The Top 20 Players of the Open Era - Update

All-Time #1 Roger Federer

By virtue of Roger Federer winning his 20th slam and becoming a "Double-Dai-Yokozuna", it is time to move him up to first spot in our all-time ranking (more precisely: the ranking of players who played all or part of their careers in the open era).

The comparisons with the older greats Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall are necessarily murky, and one still could make arguments for either of these (Laver: calendar year open era slam, Rosewall: 22 majors (pro and amateur) in a period when among the pros there were only 3 majors a year). But long ago we drew the line for Federer at either winning a calendar year slam himself or at piling up 20 grand slam titles, and the latter line has now been crossed.

Just in case you wonder, Serena Williams will move to the #1 spot once she wins her 24th slam.

Note: active players are in bold .

The Top 20 of the Open Era

	Male Players	Highest Rank			Female Players	Highest Rank
1	Roger Federer	Dai-Y		1	Margaret Court	Dai-Y
2	Rod Laver	Dai-Y		2	Serena Williams	Dai-Y
3	Ken Rosewall	Dai-Y		3	Steffi Graf	Dai-Y
4	Rafael Nadal	Dai-Y		4	Chris Evert	Dai-Y
5	Pete Sampras	Dai-Y		5	Martina Navratilova	Dai-Y
6	Bjorn Borg	Dai-Y		6	Billie Jean King	Dai-Y
7	Novak Djokovic	Dai-Y		7	Monica Seles	Dai-Y
8	Ivan Lendl	Y		8	Evonne Goolagong	Y
9	Jimmy Connors	Y		9	Venus Williams	Y
10	Andre Agassi	Y		10	Justine Henin	Y
11	John McEnroe	Y		11	Martina Hingis	Y
12	Mats Wilander	Y		12	Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario	Y
13	Stefan Edberg	Y		13	Maria Sharapova	Y
14	Boris Becker	Y		14	Hana Mandlikova	Y
15	John Newcombe	Y		15	Kim Clijsters	Y
16	Andy Murray	Y		16	Lindsay Davenport	Y
17	Jim Courier	Y		17	Jennifer Capriati	Y
18	Guillermo Vilas	O		18	Ann Haydon-Jones	O
19	Arthur Ashe	O		19	Virginia Wade	O
20	Stan Wawrinka	O		20	Gabriela Sabatini	O

Ray Emerson, Maria Bueno not included as most of their successes were before the open era.

Updated: January 29, 2018