Martina Navratilova
Margaret Court
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Margaret Court leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Martina Navratilova at #7 and Margaret Court at #8.
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The case for Martina Navratilova
Navratilova rewrote what a tennis career could contain. Her 167 singles titles are the most by any player in the Open Era, man or woman; add 177 doubles titles and 59 total Grand Slam trophies (18 singles, 31 women's doubles, 10 mixed) and she is the most decorated champion in the sport's history. Her peak was the most dominant sustained stretch ever played: 86-1 in 1983, a 74-match winning streak in 1984 that remains the Open Era record, six consecutive majors across 1983-84, and 331 total weeks at No.1. Her record 9 Wimbledon singles titles included six in a row. Beyond the numbers, she changed the sport's methods — the first champion built on modern strength training, nutrition and sports science, a full decade before it became standard — and her 80-match rivalry with Chris Evert (43-37 Navratilova) is the longest great rivalry tennis has produced. She won her last major, mixed doubles at the 2006 US Open, at age 49.
The case for Margaret Court
Court's 24 Grand Slam singles titles stood alone as the all-time record for half a century until Djokovic equalled it in 2023, and her 64 total majors across singles, doubles and mixed will never be approached. She won the calendar Grand Slam in 1970 — a season crowned by a 14-12, 11-9 Wimbledon final over Billie Jean King, still the longest women's final by games — and she completed the 'boxed set' of every major in every discipline, a feat unique in tennis history. The era caveat is real and must be stated: 11 of her singles majors came at the Australian Championships in years when most top internationals did not make the trip, and her totals straddle the amateur-open divide. But she also won 13 majors after the Open Era began, against fully professional fields, and her serve-and-volley athleticism — she was among the first women to train with weights — was a generation ahead of her peers. Wherever one ranks her, the record book starts with her name.