Best Tennis Players of All Time: Men and Women Ranked | Tips.GG

Two players in the history of tennis have won 24 Grand Slam singles titles. One of them played her last major in 1975, the other reached an Australian Open final in February 2026 at the age of 38. Ranking them against each other requires deciding what those 24 titles are actually worth, and most lists that put men and women together decline to make that call.

This one makes it. The best tennis players of all time are usually split into two rankings, which is defensible — the tours are separate, the formats differ, the history diverged in 1970. It also leaves the most-asked question in the sport unanswered.

What follows is a single ranking of 20 players, men and women, built on one set of criteria applied identically to both tours. The individual cases live elsewhere: our men’s top 10 and women’s top 10 argue each player in full. This page does the thing neither of them can — puts them on one scale.

How We Rank the Best Tennis Players of All Time

A ranking that only counts trophies collapses on contact with the evidence. Ken Rosewall was barred from the majors for 11 years. Margaret Court won 11 Australian titles against fields missing most of the world’s best. Monica Seles was stabbed on court at 19. Bill Tilden competed when reaching Australia meant a month at sea.

Seven criteria, weighted as follows. This is the methodology behind all three of our all-time tennis rankings, and it is applied identically to both tours.

Criterion	Description	Weight
Major titles	Grand Slam singles titles, plus the professional majors won by players banned from the amateur game before 1968, adjusted for era and field depth	High
Era dominance	Weeks at world No. 1, year-end finishes, winning streaks	High
Strength of opposition	Quality of the field beaten; pre-1968 titles discounted	High
Peak level	How far clear of the field a player was at their best, judged on win rates and finals records	Medium
Surface versatility	Titles won on clay, grass and hard courts	Medium
Longevity	Years spent genuinely contending, including comebacks and late-career majors	Medium
Influence on the sport	Impact on the professional game beyond results	Low

Figures come from ATP and WTA ranking records, Grand Slam archives, the International Tennis Hall of Fame and Bud Collins’ History of Tennis for pre-Open Era results, where world rankings were compiled by journalists rather than computers.

One note that matters more here than on either single-tour list. This ranking does not reorder either tour: the men appear in the same sequence as our men’s top 10, the women in the same sequence as our women’s top 10. The only judgement this page adds is how the two lists interleave — and that judgement is set out below the table.

Best Tennis Players of All Time: The Top 20, Men and Women

Ten men, ten women, counting down from twentieth.

Rank	Player	Tour	Major titles	Time at world No. 1
20	Venus Williams	Women’s	7	11 weeks
19	Martina Hingis	Women’s	5	209 weeks
18	Ivan Lendl	Men’s	8	270 weeks
17	Justine Henin	Women’s	7	117 weeks
16	Ken Rosewall	Men’s	8 + 15 pro	Pre-rankings era
15	Bill Tilden	Men’s	10 + 3 pro	6 years, 1920–25
14	Monica Seles	Women’s	9	178 weeks
13	Pancho Gonzales	Men’s	2 + 12 pro	8 years, 1952–60
12	Björn Borg	Men’s	11	109 weeks
11	Pete Sampras	Men’s	14	286 weeks
10	Billie Jean King	Women’s	12	Pre-rankings era
9	Chris Evert	Women’s	18	260 weeks
8	Margaret Court	Women’s	24	Pre-rankings era
7	Rod Laver	Men’s	11 + 8 pro	Pre-rankings era
6	Martina Navratilova	Women’s	18	332 weeks
5	Roger Federer	Men’s	20	310 weeks
4	Rafael Nadal	Men’s	22	209 weeks
3	Steffi Graf	Women’s	22	377 weeks
2	Serena Williams	Women’s	23	319 weeks
1	Novak Djokovic	Men’s	24	428 weeks

Computer rankings began in 1973 for the men and 1975 for the women. Players whose careers predate them are judged on contemporary world No. 1 recognition instead: Tilden held it for six straight years, Gonzales for eight, and Court, King, Laver and Rosewall through periods when the top ranking was decided by journalists rather than points.

The Calls That Decide This List

Merging two rankings is not an averaging exercise. Four decisions determine everything above, and each of them is contestable.

Djokovic ahead of Court on the same major count. Both have 24. Thirteen of Court’s came before the Open Era began in 1968, eleven of them Australian titles won when the field routinely lacked the world’s best. Djokovic’s 24 came against full professional draws, alongside the records for weeks at No. 1, year-end finishes and Masters 1000 titles. Strength of opposition carries High weight, and it separates them decisively.

Serena second, ahead of Graf. The two heaviest criteria pull in opposite directions here. Graf leads on era dominance — 377 weeks at No. 1 is the women’s record and second only to Djokovic overall. Serena leads on strength of opposition, across a span half again as long: 18 years between her first major and her last, against Graf’s 12. Where a criterion tie has to break, this list breaks it toward the player who beat more, for longer, which puts Serena ahead by a margin thin enough to reverse under a different weighting.

Laver seventh, ahead of Court. The closest call on the page, and the one that most exposes the methodology. Both completed the calendar Grand Slam — Court in 1970, Laver in 1962 and 1969. Court’s Grand Slam total is more than double his official count. But the discount applied to each is different in kind: Court’s pre-Open majors are discounted because of who she beat, Laver’s missing majors were never available to him at all. Penalising an absence caused by a ban and a weakness caused by a thin draw at the same rate would be the easier call. It would also be the wrong one.

Navratilova sixth, ahead of Federer. Eighteen singles majors put her level with Evert and behind five of the ten men here once professional majors are counted. Every other criterion moves her up: 332 weeks at No. 1, the record nine Wimbledon singles titles, a 74-match streak that still stands, and 59 majors across all three disciplines, more than anyone else in the Open Era. This is the clearest case on the list of a player whose headline number is the least informative thing about her.

Who Is the Tennis GOAT, Male or Female?

Novak Djokovic, on the evidence available. He leads or matches the field on every measure that exists on both tours simultaneously: most major singles titles (24, level with Court), most weeks at world No. 1 (428, ahead of Graf’s 377), most year-end No. 1 finishes (eight, level with Graf), and a career Golden Slam completed in Paris in 2024.

No other player matches him on more than one of those. Court matches the major count and nothing else. Graf matches the year-end finishes and holds the only calendar Golden Slam ever completed, which remains the single most impressive season anyone has produced. Serena has the longest span of dominance against the deepest fields. Navratilova has the most majors across all disciplines in the Open Era.

Three caveats worth stating plainly, because the comparison has real limits.

• Format. Men play best of five at the majors, women best of three. Longer matches reward physical durability differently, and win percentages are not directly comparable across the two.
• Tour history. The women’s professional tour began in 1970 and computer rankings in 1975. The men’s amateur-professional split distorted major counts for two decades before 1968. Neither tour offers a clean continuous record.
• Field depth. Draw sizes, prize money and the number of countries producing elite players have all changed at different rates on the two tours, which makes strength of opposition the hardest criterion to apply across them.

Those caveats explain why the debate stays open. They do not change where the numbers currently point.

All-Time Tennis Records at a Glance

The records that anchor every version of this argument, across both tours.

Record	Holder	Mark
Most Grand Slam singles titles, all-time	Margaret Court, Novak Djokovic	24 each
Most Grand Slam singles titles, Open Era	Novak Djokovic	24
Most Grand Slam singles titles, Open Era, women	Serena Williams	23
Most major titles across all disciplines, all-time	Margaret Court	64
Most major titles across all disciplines, Open Era	Martina Navratilova	59
Most weeks at world No. 1	Novak Djokovic	428
Most weeks at world No. 1, women	Steffi Graf	377
Most consecutive weeks at world No. 1	Roger Federer	237
Most titles at a single major	Rafael Nadal	14 French Opens
Most Wimbledon singles titles	Martina Navratilova	9
Calendar Grand Slam in singles	Budge, Connolly, Laver (×2), Court, Graf	5 players, 6 occasions
Calendar Golden Slam in singles	Steffi Graf	1988
Longest winning streak, Open Era	Martina Navratilova	74 matches
Highest career win rate, Open Era, women	Chris Evert	1,309–146, roughly 90%

The Full Rankings, Tour by Tour

The men’s list is shaped by two eras that could not be less alike. The Big Three took almost every major between 2003 and 2023 and pushed the record totals somewhere the previous generation never approached. Before 1968, the opposite distortion applied: the best players in the world turned professional and were locked out of every major for a decade or more, which is why four of our top 10 have official Slam counts that badly understate them.

Read the full ranking of the best male tennis players of all time, with the case for each of the ten and honourable mentions for Alcaraz, Connors, McEnroe, Agassi and Kramer.

The women’s list carries a problem the men’s does not. Three of its top four competed in eras where one player could be reliably better than everyone else for a decade, and the current game has closed that window entirely. It also carries the sport’s widest era gap: the difference between winning an Australian title in 1963 and winning one in 2003 is greater on the women’s side than anywhere in men’s tennis.

Read the full ranking of the best female tennis players of all time, with the case for each of the ten and honourable mentions for Lenglen, Wills Moody, Clijsters, Osaka and Świątek.

Why This List May Not Change for a While

Lists like this normally have a shelf life. This one may not.

Everything the criteria above reward — weeks at No. 1, year-end finishes, majors stacked into a single decade — requires one player to be better than everyone else for long enough to accumulate them. That condition is disappearing. Wimbledon has produced ten different women’s champions in ten editions through 2026, and this year’s US Open reached its second round with none of Djokovic, Federer or Nadal in the draw, the first time a major has done so since Roland Garros in 2003.

Carlos Alcaraz is the exception worth watching, with seven majors at 23 and the youngest career Grand Slam in history. Jannik Sinner has five and the most reliable baseline in the sport. Iga Świątek has six and titles on every surface. Mirra Andreeva and Coco Gauff both have majors before turning 22.

None of them has held world No. 1 long enough to register on the criteria used here, and the depth of the current game makes that harder to fix than winning another major. A Djokovic-sized career needs a decade of clear water. Nobody currently playing has found any.