Martina Navratilova on whether or not Serena Williams is the GOAT: ‘It depends how you measure it’

WTA Tour

Shahida Jacobs
September 1, 2020

Martina Navratilova insists the GOAT debate in women’s tennis is not cut and dried with Serena Williams the clear winner.

Many believe 23-time Grand Slam winner Williams is the greatest women’s tennis player of all time with some, including Andy Murray even rating her as the overall GOAT, above the likes of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.

However, 18-time major singles winner Navratilova believes the likes Steffi Graf and Margaret Court should also be included in the discussions.

Court currently leads the Grand Slam tally with 24, followed by Williams, Graf (22), Helen Wills Moody (19) and Navratilova and Chris Evert (18).

“If you just go on majors, then you have Serena,” Navratilova, who also won 31 women’s doubles majors and 10 mixed doubles titles, told Tennis Channel. “If you go a different way, then it would be me or Steffi Graf, perhaps Margaret Court. It just depends how you want to measure that.

“But I think Serena just wants that record [of 24 Grand Slam titles] regardless of any GOAT status. For her it’s about that number. Now she’s got a great chance with the US Open with a smaller field obviously.”

She added: “There is a lot of different measuring sticks. It’s hard for me to talk about it completely objectively because we were playing under a different measuring stick, so to speak, during my time with Chris and myself.

“Not even playing the French Open or the Australian Open because we were playing World TeamTennis. The Australian Open wasn’t even important enough, and the money was so bad, we would make more money playing regular tournaments than going down to Australia. The majors became a huge measuring stick in the ’90s forward.”

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Martina Navratilova Serena Williams