The Longest Win Streaks in Pro Tennis

​Professional tennis is a physically taxing sport. Matches can last several hours, and the pro season operates for roughly 11 months each year, offering little time for rest and training. Due to the single-elimination nature of tournaments, a few losses can result in a player going weeks without much high-level competition, while winning multiple tournaments in a row risks burnout and exhaustion. Despite all of these challenges, numerous players have enjoyed historic winning streaks during their careers.

Despite a relatively short career, Bjorn Borg is regarded as one of the most dominant tennis players of all time. He won 11 major titles from 1974 to 1981, in addition to making five additional finals. His dominance is underscored by the fact that he established the two longest winning streaks in modern tennis.

Early in the 1978 season, Borg won titles in Gothenburg, Las Vegas, Milan, and several smaller events. In May of 1978, following a walkover to Vitas Gerulaitis, Borg captured titles in Rome and at Roland Garros, won two Davis Cup quarterfinal matches, then added victories at Wimbledon, Bastad, Menton, and Frejus, plus two more Davis Cup victories. He reached the final of the United States Open before losing to Jimmy Connors, ending his record-setting winning streak at 49 matches.

The following season, Borg enjoyed a 48-match run of victories which stretched from September 1979 to May 1980. Other notable win streaks include Guillermo Vilas' run of 46 victories from 1977 to 1978, Ivan Lendl's 44-match streak in 1981 and 1982, and, more recently, Novak Djokovic's 43-match run in 2010.

Other men have enjoyed extended win streaks on specific playing surfaces. Roger Federer, for example, won 56 straight matches on hard courts. His streak began after a loss to Tomas Berdych at the Athens Olympics in 2004, continued throughout the entirety of the 2005 season, and included the 2006 Australian Open before ending in the Dubai final against Rafael Nadal.

Nadal owns an even more impressive surface-based win streak, claiming 81 straight victories on clay from April 2005 to May 2007. Fittingly, the streak ended to Federer at the Hamburg Masters, but not before Nadal claimed six masters titles and two French Open victories.

While men have established many impressive records at the pro level, few tennis players can stand up to the lofty achievements of Martina Navratilova, who won 74 consecutive matches, a streak that lasted almost the entirety of the 1984 season. Following a loss to Hana Mandlikova in the final of the Oakland tournament on January 15, Navratilova secured 13 consecutive tournament victories. Her streak included major titles at the French Open, Wimbledon, and the United States Open. Navratilova dropped just one set at these events, winning the latter two without losing a single set. Her streak ended in December at the last event of the year, the Australian Open, 5-7 in the third set of her semifinal match against Helena Sukova.

Navratilova also recorded 58 and 54-match win streaks during her career, though the second-longest run of victories in women's tennis belongs to another dominant force, Steffi Graf. From June 1989 to May 1990 Graff won 66 matches, going almost a full year without a loss. She won the French Open, Wimbledon, US Open, and Australian Open during this streak before losing to a 16-year-old Monica Seles, who won her 24th straight match by winning the German Open over Graf.

Sean Unwin

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