In the Open Era of professional tennis, which started in 1968 to allow professional players to compete with amateur players, Gabriela Sabatini is the only Latin American female tennis player to have won a Grand Slam title, in the 1990 U.S. Open. She was also runner-up in two other Grand Slam finals: U.S. Open (1988) and Wimbledon (1991). Maria Bueno, a Brazilian tennis player, holds the record of most Grand Slam titles won prior to the Open Era, with seven wins and five runner-ups.
Queens of the court
Serena Williams is undoubtedly one of the best female tennis players of all time.
Of her 23 Grand Slam titles to date, seven each came at the Australian Open and at Wimbledon. Along with her six victories at the U.S. Open and her three French Open titles, she is one of only two female players in the Open Era to have won each of the major tournaments three times or more. The other player to join her in that exclusive club is
Steffi Graf, who holds the record for the total number of weeks at No. 1 in the WTA rankings.
Can Williams match Navratilova?
While Serena Williams tops the list for most Grand Slam titles, it is
Martina Navratilova who holds the record for most singles titles on the WTA circuit. While Serena Williams has won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles with her sister, Venus,
Navratilova managed an impressive 31 Grand Slam doubles wins during her career, as well as 177 overall doubles titles. Navratilova won titles with several different partners, but her most successful doubles pairing was with Pam Shriver, with whom she won 21 Grand Slam titles between 1981 and 1989. Impressively, Navratilova reached the final of the 2003 U.S. Open at the age of 46, some 13 years after her latest Grand Slam doubles success at the same tournament. In 2003, however, she lost out in the final with her partner, Svetlana Kuznetsova, marking Navratilova’s last appearance in a Grand Slam doubles final.