Talk About Tennis 2.0

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 03, 2025 5:14 pm A player that reached two slam finals in a year, but did not win either?

That's happened multiple times on the men's side.

Looked it up. It has happened more times on the men's side that on the women's.
Well, Mick never posts easy ones...

"...but did not win" is hardly an achievement )) No, the one I asked is a real no joke achievement.

A career "Boxed Set," which is a career Grand Slam in Singles, Doubles and mixed Doubles, completed by both Martina Navratilova and Margaret Court in the Open Era and also Margaret Court and Doris Hart before the Open Era.

I guess this could be considered as an answer. I did not specify in my question that the achievement is related to singles only. Now I do. I had in mind different achievement.

You post the hardest questions, Mike

The said achievement is winning you second slam immediately after the first (in the next GS tournament). Happened on WTA more than once (Venus Williams, Osaka). Never happened in ATP history.

Let's do more straightforward trivia question. I was recently in the conversation on MTF about did anyone ever beat both Sinner and Alcaraz to win a tournament. The answer - it happened only once - exactly 2 years ago when Djokovic won his last YEC. That drove my thoughts in the direction - on how many occasions someone beat Nadal and Djokovic to win a tournament. I tried to combine a list from my memory before giving up and looking in the database. Turned out I remembered 6 out of 8 times it happened. I'm wondering if anyone has better memory )

Svitolina now has 19 title match wins vs only 4 losses. This is 82.6%. If we'll exclude all players with less than 10 tournaments won, only 3 players in WTA history are ahead of her in percentage. One is Iga Swiatek with 25-5 records (83.33%). There is also Helga Hosl with 11-1 record. But some tournaments (or even all of them) on her record are questionable - the majority of her titles are before WTA was created (pre 1973). But there is another player who's lead is unquestionable. Who is that player?

Not Steffi nor Serena.
I am impressed by that stat.
But who you are referring to... I have to think.

Ash Barty?

Monica Seles?

Margaret Court?

It is hard to analyze Court, because for those early years it isn't entirely clear what tournaments shall be considered. At least ATP has their archive online and their stance on each tournament is clear (although sometimes they reconsider and add/remove tournaments). WTA never bothered to keep an archive in a coherent matter. So I filled my database from various sources. For Court I have a record of 87-21 in finals. This gives 80.56%. But I mentioned that early years shall not be considered. The player I had in mind is Anna Smashnova who has 12-1 record in the finals (92.3%). Her titles are from 1999 to 2006, so they are well documented and there is no issues to discuss about this record.

I had totally forgotten about her. And did not know she held that distinction.