No tournament rewards greatness quite like Wimbledon. To win it you must master the most unforgiving surface in the sport across two relentless weeks, beating seven opponents on lawns that punish hesitation. These are the players who did it best — the names whose shots you can borrow in THE SLAM.
For decades, grass belonged to the players who attacked the net. Martina Navratilova built the most dominant grass-court résumé in history on the back of a left-handed serve and the surest volleys the women’s game has seen, winning a record nine singles titles. On the men’s side, Pete Sampras turned Centre Court into a fortress with a second serve as reliable as his first and a running forehand that ended points in a single stroke. Before them, Björn Borg married baseline consistency with ice-cold nerve to win five in a row, while John McEnroe answered with the most instinctive hands the sport has produced.
As racquet technology improved, raw power began to overwhelm finesse. Boris Becker announced himself at seventeen, diving across the grass and bludgeoning serves; Stefan Edberg countered with textbook serve-and-volley elegance, and their late-1980s finals are some of the most replayed in the tournament’s history. Steffi Graf, meanwhile, ran around her backhand to unload a forehand that remains a benchmark, anchoring a seven-title haul and the 1988 Golden Slam.
Few players changed a sport the way Venus and Serena Williams changed tennis. Combining serves that touched 200 km/h with athleticism never before seen on a tennis court, the sisters met in multiple Wimbledon finals and pushed the women’s game into a new physical era. Serena’s ability to raise her level on the biggest points made her, by most measures, the greatest champion of the modern age.
Roger Federer made grass look like a private art form, gliding to a record number of men’s singles titles with a game that blended classic touch and modern power. Rafael Nadal proved that a clay-court genius could conquer the lawns too, and his 2008 final against Federer — finished in near-darkness over five sets — is widely regarded as the greatest match ever played. Novak Djokovic answered with the most complete defensive-to-offensive game in history, returning serve better than anyone and saving championship points to win the first final ever decided by a deciding-set tiebreak in 2019.
Wimbledon is never short of new heroes. Carlos Alcaraz arrived with a blend of power, touch and speed that evokes the very best of the past, while a wave of young players — from big servers to fearless shot-makers — now chases the title that defines a career. That is exactly what THE SLAM lets you explore: take the serve of one champion, the return of another and the nerve of a third, and find out whether your custom legend could have lifted the trophy.
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