Tennis Champions
Like many other sports with a long history, the game of tennis has evolved greatly over the span of the last 60 years, and comparing players from different periods is tricky at best.
One generally agreed indicator of performance is the number of wins in Grand Slam tournaments. Tracking men singles’ titles wins from 1968, the beginning of the “open era”, when all major international tournaments opened up to both professionals and amateurs (at least in principle) and including only players with at least 2 wins to their credit, yields the following national ranking (in parenthesis the player with most wins):
- USA, 48 wins (Sampras, 14)
- Australia, 42 wins (Emerson, 12)
- Sweden, 24 wins (Borg, 11)
- Switzerland, 15 wins, all by Federer!
- Spain 12 wins (Nadal 10)
- Czechoslovakia, 11 wins (Lendl, 8)
- Argentina, 5 wins (Vilas, 4)
- Russia,4 wins (Kafelnikov and Safin, 2 each)
- Serbia and Brazil, 3 wins, all by N. Djokovic and Kuerten
- Romania, 2 wins, both by Nastase
The top individual players by the same criterion are:
- R. Federer (Switzerland), 15 wins
- P. Sampras (USA), 14 wins
- R. Emerson (Australia), 12 wins
- Rod Laver (Australia) and B. Borg (Sweden), 11 wins each
- R. Nadal (Spain), 10 wins
- J. Connors (USA), A. Agassi (USA), K. Rosewall (Australia), I. Lendl (Czech.), 8 wins each
- J. McEnroe (USA), J. Newcombe (Australia), M. Wilander (Sweden), 7 wins each.
