One of the best eras of women’s tennis history was between the 90s and 2000s. In those years, players of the caliber of Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Steffi Graf, Martina Hingis, Monica Seles, Jennifer Capriati, Mary Pierce, Maria Sharapova, Justine Henin, and Lindsay Davenport, just to name a few examples, stood out.
Davenport was one of the best players in the world between the late 90s and early 2000s. In that period, she won her three Grand Slam titles—US Open 1998, Wimbledon 1999, and Australian Open 2000—and had previously won the Gold Medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. In those years, she was also the WTA World No. 1.
The three-time Grand Slam champion retired from professional activity and remained connected to the world of tennis in various capacities; she was a commentator and, for some time now, has been the captain of the American women’s team that plays in the Billie Jean King Cup.
However, when choosing the greatest male or female player of all time, Davenport had a change of selection. In a 2020 conversation with Tennis Channel, the American ranked Serena Williams as the best tennis player of all time in a ranking, regardless of gender, while placing Novak Djokovic in sixth place.
Serena Williams and Lindsay Davenport after the 2005 Australian Open final. (Getty Images)
But four years later, in 2024, she spoke with Tennis Channel again, and this time her choice for the greatest player of all time went to Djokovic: “He is going to go down in history statistically—whether people like it or not—as the greatest player that has ever existed, male or female. It’s crazy when you look at all his numbers. At 37 years old, hats off to him”.
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Davenport and her joy after Djokovic’s 2024 Paris Olympics win
Statistics strongly support the notion that Djokovic is one of the best players in history; in fact, along with Margaret Court, they are the only players to have won 24 Grand Slam titles.
The Serbian currently has 100 ATP titles, being the only one along with Roger Federer and Jimmy Connors to win more than a hundred championships. However, the only thing Djokovic lacked was being able to win an Olympic gold medal, something he achieved in Paris 2024, and Lindsay Davenport celebrated.
“I was extremely happy when he won the gold medal in Paris. If they had asked him: ‘Do you want to win the gold or the four Grand Slam tournaments this year?’ I am convinced he would have chosen the gold medal. It was undoubtedly the best moment in tennis this year,” Davenport declared in an interview with the media outlet SportKlub
“He wanted that medal more than anyone, more than anything in the world. He achieved that feat after his surgery and his loss in the Wimbledon final against Carlos Alcaraz. All this only serves to demonstrate his greatness,” she added.
