To celebrate TENNIS Magazine’s 40th anniversary, we’ve chosen the 40 best players of the last four decades. Here are numbers 36 through 33

36. Jennifer Capriati
Photo By Susan Mullane

Most players would be happy with a fraction of Jennifer Capriati’s career. It’s not just her longevity (13 years on tour and counting) or three major titles they might envy. What’s made Capriati’s run special has been the drama.

Has any player lived through more dizzying highs and mortifying lows? The best moments include her first tournament, at Boca Raton in 1990, where the 13-year-old came out swinging with abandon and became the youngest-ever finalist in a pro event; her upset the next year of Martina Navratilova in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon; a stunning three-set win over Steffi Graf for Olympic gold in Barcelona in 1992; wins at the Australian Open in 2001 and 2002; and a 12-10 third-set victory over Kim Clijsters for the 2001 French Open.

Despite those achievements, it’s the darker stuff fans seem to remember about Capriati: the deflating loss in a third-set tiebreaker to Monica Seles in their 1991 U.S. Open semifinal; her mid-’90s drug use and shoplifting arrest, which made “Capriati” synonymous with “burnout”; and two more losses in third-set tiebreakers at Flushing Meadows, in the 2003 and 2004 semifinals.
 Even if she hasn’t gotten that Open title she desperately wants, those last two matches showed what she’s made of. Capriati fought, screamed, and cried, but fell just short. “I gave everything I had,” she said after each. When she finally brings the drama to a close, that’s how we’ll remember her. —STEPHEN TIGNOR

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:
> 2001 and ’02 Australian Open, and ’01 Roland Garros titles > Won 1992 Olympic gold medal
> Spent 17 weeks at No. 1

35. Stan Smith
Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

At a time when the game was exploding with talent and controversy, Stan Smith stood ramrod straight for tradition. Nobody accused him of being a punk, or fainted at the sight of a feathery drop volley alighting from his strings à la Ilie Nastase. But then, nobody jabbed a finger at him either, shouting, “Cheater! Showboat! Jerk!” As a heavy-footed youth in Pasadena, Calif., Smith set his ice-blue eyes on an unlikely prize: a Grand Slam trophy.

He was a slow learner, but he sprouted to 6-foot-4 and developed a thundering, straight-ahead game suited to the grass courts on which he realized his dream, at the 1971 U.S. Open. Smith was 24 by then, most of his fine blond hair had gone the way of his teenage acne, and he confided that he concentrated so hard during play that he often got a headache.

The runner-up at Wimbledon in 1971, Smith went all the way the following year. It was only fitting, for Smith was old guard all the way, right down to his immaculate whites and brilliant Davis Cup résumé. He shares the record with Bill Tilden for playing on the most Cup-winning squads (seven), and his three-win performance against Romania in the 1972 final on a clay court in Bucharest, where he overcame a whole bunch of cheaters, showboat s, and jerks, ranks as one of the game’s greatest achievements. — PETER BODO

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:
> 1971 U.S. Open and ’72 Wimbledon titles
> One of six Open era men who have won 100 pro titles or more (singles and doubles)

34. Lleyton Hewit
Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

 It’s nice to have a role model. Think, for a moment, about where you’d be if Lleyton Hewitt, the scrappy kid from Adelaide, Australia, who has no discernible weapons other than his tenacity and determination, never crashed the tennis scene as a teenager to beat much bigger, much stronger opponents. Without Hewitt, you’d be stuck with models like Roger Federer and Pete Sampras, players of unmistakable but unattainable genius. Hewitt gives us all hope that we can overcome any obstacle through the sheer will to win.

His combativeness was never on more brilliant display than in the 2003 Davis Cup semifinals in Melbourne. Down two sets to Federer, Hewitt staged a rousing comeback, punctuating every winner with his trademark “C’mawwwwn!” By the fifth, Federer was beaten into submission. Two months later, in the final, Hewitt added another “C’mawwwwn!” moment when he defeated Juan Carlos Ferrero in five sets to help Australia win the Cup.

Hewitt is cut from different cloth than the Aussies of yore. His in-your-face ’tude owes more to the crudity of Jimmy Connors than the class of Rod Laver. Fittingly, his first major title came on Connors’ stomping grounds, at the U.S. Open in 2001. Later that year, when he won the Tennis Masters Cup, Hewitt became the youngest man—and the first Aussie—to finish the year No. 1. Although he’s had his share of struggles since, Hewitt hasn’t given up the good fight, and never will. —JAMES MARTIN

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:
> 2001 U.S. Open and ’02 Wimbledon titles
> Finished 2001 as the youngest yearend No. 1 ever, at 19, and was No. 1 again in ’02

33. Hana Madlikova
Photo by Michael Cole/AP

 If talent were the sole criterion, few players of any era would outrank Hana Mandlikova. This silky-smooth Czech had a game full of rich tones and colors. She appeared in eight Grand Slam finals (winning four) in the 1980s, despite laboring in the shadows cast by two icons, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova.

Mandlikova played with a stylishly complete arsenal of strokes. Short crosscourt backhand passing shots? No problem. Driving ground strokes? Piece of cake. Lob-volley winners? Been there, done that. But percentage tennis was not her forte. A shot-maker at heart, she often succumbed to the temptation of trying a crowd-pleasing winner instead of a safe shot.

Ginger Rogers once described Mandlikova’s legs as “the most beautiful I’ve ever seen,” but it was Mandlikova’s high-risk style that made her so exciting, and infuriating, to watch. When she was good, she was spectacular, winning as easily on clay as on fast indoor carpet. When she was bad, ball boys, linesmen, and even spectators found themselves dodging misfired bullets. In keeping with her unpredictability, Mandlikova won every major but the one suited to her attacking game: Wimbledon. Evert beat her in one final, in 1981; Navratilova in another, in 1986. But those rivals didn’t always have the upper hand. On the way to the title at Roland Garros in 1981, Mandlikova handed Evert her first loss there in eight years; in 1985, she won the U.S. Open while becoming only the fourth player to beat Evert and Navratilova in the same event. —TONY LANCE 

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:
> 1980 and ’87 Australian Open, ’82 Roland Garros, and ’85 U.S. Open titles
> Inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1994