Serena Williams Won the 2017 Australian Open Without Dropping a Set, While Pregnant

Serena Williams won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, the most of the Open era. She won the last of them at the 2017 Australian Open at 35 years old, without losing a set all tournament, while roughly eight weeks pregnant.

She beat her sister Venus in that final and returned to world number one the following week. She spent 319 weeks at the top of the rankings across her career, won each of the four majors at least three times, and held all four at once on two separate occasions, thirteen years apart.

The longevity is the part that has no parallel. She won her first major at the 1999 US Open as a teenager and her last in 2017 at 35. Careers at that level normally run five or six years. Hers spanned three decades, several complete generations of opponents, and a shift in equipment and court speed that remade how the game is played.

The serve is the mechanical reason it lasted. It is the best the women game has produced, and a great serve ages better than groundstrokes or movement do. It meant that even in a poor match, against an opponent playing well, she was never more than four free points from taking a set back, which is why she won so many finals she was losing.

Margaret Court finished with 24 major singles titles, one more than Williams. Eleven came before the Open era, when the fields were smaller and many of the best players were barred as professionals, and thirteen of them were at the Australian Open in years when most leading players did not travel. Steffi Graf has the strongest quality-adjusted claim: in 1988 she won all four majors and Olympic gold in the same calendar year, the only Golden Slam in singles anyone has completed.

Graf's 1988 is the single best season in the history of the sport, and Court has the raw number. Williams has the deepest era, the most Open era majors, four Olympic golds and a career that outlasted everyone she started against.

The verdict: Serena for the Open era. Graf for the Golden Slam year. Court for the raw total.