The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) is the principal organizing body of women's professional tennis. The association governs the WTA Tour, which is the worldwide professional tennis tour for women, and was founded to create a better future for women's tennis. The WTA's corporate headquarters is in St. Petersburg, Florida, with its European headquarters in London and its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Beijing.
James Scott Connors is an American former world No. 1 tennis player.
Martina Navratilova is a Czech–American former professional tennis player. Widely considered among the greatest tennis players of all time, Navratilova won 18 major singles titles, 31 major women's doubles titles, and 10 major mixed doubles titles, for a combined total of 59 major titles, the most in the Open Era. Alongside Chris Evert, her greatest rival, Navratilova dominated women's tennis for the first two-thirds of the 1980s.
Tracy Ann Austin Holt is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. She won three major 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.
John David Newcombe AO OBE is an Australian former professional tennis player. He is one of the few men to have attained a world No. 1 ranking in both singles and doubles. At the majors, he won seven singles titles, a former record 17 men's doubles titles, and two mixed doubles titles. He also contributed to five Davis Cup titles for Australia during an age when the Davis Cup was deemed as significant as the majors. Tennis magazine rated him the 10th best male player of the period 1965–2005.
Gabriela Beatriz Sabatini is an Argentine former professional tennis player. A former world No. 3 in both singles and doubles, Sabatini was one of the leading players from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, amassing 41 titles. 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, Sabatini won Wimbledon in 1988 partnering Steffi Graf, and reached three French Open finals. Among Open era players who did not reach the world No. 1 ranking, Sabatini has 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 female player of the preceding 50 years.
Guillermo Vilas is an Argentine former professional tennis player. Vilas was the world No. 1 of the Grand Prix seasons in 1974, 1975 and 1977. He won four major titles and the year-end championships, totalling 62 singles titles alongside 16 doubles titles during his career on the ATP tour. World Tennis, Agence France-Presse and Livre d'or du tennis 1977, among other rankings and publications, rated him as world No. 1 in 1977. In the computerized ATP rankings, he peaked at No. 2 in April 1975, a position he held for a total of 83 weeks, although some have argued that Vilas should have been ranked No. 1 for at least 10 weeks, particularly in 1977 when he won 2 majors. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1991, two years after his first retirement.
The WTA Finals is the season-ending championship of the WTA Tour. It is the most significant tennis event in the women's annual calendar after the four majors, as it features the top eight singles players and top eight doubles teams based on their results throughout the season.
The WTA rankings are the ratings defined by the Women's Tennis Association, introduced in November 1975. The computer that calculates the ranking is nicknamed "Medusa".
World number 1 ranked male tennis players is a year-by-year listing of the male tennis players who were ranked as world No. 1 by various contemporary and modern sources. The annual source rankings from which the No. 1 players are drawn are cited for each player's name, with a summary of the most important tennis events of each year also included. If world rankings are not available, recent rankings by tennis writers for historical years are accessed, with the dates of the recent rankings identified. In the period 1948–1953, when contemporary professional world rankings were not created, the U.S. professional rankings are cited.
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) designates a World Champion each year based on its own majority opinion of performances throughout the year, emphasizing the Grand Slam tournaments, and also considering team events such as the Davis Cup and Fed Cup. Men's and women's singles champions were first named in 1978; the title is now also awarded for doubles, wheelchair, and junior players. It is sometimes named the "ITF Player of the Year" award, alluding to similar other year-end awards in tennis.
The WTA Tour is the elite tour for professional women's tennis organised by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA). The WTA Tour includes the four Grand Slam tournaments, the WTA Tour Championships and the WTA Tier I, Tier II, Tier III and Tier IV events. ITF tournaments are not part of the WTA Tour, although they award points for the WTA World Ranking.
World number 1 ranked female tennis players is a year-by-year listing of the female tennis players who were ranked as world No. 1 by various contemporary and modern sources.
The Evert–Navratilova rivalry was a tennis rivalry in the 1970s and 1980s between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, widely regarded as two of the greatest female tennis players of all time. It is considered to be one of the greatest rivalries in tennis history and sports in general. The pair contested 80 matches between 1973 and 1988, with Navratilova leading the overall head-to-head 43–37 and 36–24 in finals. It is the most prolific tennis rivalry of the Open Era.
Iwona Kuczyńska is a retired tennis player from Poland. Her highest WTA singles ranking was No. 64, reached on 12 October 1987, while her highest doubles ranking was No. 35, reached on 16 January 1989.
Varvara Alexandrovna Flink is an inactive Russian tennis player.
Catherine "Caty" McNally is an American professional tennis player. She achieved her career-high singles ranking of world No. 54 on 22 May 2023 and her best WTA doubles ranking of No. 11 on 4 April 2022. She has won eight doubles titles on the WTA Tour, three of them with Coco Gauff, and the pair also reached the final of the 2021 US Open. She reached another major final at the 2022 US Open with Taylor Townsend. She has also won six doubles titles on the ITF Circuit. In singles, McNally has won one title on the WTA Challenger Tour plus three on the ITF Circuit.
The 2022 WTA Tour was the global elite women's professional tennis circuit organized by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for the 2022 tennis season. The 2022 WTA Tour calendar comprised the Grand Slam tournaments, the WTA 1000 tournaments, the WTA 500 tournaments, the WTA 250 tournaments, the Billie Jean King Cup, and the year-end championships.
This article presents top ten lists of female singles tennis players, as ranked by various official and non-official ranking authorities throughout the history of the sport.
This article presents top ten lists of male singles tennis players, as ranked by various official and non-official ranking authorities throughout the history of the sport.
