After Roger Federer won his seventh Wimbledon Men’s Single Championship, and Serena Williams won her fifth Ladies’ Single Championship this past weekend, the question arises if either or both of them are the best tennis players ever.
Federer has now won 17 Grand Slam Championships, which puts him 3 ahead of Pete Sampras, in 3 fewer years of winning Grand Slams. He hadn’t won a Grand Slam in 2 1/2 years, and was thought to have slipped behind Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic into 3rd place of the world’s best men’s tennis players. But after Nadal was eliminated early, and Federer defeated Djokovic in the semifinals, Federer beat hometown favorite Andy Murray in the finals, in 4 sets. Once again, Federer is the #1 player in the world, tying him for the most weeks at #1 with Pete Sampras at 286. They are also tied for the most Wimbledon titles with 7 each. Not bad for a so-called washed-up 30 year old.
Serena Williams won her 14th Grand Slam Championship on Saturday, defeating Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland in 3 sets. The argument for Serena being the best ever is much more difficult. There are 5 women still ahead of her in Grand Slam victories, including Margaret Court with 24, and Steffi Graf with 22 titles. I’m sure Serena’s number of Grand Slam titles would be higher if she didn’t have her sister, Venus, winning 7 titles herself. However Steffi Graf is still 8 titles ahead of Serena, and should be considered the best player of the last 40 years, and Serena is the dominant player of the last 15 years.
While the facts do seem to show that Federer is the greatest men’s tennis player of all time, Serena still has quite a bit of work to do, to be the best women’s player ever. Both just won the most recent Grand Slam at the age of 30. Ironically, Roger Federer and Serena Williams are less than 2 months apart in age, and still going very strong.