Serena Williams
Roger Federer
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Dead even across the measured categories. Our all-time ranking places Serena Williams at #2 and Roger Federer at #3.
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The case for Serena Williams
Serena Williams won her first major at the 1999 US Open at age 17 and her 23rd — the Open Era record for any player, man or woman — at the 2017 Australian Open while roughly eight weeks pregnant. Between those bookends lies the most sustained excellence in women's sports history: 23 Slam finals won from 33 contested, 319 weeks at No.1 including a 186-week consecutive run that tied Steffi Graf's record, four Olympic gold medals, and two separate 'Serena Slams' (holding all four majors at once) completed eleven years apart, in 2002-03 and 2014-15. She won majors as a teenager and in her mid-thirties, beat No.1-ranked opponents across three different decades, and returned from a 2011 pulmonary embolism to compile arguably her best stretch, going 3.5 seasons from 2012 with a match record above 90 percent. Her serve is widely considered the greatest shot in the history of women's tennis. On dominance relative to field, she has a case for the top spot on any list.
The case for Roger Federer
Federer's statistical case rests on a peak no one has matched: between 2004 and 2008 he held the No.1 ranking for a record 237 consecutive weeks, reached 18 of 19 Grand Slam finals from 2005-2010, and made 23 consecutive Slam semifinals — a streak of durable excellence that may be the safest record in tennis. He finished with 20 majors, 310 total weeks at No.1, 103 tour titles (second in the Open Era only to Connors), a record 8 Wimbledons, and 6 ATP Finals crowns. The aesthetic argument — the effortless movement, the all-court shotmaking that drew Wallace's 'religious experience' essays — is inseparable from his impact: he globalised the sport's audience in the 2000s like no player before him. The counterargument is equally clear: losing head-to-heads against both Nadal (16-24) and Djokovic (23-27), and a 2004-07 stretch inflated by a weaker field than his rivals faced. His 2017 Australian Open, won at 35 off a six-month injury layoff by beating Nadal in five sets, remains the most romantic single result of the era.