The 9 Tennis Players With The Longest Winning Streaks Since The Start Of The Open Era

Tennis routinely spawns superstars who have the ability to make the rest of the competition look like a bunch of scrubs due to their dominant play. That includes the legends who are responsible for rattling off the longest winning streaks since the Open Era began close to sixty years ago.

These are the men and women who’ve put together the longest winning streaks since tennis entered the Open Era

Modern tennis is defined by the advent of the Open Era, which began when the French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open eliminated the ban that had previously limited the field to amateurs and allowed pros to compete for prize money for the first time in 1968 (the fourth Grand Slam, the Australian Open, followed suit the following year).

Those tournaments have been headlined by the best tennis players on the planet ever since then, including a number of notable names who’ve cemented their status as the greatest men and women in the world by ripping off a lenghty winning streak.

I’m limiting every player on this list to a single entry, although some of them would have multiple spots in the top ten if you took all of their streaks into consideration (ones I will note when applicable).

I also want to give credit where credit is due to Suzanne Lenglen, a French amateur who secured what is largely considered a record after winning 181 matches in a row in the 1920s.

9. John McEnroe: 42

The first five entries on this list hail from the ATP, as women have largely put the men to shame when it comes to the overall length of their winning streaks.

We’re kicking things off with John McEnroe, who had the best season of his career in 1984 while posting an 82-3 record.

42 of those victories came in succession, as he started the year with a win at The Masters at the start of January (a victory he secured by beating Ivan Lendl, who will also be making an appearance here).

That marked the first of six straight tournament wins, and he had the chance to extend it to seven when he qualified for the finals at Roland Garros. However, Lendl was the man who brought the streak to an end, as he bounced back after losing the first two sets to secure the title.

8. Novak Djokovic: 43

Novak Djokovic unofficially announced his grand arrival when he won his first Grand Slam at the Australian Open in 2008, and he’d already established himself as one of the best players by the end of 2010.

That’s when this streak began, as he had a spotless record in the two matches he played while representing Serbia at the Davis Cup in December. It continued as he won his second Australian Open title, which was the first of the seven tournaments he won while extending the run to the start of the French Open.

It ultimately ended when he lost to Roger Federer in the semifinals, but that ended up being the only Grand Slam he didn’t win that year while finishing with a 70-6 record overall.

7. Ivan Lendl: 44

Ivan Lendl won eight Grand Slams during his career (Wimbledon was the only one of the four where he failed to get it done).

None of those titles came during a streak that transpired between 1981 and 1982, but he still did very well for himself during that span.

Lendl lost to Vitas Gerulaitis (who we’ll also be mentioning in a moment) in the round of 16 at the US Open in September 1981, but he returned with vengeance at the end of the month. He’d won six tournaments in a row by the time the year came to an end, and he picked up where he left off with two more when 1982 rolled around.

He had the chance to extend his streak to 45 matches (and nine straight) tournaments at Indian Wells, but Yannick Noah spoiled the fun in the finals.

6. Guillermo Vilas: 46 matches

Guillermo Vilas had his heyday during the middle of the 1970s, and he peaked with a truly phenomenal showing in 1977.

The Argentine won a whopping 16 titles that year while going 130-15 overall. He lost in the third round at Wimbledon, but he fared much better after heading onto the clay in Kitzbuhel, Austria  midway through July, which served as the surface for the seven straight tournaments he won during a run that included a win at the US Open.

The good times eventually came to an end in September at the hands of  Ilie Nastase in the finals of teh Raquette d’Or in France, a match where Vilas resigned ahead of the third set after losing the first two while citing the “spaghetti racket” his opponent was using (a set-up that was promptly banned).

Vilas rebounded with another winning streak of 27 matches, meaning he’d theoretically be tied for the longest one in tennis history if not for Nasatse’s controversial equipment.

5. Bjorn Borg: 49 matches

Other Notable Streaks: 48 (1979-80)

Vilas still had the longest winning streak any man had recorded in the Open Era when it ended, but it only stood for less than a year before Bjorn Borg ascended to the throne.

The Swede headed into 1978 with four Grand Slams under his belt, and he added two more with victories at Wimbledon and the US Open. Both of them came during a stretch of dominance that began at the Davis Cup in March, and Borg had the chance to extend the streak to an even 50 and add a US Open title to the run in August before he lost to Jimmy Connors in the final.

He came one shy of equaling the feat between 1979 and 1980, but 49 remains the number to beat on the men’s side.

4. Chris Evert: 55 matches

Other Notable Streaks: 42 (1975-76)

As promised, we’re now turning our attention to the women who are responsible for the longest streaks in the Open Era.

The first is Chris Evert, who became just the second woman to win more than 50 matches in a row when she went on an absolute tear in 1974. She’d been vanquished by Billie Jean King in the finals of two matches in the first few months of the year, but she kicked things into high gear when her schedule shifted to clay at the start of April.

Evert won eight tournaments in a row (including Wimbledon, the only one that wasn’t on clay), but her streak ended at 55 with a loss to Evonne Goolagong in the semifinals at the US Open in August (she finished with a 92-6 record that year).

She had another impressive one that began the following year, although it “only” ended up being 42 matches.

3. Margaret Court: 57 matches

Margaret Court burst onto the scene in her native Australia in 1960, and she temporarily retired six years later before staging a comeback and turning pro when the Open Era arrived.

She ended up winning every Grand Slam in 1970 (one of just three women to do so), but she stepped away from the game in 1971 to prepare to give birth to her son, who was born in March the following year.

It is safe to say that the hiatus wasn’t too detrimental to her game, as Court returned in July and ended the year with a seven-game tournament win streak that began in October. It stretched in 1973, and she ended up with 57 wins in a row before falling to Billie Jean King in February.

2. Steffi Graf: 66 matches

Other Notable Streaks: 46 (1988), 45 (1987)

The last two women on this list exist on a different tier than anyone we’ve mentioned so far, and they were repeatedly able to string together some of the longest streaks in history.

Steffi Graf won 45 matches in a row in 1987 before topping that streak by one the following year, but she firmly outdid herself starting in 1989.

This one began after she fell to Arantxa Sanchez Vicario in the final at Roland Garros on May 29th of that year, and it would be close to a year before she lost another match. The run included wins at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open, and Graf won eleven straight tournaments before falling to Monica Seles in her native Germany on May 14, 1990.

1. Martina Navratilova: 74 matches

Other Notable Streaks: 58 (1986-87), 54 (1983-84), 41 (1982)

Women’s tennis basically ran through Martina Navratilova for a significant chunk of the 1980s, as evidenced by the slew of impressive streaks she managed to put together.

1988 was a bad year to be pitted against Navratilova, who posted a 70-7 record in the matches she played. Her first loss came in the final of the Silicon Valley Classic in Oakland in May, and she got back on the right track with a run of wins that secured the U.S. Indoor Championships at the end of February.

The Czech phenomenon ended up winning 13 tournaments in a row, including the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. However, her attempt to become just the fourth woman to win every Grand Slam in the same year (and extend the streak to 75) was thwarted by Helena Sukova, who dispatched her in the semis at the Australian Open.