Fifty Shades of Greatness
Tennis|Mar/Apr 2018

The GOAT debate allows us to do more than rank players; it lets us rediscover them

Stephen Tignor
Fifty Shades of Greatness

The journey is what matters, they say.” That’s what I wrote in Martina Navratilova’s entry in our 50 Greatest Players of the Open Era countdown. Looking back at the process of creating our list, the same phrase came to my mind. By now, most tennis fans understand that the debate over who is the Greatest of All Time has its limits. How can we compare players who swung wooden racquets to those who use today’s souped-up frames? How can we make majors the criteria for greatness, when Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall were once banned from playing them?

This story is from the Mar/Apr 2018 edition of Tennis.

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This story is from the Mar/Apr 2018 edition of Tennis.

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