I have Steffi... 22 Slams by Age 29 and a Calendar Golden Slam... Serena's Loss to Vinci (2015 USO) which blew the chance at the Calendar Slam was Crucial in deciding this...
I say it's Serena. Not only did she have more slams, but her style of playing (and of her sister, Venus) changed how the women play the game. No longer is skill, speed, and craft enough (of which Steffi had an abundance), you now need to hit the gym and build the upper body muscles enough to include a power game, and not just on the serve. If the two were to play each other, I would give Serena at her prime the edge over Steffi at hers. Serena is one of only a handful of athletes that I would never bet against, even on a bad day.
An overpowering serve took a lot of enjoyment from the game for me specifically. Given that personal opine, they are/were both forces to reckon.
I was lucky enough, back in high school, to have one gym teacher who had been a tennis pro in the 60s. Managing to return a hard and fast serve can be painful and takes a lot of practice, but once you start hitting some of them back, you feel awesome! And while she didn't serve over about 95 mph, being a smallish 16 year old, it sure seemed faster!
Now you are talking about my sport of choice, guys, I will politely suggest I swim in the deep waters here that you are wading into with golashes. Ahem, While I never ever take a definitive stance ranking the all time greats in the women's game, I have no compunction handing out the nominee list. So lets start with the contenders list. Your 'list of two' is dripping with contemporary bias and confirmation bias and it presupposes that the criteria for 'sport greatness' has not changed with the times or vary with selection criteria. It definitely has and player behavior and choices during these careers, will inevitably reflect its own era's priorities and standards for greatness, over your late twentieth and 21st century definition of greatness. Here is a pretty universal opinion of the nominees in chronological order by historians of women's tennis. Pre- modern era: Susanne Lenglen, Helen Wills Moody, Maureen Connolly. Pre and post modern era: Margaret Court. Modern era: Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Serena Williams. Now you have a lot of questions to answer that will lead you to your choice. Are you measuring their best years and comparing, or their entire careers of competition from first match to final retirement? Are you prioritizing peak performance or consistency in performance? How much emphasis are you putting on the traditional 'slam' tournaments and how much weight do you give other tournaments that also contributed to global and local access to these champions and the sport, or team or national competitions like the olympics or fed cup all of which these champions were told did matter to everyone, and were sold as a duty and responsibility to the tour and sport? What role do World rankings contribute that first reflected considered opinions by sports writers of the time and then a computor generated system? Then there is the real stickler. Whatever shall we do with all those doubles and mixed competitions played in those same venues, with all those titles, rankings etc that many of these women were again, told did matter to everyone, and were sold as a duty and responsibility to the tour and sport as much as slam entrance is now? Are they now defined as eccentricies of the day, or as a completely different and irrelevant sport despite the fact that the same shots, equipment and most of the rules are precisely the same. Do we give these champions 'half credit' because they presumably did half the work, or maybe 'tiebreakers' when you guys simply can't make up your mind any other way? Just asking the questions guys, not providing the answers!
To add a different insight here, I am going to turn these two women's singles slam careers upside down and inside out and look at the underbelly as well as the glory. It makes no sense to look at the wins outside of any context of losses acrued to get them to get a better idea of their career long patterns and consistency levels. First Steffi she entered the main draw in 54 slams between 1983-1999 (17 years) and won 22 with a 90% win/loss match ratio . She won 40.7% of the major championships she entered and reached the finals of 30 slams, or 55.6% of the slams she entered and 66% of the time she was a semifinalist. 74.1% of the time Steffi reached the QFs/ Steffi's underbelly: I am just putting aside what happens in the fourth round, and looking downwards now, Graf lost in Rds 1, 2, or 3 of a major 13% of the time she played one, with 3 1st Rd losses, 1 2nd Rd losses and 3 Rd 3 losses . Serena entered 81 majors between 1998-2022 (25 years) and won 23 with an 87% win/loss match ratio. That means she won 28.4 % of those 81 and reached the finals 40.7% of the time. Serena reached the semifinals 49.4% of the time she entered a slam and the QFs 66.7% Serena's underbelly: I am just putting aside what happens in the fourth round, and looking downwards now, Serena lost in Rds 1, 2, or 3 of a major 21% of the time she played one, with 2 1st Rd losses, 3 2nd Rd losses and 11 Rd 3 losses . Steffi was definitely a more consistent performer in majors, with only one less slam to show. Now I have yet to use the word 'upset' because that involves more defining. You can define an 'upset' as failing to meet your 'seeding' If you are ranked in the top 4 seeds, then you should reach the semifinal round to uphold your seeding. Or you can define an upset as losing to an opponent seeded lower than you are. If you are ranked # 8 in the tournament, and lose to someone ranked # 16, then you have been upset in the tournament. If there is interest expressed, I can look at these losses and discover which were actually 'upsets'. I warned you, I can get really nerdy about this tennis stuff!
Court is a more controversial pick these days , but she sure should not be. Her records and stats and head to heads definitely justify her inclusion even with her two long breaks from the sport to bear children. But I do think with both of those picks, you have to credit all those doubles and mixed doubles titles to get them both over the rest of the field.
I have Steffi, too. They were both great players and I was a fan of both, but Serena blew her shot at GOAT status in my eyes when she had that meltdown at the US Open in 2018 (her lack of graciousness towards Jennifer Capriati never sat well with me, either). There's more to being the GOAT than how many matches and tournaments you win - how you handle, defeat, setbacks and adversity says even more about a person.
Serena. If Monica Seles had not been stabbed, she would have cost Stuff at least 5 of her titles. Serena also was a far better doubles player. Steffi was almost as fast as Serena and her forehand was as good. Her serve was about 85% as good as Serena's and her backhand was about 65% as good. Serena was a better volleyer as well.
hardly. Many of Court's titles were at the Australian which-at the time-did not attract the top players since it was at the end of the year and the depth in women's tennis back then was marginal compared to today. Martina was too small to beat someone like Serena consistently.
what would Steffi's record been if Seles had not been stabbed by a Graf fan. And personally I adore Steffi. I have a front row box at the ATP in Cincinnati-my father got the first pick when the stadium was built and while Steffi never played there, she sat in my box several times to watch her husband play because my seats are superior to the player's box. She's delightful and one of the most incredibly attractive women I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.
Pssst You just gave Serena credit for winning doubles in an era where there is virtually no depth in doubles. Are you planning on giving Court enhanced credit for winning doubles and mixed doubles slams when those events represented the who's who in in the womens game. Literally every doubles slam Court won was chock full of the best volleyers of all time because 8 of the top ten players in the world would have played doubles and singles at least and they were almost all serve/ volleyers as opposed to baseliners who played to get extra volley practice in. That means every Wimbledon, US National, French Open doubles and mixed that she took home would have been incredibly competitive compared to what we see now. So what I have done is used that 'weak Aussie' argument of yours reversed it and applied to far more slam titles tnan those 11 Aussie singles you are now sneering at. Serena winning a doubles slam now equates rather nicely Margaret winning an Aussie singles slam back then. Not really that impressive when you look at those draws. Be careful what standard you intend to apply. It sounds like what you are doing is just deciding the most recent players are GOAT because they are bigger stronger, more scientifically trained etc. That logic just has you looking at the top ten players from 2020-22 and doing a copy/paste job on the GOAT list. Comparing different eras is very complex indeed. If you take Serena and shove her back into 1960, she's not going to be as big, strong and tall. She's not going to serve those bombs, and hit those groundstrokes like she does today. She won't have the diet, the weight equipment, the racket, the shoes, the balls, the computer analysis etc. She and her coach can't even review her last match and take a look at what's going wrong with her forehand. Do you want to compare injury diagnosis/ treatment/ and recovery times with Margaret's or Billie Jean Kings? It must be real nice to use a racket with a sweet spot that encompasses the entire racket face and is twice the size. Evert's little wooden thing had a sweet spot not larger than the tennis ball itself. Gaining control and consistency over strokes and volleys back then was very very different art than it is now.
Court is the greatest female tennis player of all time taking into account all her titles. You could even argue she is the greatest tennis player male or female given her 64 titles vs the best male at 28 (try naming him without googling). However, I would rate Serena the greater singles player. She won at a time of greater depth, on a wider variety of surfaces and across a longer period of time. As pointed out, Court won a LOT of Australian Opens at a time when fields for that tournament were not always the best available.
Nice, and as I pointed out earlier character/personality figured into my choice of Steffi over Serena as GOAT. Your point about Seles is well taken, too, and it illustrates one of the many problems one encounters when making these comparisons.
I am not at all sure Serena did her winning on a wider variety of surfaces because she never played on carpet at all, and the disparity of speed between European clay and Wimbledon grass is not nearly as wide as it was in Court's day. By all sources, Wimbledon has worked very hard to slow down the speed of its lawn grass considerably since the 1970's by changing the texture and species of the grass. It's actually an interesting question, because Serena definitely had a wider variety of synthetic 'hard court' surfaces, she did not have as much experience on diverse grass, because the Australasian grass courts played as differently from English and American grass, as Har tru green clay did from red clay. Margaret was also among the very last players to play on a few covered court tournaments, which were covered with wood and extremely low bouncing and quick. One of the real keys to Court's success in Australia was that those grass courts were hard and dry and they tended to bounce up more than the courts from wetter climates. For tall players like Court or Mandlikova, they did better Down Under, because the chances were better that the conditions would not get heavy, soggy and slippery. Players like King, and Navratilova did better in England because they could really bend lower, keep a lower center of gravity scrape those volleys and half volleys out the the turf
I have some problems with that 'seles point' It seems to only apply to Steffi and Steffis's slams. what you are really saying is that a grand slam tournament without the best player in the world competing is by definition compromised to the point that it really ought to have some sort of asterisk, showing that the winner never had a chance to beat the best player, or the player that beat the best player. That major is 'weak' and the title is 'weak' 1. I just don't think that is true. I think to call a major tournament 'weak' you need to see several of the top 5 players out of the draw, or maybe 6 of the top 12. No single player is that important, that vital to a slam's reputation or its winner's credibility, even the best. 2. ,People are not applying the asterisk to the tournament. They are putting it on Steffi and only Steffi. We have no idea how often the winners of the Aussie, the French, Wimbledon, or the Open won, without the best player in the world in the draw, because nobody asks the question if Seles is not the best player absent. I am hear to tell you it happened a lot throughout history and my wager is that I can find more than one occasion for all of these women nominees! But we are not doing the substraction problem unless its a German winner!
what would Steffi's record been if Seles had not been stabbed by a Graf fan. And personally I adore Steffi. I have a front row box at the ATP in Cincinnati-my father got the first pick when the stadium was built and while Steffi never played there, she sate in my box several times to watch her husband play because my seats are superior to the player's box. She's delightful and one of the most incredibly attractive women I have ever had the p the depth and athleticism in the women's game in the era of Court is a shadow of what is going on now. Bottom line is that when Court was playing-the Eastern Bloc-save the Czechs, and Asia, were not turning out top athletes. It was essentially 5-7 countries. Not the world as it is now. That is the reason why most experts rate Serena #1. she was up against the best athletes in the world. not just Australia, England, France, the USA and a couple other countries
BTW Roger Federer just announced his retirement from competitive tennis. We can start arguing if he is the GOAT. I think he has a good argument but I consider Nadal the GOAT but its close between Roger ND and Rafa
With all due respect to Margaret Court, she won most of her 24 grand slams at home in Australia, with most of her titles won before the open era, when all players had to be amateurs. There was no pay, and many of the best players did not have the means to travel to Australia. Once the tournaments opened up to those who had turned pro (because most of them needed money), she started winning fewer titles. Serena, as I said earlier, changed how the game was played. There is no comparison.
For the record, I'm saying nothing of the sort. Having played many sports myself, I'm not about to apply asterisks and declare tournaments weak on account of any individual's injury. Injuries are part of sports in general and every sport and every competition in specific. Furthermore, we can contemplate the what ifs and the woulda, coulda, shouldas till the cows come home, but that's pure speculation, and pure speculation doesn't figure into who I consider the GOAT in any individual and team sport. To further reinforce my point/view, let's look at the situation with Novak Djokovic in this year's US Open. Sure, his absence in this and other tournaments will diminish his stats a bit, but in the immortal words of 49ers QB Steve Young, statistics are for idiots. No one is going to think less of Djokovic's ability, career and place in the pantheon of men's tennis. As for the tournament itself, there's no question his absence was felt, but there was also no way of predicting how he would have fared. For all we know he could have gotten injured in the first round or beaten in the second - there's no way of knowing - and who is going to hold Djokovic's absence against Carlos Alcaraz? Not me. There are a lot of things in every player's career that they cannot control, and I think reasonable people understand that. Steffi is my GOAT, in part, because she took care of the things she could control, and that's all you can expect from an athlete.
the Australian was also the last major of the year, now it is the first. There was no incentive for many amateurs to spend that kind of money, during the Christmas season, to go to Australia if they had not already the prior majors and were looking for the Grand slam-or at least the #1 ranking in the world. Now that it is first on the calendar, and the money is huge, no top 50 pro is going to ignore it. Serena was beating several rounds of full time professional athletes from all over the world. Court was beating mainly Australian Amateurs in many of her titles. When Court won her last Australian in 1973 , NINE of the top 12 seeds were Australian
That line of reasoning means accomplishments play virtually no role. We can continue to see tennis improve as training, nutrition, rackets, medicine improve. With each passing year, the same globalization forces continue promote more tennis camps, coaches, better financed olympic teams, more sponsorship deals all across the globe, and now Graf is outdated trash, just as Court, Evert, Navratilova are. All you have to do is grab the 2022 top ten list and be assured that ALL of the are better than a Graf. She should not even be mentioned in the top 40 because there is no way anyone from the 1980's to 1990's could possibly hand the ever improving ever advancing and even more professionally competitive 2020 game. The falacy is you are always moving the older player foreward and never moving the newer players backward. Serena is the perfect player, perfect body type, perfect machine, with the perfect tactics for 2020 that she is, because she was born, raised, trained and molded by her era. You shove her back to 1960, and NONE OF THIS WORKS anymore because none of it is there to create that strength, power and the rackets won't transfer it through the same stroke without those balls flying all over the place. Serena isn't Serena in 1964, anymore than Margaret is Margaret in 2020. What I think we are doing is making a ratio. We are comparing Court to Courts competitors, Graf to Graf's and Serena to Serenas, and looking to find the greatest disparity.
