through a few of the other nominated matches that didn’t make that list. Note that I’ll use the names people used to vote, often on social media where many folk use nicknames or quirky handles.
‘Beast Monarch’ said their favourite Wimbledon match ever was Pete Sampras being beaten by Roger Federer in the fourth round in five sets, “for both the quality of the match and its historical significance.”
Federer didn’t win that year; he lost to Tim Henman in the quarters. But it signalled a changing of the guard, Federer going on to win more Wimbledon titles than Sampras had.
‘Mickrab’ nominated Bjorn Borg versus Vitas Gerulaitis in 1977, saying: “No other answer allowed.” That match was a five-set thriller between friends and practice partners in a semi-final (below) that led to Borg reaching a second straight Wimbledon final.
Andy Murray’s inaugural Wimbledon final win against Novak Djokovic in 2013 was nominated by Ellis Redding, among others, but didn’t get enough votes for the top five. It was historic in British tennis terms as Murray became the first Brit to win the Wimbledon title since Fred Perry in 1936, ending a 77-year hoodoo. But it was, perhaps against the odds, a straight-sets 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 win and while hugely important, lacked the drama of other matches.
Other nominations that didn’t make the top five included Borg’s five-set semi-final win in 1981 over Jimmy Connors (nominated by CK) and Novak Djokovic’s five-set semi-final win over Rafa Nadal in 2018, with Djokovic winning the battle of the endurance bunnies 10-8 in the fifth.
When I asked readers to nominate their best ever Wimbledon matches, I expected maybe somebody would nominate the first singles title won by Andy Murray at Wimbledon, which was Olympic gold in 2012. He beat Roger Federer in straight sets just four weeks after losing to him in the Wimbledon final in four sets on the same court. But nobody picked that.
To state the bleeding obvious there have been a LOT of magnificent matches at Wimbledon down the years. But on to the top five as voted by you, the readers.