I tried oh so hard but when you get an idea in life, you have to go with it. 

Most of our other polls have been about who is your favourite and we did that to death. A lot of the greatest players turned out not to be our favourites, as it happens, but we never tested who the board members think is the greatest player of all time. 

This is a debate that rages, of course. And opinions are split. How do you decide what counts most ? Is it longevity? Is it Alan wins? Or do other big events count? How do you count other big events of today against big events of yesteryear? What about the fact that some players where amateurs and won a few slams only before turning pro? Or someone who dominated the pros prior to the open era and dominated in the pro game, for years? And what about doing the grand slam? Or winning loads of one particular slam? And then we have head to heads? Or it may be outside factors such as popularity or impact on the game play in or detract?

We all have different views and perspectives so why not vote on it and we can see who the board thinks is the greatest.

I have selected 32 men and 32 women and we will end up with 1 of each as the respective greatest players. I had to decide a criteria for qualifying.  Is it slam wins and if so, how many? I took the view that many players win slams who can no way be the greatest ever, Steve Denton, Johan kriek, Richard krajicek etc etc. Is it being number one? If someone peaked at 2 or 3, how can they have a claim to being the greatest ever? Pre 1973 though, no mid year rankings etc, the rankings where decided by August publications and at the year end. The view could be that to be the greatest ever, youd need to be the best in a given year. And by its nature, being best in a given year involves winning at least 1 slam. 

So I've selected 32 men and women whove all been ranked year end number 1. The best in their year. Sometimes there are.ties- the wta or atp had 1 top player, the itf selected another as their champion, so both count as equal. Pre 1968, there are sometimes joint tops one pro and one amateur. So they both count, the good news being that typically they are just one player selected by the top journalists of that era , pro or amateur combined. 

I'm lucky that wiki has done it for me and compiled the top men and women in each year and how they where judged. Nearly all won slams. 

The 32 men go back to the mid 30s. As such, Bill Tilden , Rene Lacoste, Jean Borotra and Henri Cochet miss out. And Lew Hoad misses out as he never got recognised formally as year end number one, although 2nd a large number of times. 

In the women, the only controversial ones missing might be Venus Williams,  but she was never year end 1, and Virginia Wade and Ann Jones, ditto. The womens goes back to around 1950 as a list. 

I'll publish the groups later and the links to the lists so you cam see how I derived them. To be fair, of 32 , only maybe 10 men and 10 women lay claim to the title. Anyone missing is at the periphery in reality. 

4 groups of 8, top 3 go to 2 groups of 6 in semis (12 players), and top 2 in each group proceed to a final 4 group. 

Over 3 days. Will post the groups tonight and they will run through to a close wednesday. Tie play offs as needed 

And 2 british men and 1 british woman make the cut based on the year end number 1 criteria as well!

-- Edited by JonH comes home on Sunday 24th of May 2020 10:39:47 AM