Talk:Open Era tennis records – Women's singles

Surface winning %
The minimum wins required for entry status in the surface stats are not consistent or fairly balanced to ensure representation I’ve periods. For example the carpet and grass court numbers are only 40 but clay is 90 and hard is 200. The following is the #1 wins vs minimum requirement: Total 593:500 (way too high minimum) Clay: 382:90 (why so different to e.g. grass?) Hard: 578:200 (why so high a minimum noting people in different era played far less hard surfaces?) Grass: 305:40 Carpet: 512:40 Antipodenz (talk) 10:04, 28 September 2021 (UTC)


 * To add to my comment (not addressed): one way to consider whether the minimum number of matches played is relevant is to consider the players who have the most titles by surface (top ten) and see if they feature in the the match winning % top ten - for clay 4/10 and for hard 3/10 do not appear; then to see if their winning % would put them into the top 10 (without the current limit). If so the current limit should be set at not higher than that number. There are other reasons also for looking at the imbalance between minimum numbers of matches played for court type. Antipodenz (talk) 04:44, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Updates to format / organization / presentation
I did a lot of changes to the overall formatting and organization of the page yesterday and today (I am IP 108.20.60.23 - just created my account now) to hopefully improve the layout. It is much closer to the men's page now but still a lot of work to do. I think the men's open era records page is very clean and organized and obviously the women's page deserves to be just as good.

I think some sections could be eliminated and wonder what others think. The section for Runners-Up per Grand Slam tournament (currently section 2.3) could be deleted perhaps? Is it really a record or achievement to be runner-up? A titlist and finalist for sure, but a runner-up? I would like to just remove this small section.

The sections labeled Achievements at all 4 majors and 3 out of 4 majors (currently sections 4.4 and 4.5) seem unnecessary to me. We have already listed all instances of players winning 3 majors in a year, 2 majors in a year, 4 finals in a year - do we really need to list instances of winning 2 majors PLUS 1 final? Or 1 win plus 2 finals losses? Are these significant enough achievements to be included on this records page? I would vote to remove these 2 sections.

Unless someone else beats me to it (which is totally fine!), I plan on adding sections for the Olympics and also add a section within Grand Slams somewhere for consecutive wins at each major, maybe consecutive finals as well. As I said, still work to do but I think the overall presentation is greatly improved!

Thank you.DropShot244 (talk) 17:09, 12 October 2021 (UTC)


 * @DropShot244 I appreciate the work you've done on this article, thanks! Letcord (talk) 13:15, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Rankings Achievements since 1968 or 1975?
The Rankings Achievements section says it is since 1968 (Open Era) but the WTA Rankings did not start until 1975. How are people determining the Weeks at #1 for 1968-1975? How are the totals for Billie Jean King and Margaret Court arrived at? What is the source? I would love to have rankings for the entire Open Era but just not sure how to confirm the numbers. DropShot244 (talk) 21:38, 13 October 2021 (UTC)


 * It should be 1975. Before then, various organizations did compile rankings, but they were unofficial. I've updated the tables in #WTA Rankings achievements to be WTA only, with King and Court removed . Letcord (talk) 13:23, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Open era in women tennis?
After the open era the professional and amateur tours were merged, but there was no professional women’s tour in 1968, only men’s. Shouldn’t it be mentioned? Jorgebox4 (talk) 17:35, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It's more complex than that. The tours weren't really merged as much as tournaments could now pay players' money without them being shut out of other events. All the big tournaments were now open to all comers. There had been no pro tour for women but there had been women professionals. Suzanne Lenglen turned pro, Alice Marble turned pro. There was no pro tour for women, but with the advent of playing for money, more women picked up the sport to compete. Of course the ladies were under the thumb of Jack Kramer's stranglehold on payouts and women's events were drying up... that is until Billie Jean King with the original nine stomped that out in 1970. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:49, 7 December 2023 (UTC)