To celebrate TENNIS Magazine’s 40th anniversary, we’ve chosen the 40 best players of the last four decades. In each issue this year, we’ve revealed the names of four players on the list.  Here are the four greatest players of the last 40 years.

4. Chris Evert
Photo By Tommy Hindly/Professional Sport

Sporting Ribbons in her hair, gold hoop earrings, and a devastating two-handed backhand, “Chrissi” pounded her way to the semifinals of the 1971 U.S. Open in her Grand Slam debut and never looked back.  By the time she played her last major, she was an icon.

 At the dawn of the 1970s, as the first rumblings of the tennis boom echoed across America, the sport needed a fresh face to represent it to the curious millions. It found just that in Chris Evert, an introverted but poised and gifted 16-year-old from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Sporting ribbons in her hair, gold hoop earrings, and a devastating two-handed backhand, “Chrissie” pounded her way to the semifinals of the 1971 U.S. Open in her Grand Slam debut and never looked back. By the time she played her last major, the 1989 Open, she was an icon. One of Evert’s rivals had a more explosive game (Martina Navratilova), another had greater athletic gifts (Evonne Goolagong), but nobody was more consistent over a longer period than the 125-pound Evert. She has the highest winning percentage in history, .900. Her father Jimmy, a reserved teaching pro at the public courts at Holiday Park in Fort Lauderdale, started his children in tennis early. Chris, one of five kids, adopted a two-handed backhand because she was too weak to swing the racquet with one. By the time she was old enough to change, Jimmy realized that he had better leave well-enough alone. That Evert’s debut occurred on fast grass courts was telling. Although her style, which was built on a foundation of highly disciplined strokes hit with little spin from the baseline, was tailor-made for clay, she was so accurate and so immune to pressure that her game translated to all surfaces. On fast indoor carpet, she could bury attacking opponents in a barrage of passing shots. On clay, she was nonpareil: She won 125 straight matches on dirt from 1973 to ’79 and, ever the realist, admitted, “I realize that a lot of my fans think I’m boring, but I play tennis to win.” Many of Evert’s finest moments came during her rivalry with Navratilova, who started as Evert’s foil but ultimately pulled ahead. With 157 singles titles, Evert is second only to Navratilova. But if you add her 72 runner-up finishes, she made it to a staggering 76 percent of the finals in the 303 tournaments she entered. And consider this: After winning her first major at Roland Garros in 1974 and repeating in 1975, Evert skipped that tournament (as well as the Australian Open) for three years. Had she played them, her Slam total might have been significantly higher. Evert was not merely consistent; she was consistently divine. —PETER BODO

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:
> Reached the semifinals or better at 53 majors, including 34 straight, an Open era record
> Finished five seasons at No. 1
> In 1974, amassed a 103-7 record and won 16 of 24 events  

3. Steffi Graf
Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images

As her husband, Andre Agassi, said during her Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2004, Graf has “always been about the action, not about the words.”

 When Steffi Graf burst onto the scene in the mid-1980s, she was a typical teenager—all arms and legs, gawky and shy. While the shyness persisted, she grew into her body and made one major statement after another on court. Leaving the theatrics to others, she put together the most diverse all-surface portfolio in the sport. She was all business, and if some of her fans wished she had opened up a little more, nobody could have demanded that she be more single-minded. Remember the 1988 French Open final, in which she beat Natasha Zvereva 6-0, 6-0 in under an hour? The running joke was that Graf played as if she were double-parked. It was that type of performance, which she turned in with astonishing frequency, that gave rise to her reputation as an emotionless warrior, a stark contrast to her countryman Boris Becker, who played the melodramatic Hamlet to her stone-cold La Femme Nikita. (Graf disputed that assessment, saying, “Anyone who thinks I’m cold doesn’t know me.”) Graf won 107 singles titles, including 22 Grand Slam titles (two short of Margaret Court’s record), and held the No. 1 ranking for a record 186 consecutive weeks from 1987 to ’91. She’s the only player, man or woman, to win the “Golden Slam”: all four majors plus Olympic gold, which she did in 1988. Graf won seven titles on the grass at Wimbledon, six on the clay at Roland Garros, five on the U.S. Open’s DecoTurf, and four Australian Open trophies on Rebound Ace. The careers of legends like Court and Rod Laver, who played when three of the four majors were held on grass, seem almost incomplete by comparison. She did it all with a game that looked homemade. Her ball toss sometimes disappeared from our TV screens; she hit laser-like forehands, but often off her back foot and with late preparation. Even her one-handed slice backhand, which bit the court, stood out in an age when most players relied on a one-sizefits- all style featuring the two-handed topspin backhand. When Graf stopped hitting those strokes in 1999, it was in signature fashion. There was no fanfare—she just up and left, still No. 3 in the world, the highest-ranked player ever to call it quits. As her husband, Andre Agassi, said during her Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2004, Graf has “always been about the action, not about the words.” —JAMES MARTIN

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:
> Reached 31 major finals, winning 22
> Only player to win each of the four majors at least four times
> Held the No. 1 ranking for 377 weeks, the record

2. Martina Navratilova
Photo by Central Press/Getty Images

In the early 1980s, Navratilova embraced Spartan approaches to training and nutrition, transforming herself into a sleek sinewy paragon of fitness.  She forced her rivals to shape up –literally.

No player, much less a Hall-of-Famer, followed a more winding road than the human self-help book named Martina Navratilova. Born in Prague, she grew up playing on slow red clay but eschewed the patient baseline style needed for that surface to become an attacker whose game radiated flair. It was only the first indication that this strong-willed girl would live by rules she wrote herself. At 18, while playing in the 1975 U.S. Open at Forest Hills, Navratilova nearly caused an international incident by defecting to the United States. She didn’t know if she would ever see her family again, but she did know that she wanted to escape the clutches of Czechoslovakia’s repressive Communist Party and pursue her tennis career—and a fast-paced Western lifestyle. This she did with a vengeance, and after a difficult period of adjustment (her weight ballooned and her game suffered) she made her breakthrough in 1978 by beating world No. 1 Chris Evert for the title at Wimbledon. The All England Club would soon become the explosive lefty’s home venue, as she won the singles title there a whopping nine times. In the early 1980s, Navratilova embraced Spartangrade approaches to training and nutrition, transforming herself into a sleek, sinewy paragon of fitness. At a hair under 5-foot-8 and 140 pounds, she was compact and light enough to complement her power with catlike quickness. Navratilova forced her rivals to shape up—literally. Her fitness helped her reverse the tide in her rivalry with Evert and make it the greatest duel between individuals in sports history (Navratilova ultimately prevailed, 43-37). Navratilova also helped turn coaches into gurus. A trio of them (Nancy Lieberman, Renée Richards, and Mike Estep) shepherded her through her glory years. They sounded the same theme: Get fit, get to the net. She did, to dazzling effect. Navratilova has won a record 167 singles titles, including 18 Grand Slams, and 351 titles overall, a record likely never to be broken. She has the most singles victories, with 1,440, and has won 40 major doubles titles (31 women’s doubles, 9 mixed). And what about her phenomenal longevity? In 1990, when a 14-year-old named Jennifer Capriati lost to Navratilova in the final of the Family Circle Cup, she declared Navratilova, 33 at the time, a “lege”— as in, legend. Fifteen years later, Navratilova still isn’t finished. This year, she reached the semifinals of the Wimbledon doubles and the final of the Australian mixed. In 2003, she won mixed titles in Australia and at Wimbledon, becoming, at 46, the oldest player to win a Grand Slam title. —PETER BODO

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:
> Won six consecutive majors in 1983–’84.
> One of three women to win all three events at each of the four majors
> Went 86-1 in 1983, the best single-season percentage (.989) ever

1. Pete Sampras
Photo By Tommy Hindly/Professional Sport

Sampras raised his game at the biggest events.  More than any other tennis player, he was worthy of the ultimate compliment you can give any professional athlete: He was money in the bank.

In the minds of tennis fans, a great player isn’t just a person, but a representation. John McEnroe embodied angry genius; Jimmy Connors was blood and guts personified; Chris Evert, grace under pressure. What do we think of when we say the name Pete Sampras? Something both simpler and more exalted: a winner. Like his idol, Michael Jordan, and friend, Wayne Gretzky, Sampras is his sport’s greatest modern champion. But it didn’t start out that way. The early Pistol Pete was known more for his raw talent than his competitive fire. Four years into his career, he hadn’t spent a week at No. 1. That’s when the 21-year-old faced Stefan Edberg in the 1992 U.S. Open final. When Sampras walked off a loser after four sets, he knew that second best would never be good enough again. “Before, I was happy at No. 6,” Sampras says. “I just didn’t dig deep enough. If that loss hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have achieved what I achieved.” What the loose-limbed Californian achieved rewrote the record books. Sampras won comprehensively, on the game’s biggest stages, and week in, week out on tour. Not only does he own the most Grand Slam titles among men, with 14, he finished No. 1 for six straight seasons and spent 286 weeks in the top spot, both men’s records. He made his name synonymous with the game’s most prestigious event, Wimbledon, where he won seven titles in eight years. But Sampras won nearly everywhere. He ended Ivan Lendl’s famous run of eight U.S. Open finals; he beat Jim Courier in Melbourne after breaking down in tears because his coach had been diagnosed with a brain tumor; and the final match of his career was a victory over his greatest rival, Andre Agassi, for a fifth U.S. Open title. The last time the U.S. captured the Davis Cup, in 1995, guess who won all three matches in the final against Russia? Still, despite many attempts, the French Open eluded Sampras. It’s a hole in his résumé and can only be excused by the fact that in the Open era just two men, Rod Laver and Agassi, have won the French along with all the other majors. Of course, plenty of women have, including the three who follow Sampras here. So how did he end up on top? It was the singularity of his accomplishments. The top three women have comparably impeccable records; on the men’s side, where the competition is deeper, Sampras stands alone. Follow the money. Prize winnings are rarely seen as a measure of tennis greatness because for decades there wasn’t any. But it’s worth noting that while our No. 2 and No. 3 players, Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf, have similar career earnings ($21 million), Sampras retired with $43 million, nearly $17 million more than the next man, Agassi, had at the time. Greatness isn’t measured just in dollar signs, but the richest events are generally the biggest, and that’s where Sampras raised his game. More than any other tennis player, he was worthy of the ultimate compliment you can give a professional athlete: He was money in the bank. —STEPHEN TIGNOR

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:
> Reached 15 finals at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, winning 12
> Won five year-end championships, the ATP record (tied with Ivan Lendl)
> First player to win $5 million in a year (1995)