Not All Are Made to be Broken : TENNIS

If it weren’t for Margaret Smith Court, there probably would not have been the “Match of the Ages”--Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs.

When Court lost to Riggs on Mother’s Day in 1973, King swung into action, and the rest is history. Unfortunately for Court, she is remembered by many for the one-sided loss to Riggs.

That’s somewhat unfair to the woman who holds a special spot in tennis history. She set several records, and one of them might never be touched, her 62 Grand Slam titles. She won 24 in singles, 19 in doubles and 19 in mixed doubles.

That record is considered untouchable for a couple of reasons. In Court’s day, three of the four Grand Slam events were on grass courts. Now, the differing surfaces favor specialists, and few of the top singles players compete in all three events at Grand Slam tournaments.

Martina Navratilova, who retired in 1994, is second behind Court with 56 Grand Slam titles--18 singles, 31 doubles and seven mixed. The leading active player is Steffi Graf, who has 22 Grand Slam titles, 21 singles and one doubles.

Navratilova, however, holds another distinctive record, a 74-match winning streak, which is unlikely to be approached. Navratilova won 13 consecutive tournaments, among them the French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open. The winning streak started after she lost to Hana Mandlikova at the Virginia Slims of California in Oakland on Jan. 15, 1984, and ended when she lost to Helena Sukova in the Australian Open semifinals on Dec. 6, 1984.

Notably, Navratilova had been on a 54-match winning streak when she lost to Mandlikova at the Oakland event.

On the men’s side, Roy Emerson has won the most Grand Slam titles--28 championships, 12 singles and 16 doubles. One element of his Grand Slam success is not likely to be repeated. He won six consecutive French Open doubles titles, from 1960 to 1965, playing with five partners, Neale Fraser twice, Rod Laver, Manuel Santana, Fred Stolle and Ken Fletcher.

Only two men have won the Grand Slam--Don Budge and Laver. And Laver is the only player to have done it twice, in 1962 and 1969. The last male player who won three of the four in one year was Mats Wilander in 1988. Wilander won the Australian, French and U.S. Opens and lost in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon.