Serena Williams Reaches for Margaret Court at the Top - The New York Times

Serena Williams will face Bianca Andreescu of Canada in the United States Open final on Saturday in a quest to notch her 24th Grand Slam singles title, which would equal the mark of Margaret Court, above, who has held sole possession of the women’s record for decades.

The women at the top of the list of Grand Slam titles span many eras of tennis history, starting from a time when these championships were not considered the absolute currency that they are now when discussing the greatest players ever.

The Women With the Most Grand Slam Singles Titles

AUSTRALIAN

OPEN

FRENCH

OPEN

UNITED STATES

OPEN

Margaret

Court

Serena

Williams

Steffi

Graf

Helen

Wills Moody

Chris

Evert

Martina

Navratilova

AUSTRALIAN

OPEN

FRENCH

OPEN

UNITED STATES

OPEN

Margaret

Court

Serena

Williams

Steffi

Graf

Helen

Wills Moody

Chris

Evert

Martina

Navratilova

When players in the past set their tournament schedules, their priorities were often overall titles, holding the No. 1 ranking or prize-money standings.

In today’s game, players like Williams play a limited schedule of smaller tournaments, focusing instead on the Grand Slam events.

The six women with the most singles titles have taken different paths to the top of the list: Williams and Court both missed time while having children; Steffi Graf soared quickly to her 22 titles and walked away; and Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova had a dynamic head-to-head rivalry, often trading championships back and forth.

Climbing the Ladder of Grand Slam Titles

The different eras and the different experiences of the game’s top players make for difficult comparisons.

King, herself a 12-time Grand Slam singles champion, said she would like to see tennis records accompanied with asterisks, like those used in baseball statistics, that could signal the incongruity of eras in tennis.

“We don’t understand the history of tennis at all,” King said on the eve of this year’s Wimbledon. “It’s terrible — we don’t connect the generations as well as I would like.”

One thing is hard to dispute: Williams and Court dominated women’s tennis in the eras in which they played.

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