Who’s No. 1? 16 Women in Tennis Who Held the Top Spot Longest 22
Two women who dominated on tour: Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert.
Points given in a WTA sponsored tennis tournament are used to calculate a players ranking and who ultimately is the No. 1 player on the women’s tour.
Points gained are totaled for one year. Then as the event rolls around again on the calendar, the points earned last year fall off and new points won replace them.
Various tournaments have different point values with the slams offering the most points. For example, the winner of a major receives 2000 ranking points.
The further a player advances in the tournament, the more points she will earn.
Ultimately for the women on tour, only the player’s best 17 tournaments count toward total ranking points. That means a player cannot simply add to her ranking total by entering every tournament.
Historically, for the women’s tour, ranking did not even appear as a statistic until 1921.
Back then rankings were subjective, based on human observation, often a professional panel. Certainly there was no universal system. Calculation of rankings were not point-based until 1975.
Despite the inadequacies of past record-keeping, evidence exists that indicate a number of very talented female players held the No. 1 ranking and dominated the women’s game prior to 1975.
We will use prior subjective rankings and convert those records to an appropriate number of weeks in order to rank the dominance of the top 16 female tennis players since 1921.