30 greatest female athletes of all time

7. Steffi Graf
Tennis

Steffi Graf needs no introduction. Her resume is as flawless as any in sports. Twenty-two Grand Slam titles, 107 tournament wins, and exactly 900 wins in her professional career.

Graf was great everywhere. At Wimbledon, she had seven individual titles and the only doubles crown of her career. She won the Australian Open three years in a row, and four times overall. She won the French Open six times, showing she could be just as dominant on clay as she was on grass. Here in the U.S., Flushing, Queens was home to five Graf championships. 

Her most impressive feat was winning the Golden Slam, something nobody has ever done in either male or female tennis. For those who don’t know, the Golden Slam consists of winning all four Grand Slam championships and an Olympic gold medal in the same calendar year. Graf did this in 1988, a year after she burst on the scene and took greatness away from Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert. She made it known there was a new top tennis player in the world, and she didn’t let that go for a decade.

Graf spent 377 weeks at number one. Just take a moment to let that number sink in. That’s more than seven years. Graf built a playstyle that could be successful no matter the court. Her footwork was impossible to emulate, and her forehand hit the ball with force and accuracy. She would dominate any era, and she just so happened to end the dominance of two of the women on this list.