The overall points winners from the first season of the Let’s Plaay Tennis All-Time Tennis campaign weren’t who you would have expected at the beginning, as Ivan Lendl and Martina Hingis were crowned the season-long champions.
Lendl was among the highest-ranked men’s players going in, though a step behind the Nadal-Djokovic-Federer triumvirate, so his victory wasn’t too much of a stretch. But Hingis was perhaps the 10th-rated women’s player in the set.
Lendl (565 points) and Rafael Nadal (530 points) finished 1-2. Lendl assured himself of the points victory when he made the semifinals of the U.S. Open. Nadal was runner-up, and a victory would have put him just five points behind Lendl.
Hingis (445 points) was fortunate to hold off Steffi Graf (425 points) at the end. Hingis was ousted in the semifinals of the U.S. Open. Graf made the final, and would have won the points title with a victory, but lost to Martina Navratilova. That moved Navratilova (400 points) up to third place.
All-Time Tennis Season 1 Home Page
Notes and thoughts on the season:
- There were four different Grand Slam winners on both the men’s and women’s sides.
- Lendl made 10 tournament finals, more than any other player, and won six (including Wimbledon). He was tied with Jimmy Connors for the most victories. Nadal and Djokovic both won five.
- Hingis was the only women’s player to come away with five victories (which included the French Open). She went 5-1 in her six finals. Navratilova and Kim Clijsters both won four. Graf went 3-6 in nine tournament finals (and didn’t win a Grand Slam).
- Lendl was the only player of either gender to win at least one tournament in each of the schedule’s four segments.
- Men’s players that overachieved: Rod Laver (fifth place, beat four higher-ranked players), Ken Rosewall (13th place, highest-ranked player among the third tier), Goran Ivanisevic (17th place, highest-ranked player among the fourth tier).
- Women’s players that overachieved (besides Hingis): Clijsters (fourth place, beat six higher-ranked players), Iga Swiatak (11th place, highest-ranked player among the third tier), Caroline Wozniacki (16th place, highest-ranked player among the fourth tier).
- A little disappointing: All-time greats Roger Federer (sixth place) and Serena Williams (fifth place) did worse than their 1A ratings would have indicated.
- Sixteen different women won a tournament, while 11 did so for the men. There were 36 total tournaments for both (each player appeared in 16).
- The best players not to win a tournament: Stefan Edberg (10th place, 0-3 in finals) and Gabriela Sabatini (13th place, 0-2 in finals).
- Made the most of their only finals appearance: 1-0 records in championship matches by Arthur Ashe, Tracy Austin and Venus Williams.
- Only one player went the entire season without ever making a semifinal, and that was Yevgeny Kafelnikov. Victoria Azarenka would have also made this list but she made a surprising run to the U.S. Open semis in the final tournament of the season.
- Only six men made it out of the first round of all four Grand Slams (Lendl and Nadal were two of them), while five never won a match at a Grand Slam. For the women, who saw more upsets, it was two and one, respectively. Surprisingly, Wozniacki was one of the two that won at least one match at all four (Navratilova was the other on the women’s side).
ROGER SPORTS & GAMES 