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While tennis keeps looking back at Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, there is another champion whose numbers are quietly extraordinary: Chris Evert.
Chris Evert won 1,309 of the 1,455 singles matches she played, giving her a winning percentage of 89.97 per cent.
There is something about tennis and the way it remembers its men. Roger Federer was seen recently at the US Open, walking into Arthur Ashe Stadium not as a player this time but as something close to a piece of living history. The five-time champion was there to be celebrated as a Hall of Fame inductee, and naturally, the occasion became another opportunity to remember the Federer years.
Rafael Nadal has just had his own moment of cinematic remembrance with Rafa, the Netflix documentary series that looks back at his career through his family, his rituals, his injuries and the extraordinary machinery of will that made him Nadal. Novak Djokovic, too, has had his career turned into a documentary, with much of the conversation around his Inat- his defiance in the face of criticism and the forces that have shaped his career.
For two decades, these men gave tennis an almost ridiculous abundance of greatness. Federer had his elegance, Nadal had his ferocity and endurance and Djokovic had his almost irritating refusal to lose. Their rivalries became stories bigger than the matches themselves and their careers were not merely recorded but were mythologised.
But while tennis keeps looking back at Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, there is another champion whose numbers are quietly extraordinary: Chris Evert.
If you wanted to make the most stripped-down argument for greatness- forget charisma, forget aesthetics, forget cultural impact, forget the endless GOAT debates- and ask only one question, How often did this person win? Chris Evert would have an astonishing answer. Over the course of her career, she won 1,309 of the 1,455 singles matches she played, giving her a winning percentage of 89.97 per cent, the highest career singles winning percentage of the Open Era among both men and women.
Chris Evert lost just 146 singles matches across a career that lasted nearly two decades, while winning 18 Grand Slam singles titles and reaching 34 Grand Slam finals. On clay, she put together a streak of 125 consecutive victories, a run so extraordinary that it almost makes the rest of her record seem incidental.
The remarkable thing, though, is that Chris Evert’s greatness was never particularly loud. Her game was built around the baseline, around patience and repetition, around making an opponent hit one more ball and then one more after that. She had a famously reliable two-handed backhand, an ability to absorb pace and redirect it and a temperament that made the idea of waiting for her to crack seem almost pointless.
| RECORD | CHRIS EVERT | NOVAK DJOKOVIC | RAFAEL NADAL | ROGER FEDERER |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Career singles win % | 89.97% | ~82% | ~82% | ~82% |
| Grand Slam singles titles | 18 | 24 | 22 | 20 |
| Grand Slam finals | 34 | 37 | 30 | 31 |
| Grand Slam semifinals | 52 | 51 | 38 | 46 |
| Weeks at No. 1 | 260 | 428 | 209 | 310 |
| Year-end No. 1 | 5 | 8 | 5 | 5 |
| Career singles titles | 157 | 100+ | 92 | 103 |
| Longest winning streak on one surface | 125 (clay) | 43 (hard) | 81 (clay) | 65 (grass) |
| French Open titles | 7 | 3 | 14 | 1 |
| US Open titles | 6 | 4 | 4 | 5 |
| Years winning at least one Grand Slam | 13 consecutive(1974–1986) | 6 (2011–2016), 6 (2018–2023) | 10 (2005–2014) | 8 (2003–2010) |
Modern tennis has taught us to recognise greatness through personality and spectacle as much as through results. We remember the rivalries that became television events in their own right and the careers that came with ready-made narratives, endlessly replayed, retold and repackaged for new audiences.
But what we forget is the quieter story of Chris Evert who was such an astonishing player the she could walk onto a tennis court for nearly twenty years and leave it having won almost nine times out of every ten.
We have spent years turning Federer, Nadal and Djokovic into Gods.
Perhaps Chris Evert deserves a resurrection of her own.
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Ask News18Chris Evert holds the highest career singles winning percentage in the Open Era among both men and women, with 89.97% after winning 1,309 of her 1,455 matches.
Ask News18September 08, 2026, 1:13 PM IST
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