One of the pleasures of sport is the rankings and the debates that follow.
Posted at 7:45 a.m.
Wayne Gretzky or Mario Lemieux?
Michael Jordan or LeBron James?
Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic?
However, among women in tennis, there is no comparison. Serena Williams, who could play this Monday night at the United States Open the last match of her singles career, is the best player in history. Point.
Steffi Graf? Yes, she was dominant. A subscriber to the Grand Slam tournament finals. Except that his successes were concentrated over a much shorter period than those of Williams.
Margaret Court? That’s right, she’s won one more Grand Slam tournament than Williams. But tennis, at the time, was less competitive. Especially in women.
When Margaret Court won her first Grand Slam tournament, in Australia in 1960, the main draw consisted of one Briton, one Brazilian and… 30 Australians.
“I mean no disrespect to Margaret Court, but that was a different time,” Serena Williams coach Patrick Mouratoglou commented last year. “At the time, three-quarters of the players didn’t even travel to Australia, where tennis was an amateur sport. »
And Williams, how much did she dominate her sport? I have prepared a nice bunch of his statistics for you. I kept only the most incredible, unusual and useless. Warning: your brain could explode!
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His career spanned four decades. His first professional tournament? It was during the week of the 1995 referendum… in Quebec. The Nordics had just left for Colorado.
How many players from 1995 are still playing in the NHL? None.
Major League Baseball? None.
From the NBA? None.
From the NFL? None.
Four years later, in September 1999, Williams won his first Grand Slam tournament — the US Open. The two finalists of the tournament last year, Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez, were not yet born.
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Serena Williams has spent 319 weeks at No. 1 in the world singles rankings. A very long reign. Longer than those of François Legault, Philippe Couillard, Pauline Marois, Bernard Landry, Lucien Bouchard, Jacques Parizeau, Daniel Johnson Sr., Daniel Johnson Jr., Pierre Marc Johnson, Jean-Jacques Bertrand and Jean Lesage as Premiers of Quebec.
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Serena Williams has won 73 tournaments during her career. It’s one more than all the players in the top 10 current GATHERED!
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Serena Williams’ favorite tournament is Wimbledon. She reached the final 11 times. No player among the top 20 in the world today has qualified more than 10 times for the London tournament.
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Let’s stick to the Grand Slam theme. A truly staggering number is the number of major tournaments Serena Williams has won after her 30e anniversary.
PHOTO DAVID VINCENT, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Serena Williams, in 2013, after her victory in the final at Roland-Garros
Four ? You freeze.
Six ? Go up.
Eight ? Even more.
The correct answer: 10. No active player, regardless of age, has won more than four.
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Her best part ever? There are several good candidates. Notably his 6-0, 6-0 defeat of Carla Suárez Navarro in the quarter-finals of the United States Open in 2013. The first set lasted 19 minutes. The second, 33. The Spaniard didn’t even win 20 rallies in the whole game.
Another standout performance: a relatively narrow 6-3, 7-6 win over second-seed Victoria Azarenka at Wimbledon in 2012. On that day, Williams had 24 aces – a tournament record, and the equivalent of a full sleeve!
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A player who would have preferred never to face Serena Williams? Maria Sharapova. Yes, the Russian has already defeated the American. Twice, even. But above all, she lost all their clashes (19) between 2005 and 2019.
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Finally, my favorite stat. The one that kept me bedridden for three days with an intractable migraine. Serena Williams is an accomplished Olympian. She won not one, not two, not three, but four gold medals at the Olympics. That’s more than Pakistan (220 million people), Nigeria (206 million), Bangladesh (164 million), the Philippines (109 million), Vietnam (97 million) and 72 other countries — in all of history games !
PHOTO BERNARD BRAULT, PRESS ARCHIVES
Serena Williams, gold medalist at the London Olympics in 2012
Still ! Still ! Still !
OK, OK. One last thing before putting away Captain Crounche’s bowl.
In baseball, the Oakland Athletics are having a miserable season. Far, far, very far from the head of their division. With nothing left to gain, they simply decided to fire their highest earners, so that today there are only three millionaire players left.
In fact, if we add up the salaries of all the players in the current edition (minus the injured), we arrive at a total of 22 million. That’s a lower payroll than the team did in 1991, and I haven’t even adjusted the dollars for inflation.
PHOTO GODOFREDO A. VÁSQUEZ, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Nick Allen and Jonah Bride of the Oakland Athletics
Even better ?
The four players who have received the most money from the Oakland Athletics this season are Stephen Piscotty, Elvis Andrus, Frankie Montas and Trevor Rosenthal. The first two, dismissed, are at home. The third now plays for the New York Yankees. And Rosenthal?
He hasn’t played for two years!