Tennis is a sport that affords one a long-lasting, robust career – if you’re good enough, you can round up titles in double digits in your cabinets before you retire. At the same time, retired players are often left unsung compared to what’s common in other sports worldwide.
While you wouldn’t blame the fans that much, you can’t ignore the fact that the media focus on current active players and barely mention the retired folks during commentaries. Of course, it makes sense to focus on the now while doing your job, but these tennis greats deserve some accolades once in a while. If not, the sports become no more different from promoter platforms like Captaingambling, which only focus on the latest betting offers instead of giving all-around information to these casino platforms.
Top 15 Most Decorated Male and Female Tennis Players.
While we must first acknowledge that men and women professional tennis players participate in the sport in different categories, we’ve decided to create a combined list of the most decorated players from both categories of tennis.
William Tatem Tiden
Kicking off the list is William Tiden, popularly known as “Big Bill”, who was an active American tennis player from 1931-1946. Being the first to win the Wimbledon championship, it’ll be a shame if he didn’t have a trophy-laden career to get him on a list like this. During his 15-year career, he gathered twelve major titles, including seven US Open titles.
Björn Rune Borg
Next is the Swedish man, Bork, who won the Wimbledon grand slam a whooping five times in a row. His sports exploits make him the first player in the modern era to win 10 majors. In total, he’s got 16 grand slam titles, including five at Wimbledon, four at the US Open, and six at the French Open.
Rod Laver
Rod Laver is the second of four male players to win each major title twice – he’s only behind Roy Emerson in this feat. In his 15 years as an active pro-tennis player, he managed to rack up 200 titles, including 10 grand slams.
Billie Jean King
There is no better way to add women to the list than to start with Billie Jean. In her 22 years as a Pro-tennis player, she won 12 grand slams. In 1971, she became the first female athlete to break through a $100,000 milestone in a single year. Her contributions in setting up the Women’s Tennis Association to officiate the women’s league earned her the office of the first president of the WTA – she retired as one of the most powerful tennisers of all time.
Roy Emerson
Emerson holds the record of being the first male player to win 12 grand slams – a record he held for three decades before being overtaken by Pete Sampras in 2000. He won the Australian Open six times, a record held for over five decades until Novak Djokovic overtook him in 2017.
Pete Sampras
Pete strolls in at tenth place with 14 majors under his belt. If you’ve been following tennis for a while, you may have heard about a serial grand slam winner who never got his hands on the French Open – he’s the one.
Martina Navrátilová
On the ninth spot is Martina Navrátilová, the title record opening of the Open era – she has 167 career titles in professional tennis, including 31 grand slams, 18 of which were in the Open era.
Chris Evert
In the eighth position is Chris Evert, the woman with a 90% career win rate. She has 18 grand slam titles, with a total title count of 189.
Helen Wills
Resting o seventh place is Helen Wills, a two-time Olympic champion with a single winning streak from 1926 to 1932. She has an impressive 19 grand slam title to her name.
Roger Federer
Now for some of the names, you may be used to in modern tennis. Currently, in his 40s, Roger Federer is often seen as the greatest of all time, even though other, more decorated players are in the game. He has 20 grand slam titles on his name and a total of 103 career titles in the Open era. He’s 3rd place on the ranking of men with the grandest slams.
Novak Djokovic
Djokovic is a Serbian professional tennis player that’s been ranked No. 1 for a record 373 weeks – that means he’s been really busy in modern-day tennis. Although he has only 91 career titles, 21 are grand slams, earning him the fifth spot on the list.
Steffi Graff
Steffi Graff appears in the fourth spot as the 3rd all-time holder of most titles in women's tennis – she had 107 titles. Of her 107 titles, 22 were grand slams – not bad for someone who retried with an 88% win rate.
Rafael Nadal
In the third position is the King of Clay, Rafael Nadal, a player with the grandest slams in men’s professional tennis. He’s known as the King of Clay because of his complete dominance on the surface – 14 of his 22 grand slam titles were from the surface. He’s still the record winner at Roland Garros, a record that may not be broken for a long time.
Serena Williams
Even though Serena has only 73 career titles, she still makes the second spot because of her impressive 23 grand slam wins. Only second to Margaret Court, she’s without question one of the most decorated tennis players of all time.
Margaret Court
The woman in the first position needs no introduction – she’s the record holder of the grandest slams in professional tennis, with over 24 grand slams in her 17-year career. She had 192 career titles, of which 92 were in the Open era, and 62 were majors.
