Billie Jean King is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. King won 39 Grand Slam titles: 12 in singles, 16 in women's doubles, and 11 in mixed doubles. She often represented the United States in the Federation Cup and the Wightman Cup. She was a member of the victorious United States team in seven Federation Cups and nine Wightman Cups. For three years, she was the United States' captain in the Federation Cup.
Stefanie Maria "Steffi" Graf is a German former professional tennis player. She was ranked world No. 1 for a record 377 weeks and won 22 major singles titles, the second-most since the start of the Open Era in 1968 and third-most of all-time. In 1988, she became the first tennis player to achieve the Golden Slam by winning all four Grand Slam singles titles and the Olympic gold medal in the same calendar year. Furthermore, she is the only tennis player, male or female, to have won each major at least four times.
Martina Navratilova is a Czechoslovakian and American former professional tennis player and coach. Widely considered among the greatest tennis players of all time, Navratilova won 18 Grand Slam singles titles, 31 major women's doubles titles, and 10 major mixed doubles titles, for a combined total of 59 major titles, marking the Open Era record for the most Grand Slam titles won by a single player. She reached the Wimbledon singles final 12 times, including for nine consecutive years from 1982 through 1990, and won the women's singles title at Wimbledon a record nine times, including a run of six consecutive titles.
Christine Marie Evert, known as Chris Evert Lloyd from 1979 to 1987, is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. She won 18 Grand Slam singles championships and three doubles titles. She was the year-end world no. 1 singles player seven times. Overall, Evert won 157 singles titles and 32 doubles titles.
Justine Henin is a Belgian former professional tennis player. She spent a total of 117 weeks as the world No. 1 and was the year-end No. 1 in 2003, 2006 and 2007. Henin, coming from a country with limited success in tennis, helped establish Belgium as a leading force in women's tennis with Kim Clijsters, and led the country to its first Fed Cup crown in 2001. She was known for her all-court style of play and for being one of the few female players to use a single-handed backhand.
Monica Seles is a retired professional tennis player who represented Yugoslavia and the United States. A former world No. 1, she won nine Grand Slam singles titles, eight of them as a teenager while representing Yugoslavia, and the final one while representing the United States.In 1990, Seles became the youngest ever French Open champion at the age of 16. She went on to win eight Grand Slam singles titles before her 20th birthday and was the year-end No. 1 in 1991 and 1992. However, on April 30, 1993, she was the victim of an on-court attack, when a man stabbed her in the back with a 9-inch (23 cm) long knife. Seles did not return to tennis for over two years. Though she enjoyed some success after rejoining the tour in 1995, including victory at the 1996 Australian Open, she was unable to consistently produce her best form. She played her last professional match at the 2003 French Open, but did not officially retire until February 2008. Regarded by many in the sport as one of the greatest tennis players of all time, Seles was named one of the "30 Legends of Women's Tennis: Past, Present and Future" by Time. Several players and historians have stated that Seles had the potential to become the most accomplished female player of all time had she not been stabbed. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2009.
Tracy Ann Austin Holt is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. She won three Grand Slam titles: the women's singles titles at the 1979 and 1981 US Opens, and the mixed doubles title at the 1980 Wimbledon Championships. Additionally, she won the WTA Tour Championships in 1980 and the year-ending Toyota Championships in 1981, both in singles.
Gabriela Beatriz Sabatini is an Argentine former professional tennis player. She was one of the leading players from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, amassing 41 titles and achieving a career-high ranking of 3 in both singles and doubles. In singles, Sabatini won the 1990 US Open, the WTA Finals in 1988 and 1994, and was runner-up at Wimbledon 1991, the 1988 US Open and the silver medalist at the 1988 Olympics. In doubles, she won Wimbledon in 1988 with Steffi Graf, and reached three French Open finals. Among Open era players who did not reach world No. 1 themselves, Sabatini retains the record for accumulating the most wins over reigning world No. 1 ranked players. In 2006, she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame and in 2018 Tennis Magazine ranked her as the 20th-greatest player of the preceding 50 years.
Bettina Bunge is a retired German tennis player. Born in Adliswil, Switzerland, she was part of a large group of successful German players in the 1980s, which also included Steffi Graf, Claudia Kohde-Kilsch, Sylvia Hanika, and Eva Pfaff.
Thomas Mario Haas is a German former professional tennis player. He competed on the ATP Tour from 1996 to 2017. After breaking into the world top 100 in 1997, and reaching a career-high singles ranking of world No. 2 in May 2002, his career was interrupted by injuries: Haas twice dropped out of the world rankings due to being unable to play for twelve months. His first period of injury saw him miss the whole of the 2003 season, and he did not return to the world's top 10 until 2007. He also missed over a year's tennis between February 2010 and June 2011, but afterwards returned to play on the tour. He returned to world No. 11 in 2013, after reaching the quarterfinals at the French Open for the first time in his career.
Li Na is a Chinese former professional tennis player.
Shinobu Asagoe is a Japanese former tennis player. She turned professional in 1997, and retired in 2006.
Flávio Saretta Filho is a former professional tennis player from Brazil who turned professional in 1998.
Mirjana Lučić-Baroni is a retired Croatian professional tennis player. She enjoyed a meteoric rise on the WTA Tour in the late 1990s, during which she set several "youngest-ever" records. She captured the women's doubles title at the 1998 Australian Open when she was 15 years old, partnered with Martina Hingis. She also won the first ever professional tournament she entered, the 1997 Croatian Ladies Open, and defended it the following year at age 16, making her the youngest player in history to successfully defend a title. She then reached the semifinals of the 1999 Wimbledon Championships, beating world No. 4 Monica Seles and eighth seed Nathalie Tauziat, the previous year's finalist, before she lost to Steffi Graf in three sets. Following a series of personal problems from 2000 onwards, she faded from the scene.
Ricardo Ycaza is an Ecuadorian tennis player who was a world top 10 junior, a Davis Cup stalwart, and a world top 100 touring professional.
Jelena Pandžić is a retired tennis player from Croatia.
Terry Holladay is an American former professional tennis player who played between 1974 and 1987, whose tennis career is particularly remembered for her pregnancy and its impact on protected rankings.
Shelby Rogers is an American professional tennis player. She has career-high WTA rankings of 36 in singles and 40 in doubles, and has won six singles titles and one doubles title on the ITF Circuit. She won the girls' national championship at 17. Her best results as a professional came at the 2016 French Open and the 2020 US Open where she reached the quarterfinals.
The WTA Tour is the elite tour for women's professional tennis organized by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA). The 2011 WTA Tour includes the Grand Slam tournaments, the WTA Premier tournaments, the WTA International tournaments, the Fed Cup, the Commonwealth Bank Tournament of Champions and the WTA Championships.
Players who neither had high enough rankings nor received wild cards to enter the main draw of the annual US Open Tennis Championships participated in a qualifying tournament held over several days before the event.
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