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Margaret Court's record

13K views 92 replies 19 participants last post by  louloubelle 
#1 ·
Hi All,

I recently had an "animated discussion" with a (dedicated) Graf fan who definitively stated that Graf should be considered the all-time GS champ, reason being that nearly all of Court's Oz titles meant "nothing" (!!), due to weak opposition.

I suggested that line of thinking is illogical - one can only beat whoever is on the other side of the net and at the end of play, if you are the Champion, well, that's that and whether the field was considered "weak" is neither here nor there.

I also suggested that possibly Graf's record would probably not be quite so stellar if Seles had been able to continue her career uninterrupted, and no prizes for guessing the response I got for uttering that particular heresy! :)

For the record, I am not a real fan of Mrs Court, nor of Steffi Graf: Court beat who she beat during her Oz wins and, post-Hamburg '93, Steffi won against all comers (including a Seles who was just a shadow of player she had been), and kudos to both of them.

So I'm turning this topic over to the knowledgable posters here for your thoughts. Should Court's record be discounted? Should Grafs? And just so I can play Devil's Advocate....

Evert has 7 French titles - I suggest 4 (74/75/79/80) were won against very mediocre fields, so should there be an asterisk against her record? Or was it a case that she was so dominant on clay, it wouldn't make any difference.

Also, BJK went on GS sprees a couple of times when Court was out: 1967/68 and from US Open 71 thru 72. I think the Court/King relationship most relevant as they were the "Chrissie and Martina" act of their day and most definitely head and shoulders above everyone else during most of the 60's and early 70's. BJK did beat Court at Oz 68, but she had just returned to the circuit (first retirement) and she also beat her in the SF of US 72 when Court returned again (from first baby), but as far as her record is concerned, does it matter that she didn't face Court anywhere near top form during those periods?

Your thoughts???

:)
 
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#2 ·
I find that no competition crap so stupid!
when you think about it, why do people have such a need to slam other players to make their fav look better?
maybe without the records they have no reason to be a fan anymore? :rolleyes:

and so steffi's 36 titles after april 93 should not discount but I will not forget what happened either because otherwise I would agree with what the idiot did and I can't do that!
 
#3 · (Edited)
You're a good devil's advocate Rboi!


If(big if) you discount ALL of Court's Aussie wins, then it stands to reason you should toss out all Aussie titles- period. This reduces Court's slam total significantly, but also reduces Graf quite a bit.
Using the "big 3" (Wimbledon, French and US) that used to be the standard according to many gives you:

19 Wills
18 Graf
16 Evert
15 Navratilova
13 Court
11 King
08 Connolly


Nothing "definite" about Graf being an all #1 at all using that method. Throwing out the Aussie DOES reduce the difference between Court and King. Marge had a big tendency to choke at Wimbledon, where Tinling said she "saw invisible vultures overhead on center court". The other big loser(besides Court) if Aussie results are totally discarded is Seles. 4 of her 9 slams came Down Under.



Another method would be to "weight" the majors. This gets subjective, but obviously a Wimbledon meant more in the 1960s than today. You could argue that in the 1990s all the slams are more or less equal. Thus, if we gave them points: 10, 10, 10 ,10=40.

Setting a maximum of 15 for a slam and a minimum of 5, you could say in 1966 slams shouls be: 5(Aussie) 10 (Paris) 15 (Wimbledon) and 10 (US).

Using this method would put Graf ahead of Court, but would also put Graf behind Wills.


And not all of Court's Aussie slams were against weak fields. Look at our grand slam results here in the Blast(see Grand Slam results) and it's obvious Court had tough opposition in 1960(beating world #1 Bueno),1962, 1963, 1965 and 1969.

Even in her "Easy" Aussies she had to beat other top tenners. In 1961 there were no foreign entries, but Lehane was in the top 10. Ditto for 1964, when half the top 10 was Aussie. In 66 she got a break when Richey defaulted in the final, but Nancy was certainly top 10. 70, 71, and 73 all had Goolagong and Reid, no lightweights.
 
#4 ·
I "basically" agree about the "no asterisk" motion.
But actually wins must be weighted.
And Court's (as Graf's or Evert's) cannot surely be diminished.
But Graf's carnet of four slams on each different location, with no weak surface, 9 hard, 6 clay, 7 grass plus the Golden Slam, gives her anyhow (whether you discharge Court's AO wins or not, I mean) the edge over any other's record.
You don't need to belittle Court or Evert or anyone else to grant her that.
But we've been discussing this for three years now.......
:cool:
 
#5 ·
So if we "weighted" results Way, would you give more weight to the 93 Aussie (because Monica was there) than the other slams that year? Sorry, I couldn't resist!;)

Surface-wise Court was just as versatile as Graf. She won regularly on grass and clay, the two dominant surfaces of her era. Indoor courts were not a problem for her, nor hard, for she won the South African Open sevreal times. No edge there for Graf IMO.


The "Golden Slam" is unique, I'll give you that. But 1988 would have been even more impressive if she had won the WTA finals as well, for it had a tougher field. That would have given her EVERY major in one year, something no one else has done. She also lost a couple times in 1988, while Navratilova remains the only woman since Mo Connolly to lose only one match an entire year(1983).

I think while we can suggest so and so should be an all-time #1 it's always debatable. That's what makes it fun:)
 
#7 ·
So if we "weighted" results Way, would you give more weight to the 93 Aussie (because Monica was there) than the other slams that year? Sorry, I couldn't resist!

Well, finally a well put way to ask questions about the noSeles period!
:)
Y'know, in a way i would.
But then you have to weight also *others'* absences, Graf's ten (?not checked) slams not entered because of injuries when she was in a position to run to the end (4 Ao for sure, all 97 and 98), outside tennis factors and........... the calculation would become infinite.
When i said we have to "weight" slams, i meant that winning twenty Wimbs is not like winning five times each slam.
I wasn't making a "personal" Graf vs Court case



Surface-wise Court was just as versatile as Graf. She won regularly on grass and clay, the two dominant surfaces of her era. Indoor courts were not a problem for her, nor hard, for she won the South African Open sevreal times. No edge there for Graf IMO.

See below


The "Golden Slam" is unique, I'll give you that. But 1988 would have been even more impressive if she had won the WTA finals as well, for it had a tougher field. That would have given her EVERY major in one year, something no one else has done. She also lost a couple times in 1988, while Navratilova remains the only woman since Mo Connolly to lose only one match an entire year(1983).

I think while we can suggest so and so should be an all-time #1 it's always debatable. That's what makes it fun


You know i'll always agree on that.
I've learned to distingush facts from opinions.
My opinion is that Graf shares the first spot with Lenglen and Connolly.
Objectively i perfectly know that any choice pointing to one of the greats (Wills, Court, Evert, King, Navra) has the same amount of good reasons i can raise for SG, SL and MC.

You're flogging a dead horse with me here!
:)
 
#11 ·
I couldn't resist Big Linds, it's the first time you've needed white-out ;) I'll never forget my first day on the old board when you were so gentle with dumb Rollo after he suggested Jana Novotna had never lost to Davenport. One day we'll have to have a cognac on that...


Pretty amazing that Mags entered 31 events in 1970. How many did she win?
 
#12 ·
1970

Hi Rollo,

I checked my 1971 Edition of World of Tennis and Mrs Court's biog piece listed 19 titles for the year, with 5 losses (2 to BJK early and she had a 3-2 record for the year against BJK), 1 to Winnie Shaw, 1 to Patti Hogan and of course, the famous loss to a baby Evert just 3 weeks after completing the GS. Her loss to Hogan stopped a 42 match-winning streak.

:)
 
#13 ·
Thanks Rboi:) Those are impressive numbers she put up. Patty Hogan-she had some temper on her. "Mother-F---- was her favorite word on court.


One problem I've noticed with older
stats is how the word "year" is defined. Evonne said Court played in 31 events and your WOT puts her in around 25 or so. Depending on how it's defined both can be right. A lot of sources seem to have stopped counting after the US Open and Pacific Southwest(right after the US), leaving out all of September to January! Other sources will count the September to December results of one calendar year towards the next.

Aren't we lucky now that we have a sane calendar year with some off season? In Court's heydey there was an event every week of the year.
 
#14 ·
I truly have more respect for Margaret Court's generation of players because they played week after week after week and not only singles, they played doubles at every tournament. Margaret had the edge over Billie Jean early in their career with 14 straight wins; however, Billie turned it around from 1966 to 1973. Billie had a 3 to 2 edge in the Majors and a 12 to 8 record during that time. I would have loved to see them go at it like Evert and Navratilova the whole year. It was also interesting to know that Chris Evert didn't beat King in any Majors until 1977? Steffi Graf is a great champion, but I would put Martina and Margaret over her because both had major rivals during their runs, Margaret had to battle Bueno and King and later Evert and Goolagong. Navratilova had to battle Evert, Court, King, Mandlikova and Austin. Graf had Seles for a few years and after that she had a run at the majors with Sanchez putting up a battle. Most of the aforementioned legends all played doubles and mixed on a regular basis and Graf didn't.
 
#15 ·
Another thread on the greatest ever, but with a different slant...LOVELY! Well, I personally think that the greatest ever should be any one who has achieved all of these 3 criteria:

1. win over 100 consective matches on a particular surface

2. win at least 6 times at any 2 grandslams

3. win at least 1 grandslam for over 12 consecutive years

:p ;)
 
#20 ·
Macn

I feel that Billie-Jean was able to improve on her record against Court between 66 and 73 largely due to 2 factors:

1 - Billie-Jean improved her game markedly after a long stint of training in Australia in 65/66, and

2 - Margaret Court retired for over 12 months from 1966 so it took her a while to get back to form. Margaret also retired to have a child in 1971 and once again it took her some time to get back to form. But in 1973 she was in devastating form once more, taking 3 of the Slams and Semi-Finalist at Wimbledon.

Rollo hit the mark perfectly when he said that about half of Margaret's Aussie Open wins included a number of the world's top players eg. Hard, Bueno, King, Goolagong, Richey etc. And the other half of her win still featured some top tenners etc. So you can't discredit these titles. Margaret beat many great players to win the Aussie Open titles.
 
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#21 ·
It would have been great if Billie Jean, Maria Bueno, and Margaret were all healthy at the same time. Poor Bueno got the worst of it IMO with all her related injuries. I think King had the first of her six knee operations, which must have hurt her a lot in the 1969 season.

Tennisvideos-do you have suggestions of specific matches if we want to get one or two matches of these 3 vs each other on tape?
 
#22 ·
I have to say that Rev. Mags makes a pretty good argument for herself as the all time best. She is not as famous as others, but in terms of sheer consistancy AND dominance she is pretty much unparalleled IMO.

Chrissie had the consistancy but never was consistantly dominant, at least at the GS's. This could've been different had she played the AO and the French more in the mid '70's when she was as close to dominating as she would ever be.

Martina dominated but there are too many holes in her career as far as I see-the years '73-'77, '80, '88, '89 were all awash in terms of consistancy at the GS's which, like it or not must be factored in (as much as I love Chrissie, she never won more than two Slams a year in her entire career which makes it difficult to argue that she ever really dominated, '76 excluded-whereas Tini twice won 3 majors in a year and at one point won six straight-Chris only won 3 straight at a point in her career '82-'83 that nobody would say that she was dominating the game).

Sorry folks, I think Steffi is the all time number two, but I can no longer truly say she was the best because the Seles factor is just too VITAL. Steffi won 6 of the 10 GS' played in Monica's absence.


And as other's have already said the Seles factor does not equate Rev. Mags' AO factor. Too many great women were coming out of Australia at the time and Bueno played there occasionally as well. Rev. Mags won her AO titles during the Apex of Australian tennis. To my mind there is no comparison.

People argue about Steffi's injuries that kept her out of certain events. Um...twice Mags left the sport for extensive period of times and came back to dominate.

I'm babbling on and on...

Oh yeah, what about Wills? 19 GS titles without ever playing the AO? Only occasionally playing the French, never playing the U.S. after the Helen Jacobs incident, and skipping Wimby several times in the mid '30's. Now there's some impressive numbers for ya!
 
#23 ·
I agree to a point Tennisvideos, The argument could be made that Margaret beat Billie Jean 14 straight tiems was because King hadn't taken Tennis as serious until 1965. Bueno, Hard and King didn't play the Australian Open that often, King only played 3 times during her prime. Hard and Bueno only played once or twice. Margaret beat Jan Lehane in about 20 finals! LOL!!!!!!!!!! I don't discount margaret's Austalian opens, but the argument has to be made that the competition wasn't as strong as Wimbledon and the U.S. Open where Margaret had to play the best players. I know that Margaret hat the layoffs and had to regain her form, but think about King who campaigned for women's tennis with board meetings, sponsor meetings, clinics, exibitions, and a variety of other things. She had to be tried after all of that. Chris Evert has stated when she beat King in a final one year how easy it was until she found out that King was in another city promoting Women's Tennis and had just returned to that tournament 1 hour before the match. I often wonder as Steve Flink has pointed out, If King had dedicated herself just to tennis, she probably would have won many more titles.
 
#24 ·
Pam,

Chris was actually going for a Chrissy slam at Winbeldon 83, after holding the 82 USO, 82 AO, & 83 FO. You are technically right though, she never held more than 2 in a calendar year, but as you point out she never bothered to play the AO until 81, and didn't play all of the FO in the 70s.
 
#26 ·
Macn-the problem with saying BJK could have won a lot more slams had she not promoted the tour comes down to two things.

1. We're talking 1971-74. Those were the years when King heavily promoted the women's tour. They were also the years King performed her best in grand slams, the exception being 1973. What else could she have won in those years?

2. It WAS BJK's choice, just as Court made the choice to take time off, retire, and have kids. And it wasn't just for the love of tennis. King's husband Larry promoted many events and the exposure secured endorsements for Billie Jean.

One of King's errors in hindsight was retiring after winning Wimbledon in 1975. She might have been good enough to win in 1976. After 1977 the age and knees caught up to her.

Take away the Aussie entiely and Court has still has 13 slams to King's 11. That's a close total, but perhaps more accurate than 24 to 12. The difference all comes down to clay. Mags could win on it while King was often a sitting duck at the French.
 
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