Best Tennis players of all time

Novak Djokovic leads the Tennis ranking with 1621 ELO points over 256 duels, ahead of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

The podium groups the modern era's dominant trio within 43 ELO points, but a sharp divide follows: Rafael Nadal edges ahead of Pete Sampras by 268 points, marking the clearest break in the ranking. That gap separates current champions from past greats and reflects how voters view the evolution of the sport. At the top, Djokovic holds a narrow 10-point lead over Federer despite a slightly lower win rate of 78% against Federer's 79%. Nadal completes the top 3 with 76% wins across 249 duels. Further down, Pete Sampras stands at rank 4 with 1310 ELO points and a 54% win rate over 287 duels, while Björn Borg rounds out the top 5 with 1258 points. The bottom tells its own story: Juan Martin Del Potro, Marat Safin and Lleyton Hewitt occupy ranks 18 through 20, with Hewitt closing the ranking at 1028 ELO points after 271 duels. This spread suggests that consistent excellence rather than standout moments defines greatness in this community's eyes.

The ranking draws on 3195 duels submitted by 54 players across 20 contenders, updated on 11 October 2026. This volume offers a stable reading of collective opinion, though margins remain thin enough at the summit that further voting could still shift the order. Cast your own duels to confirm or challenge the current hierarchy.

Updated on October 11, 2026

How this ranking is computed

Every duel won lifts a contender and every loss drops them, by an amount that depends on the opponent's strength: beating the leader is worth more than beating the last. It is an ELO, the same principle as in chess. Duels are not drawn at random — an adaptive entropy sort puts the least predictable match-ups first, which settles the ranking far faster than a full round robin. A worldwide ranking is only published past 30 completed plays. Known limit: a contender who has faced few opponents keeps an approximate score, and the bottom of the table moves more than the podium.

How our rankings are made →