The 2023 edition of Wimbledon is right around the corner, and there are plenty of storylines.

Iga Swiatek, fresh off her dominant French Open performance, is looking to make it back-to-back major victories. Meanwhile, the top-ranked American, No. 7 Sloane Stephens, is still looking for her first Grand slam title.

It remains to be seen what’s in store for tennis fans this year.

Who won the Wimbledon Women’s Singles final in 2022?

Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina defeated Ons Jabeur 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 in the 2022 Wimbledon women’s singles final.

History of Wimbledon Women’s Singles Winners

The first all-amateur women’s Wimbledon singles tournament was contested in 1884. Billie Jean King won the first women’s Wimbledon tournament of the “Open Era” in 1968, when professionals were first allowed to compete against amateurs. The winner of the tournament claims the famed “Venus Rosewater Dish.”

 Tiebreakers have undergone various changes over the years, but as of 2023, all sets go to a tiebreak if tied at 6-6.

You’ll find a full list of women’s Wimbledon winners here.

Who has won the most women’s Wimbledon titles?

American Martina Navratilova has captured the most Wimbledon women’s singles titles with nine in the Open Era. Serena Williams and Steffi Graf each have seven. 

Ranking the Top 10 Greatest Women’s Champions in Wimbledon History

10. Elena Rybakina

Wimbledon Champion: 2022

We’ll kick off this list with last year’s Wimbledon women’s singles winner. In 2022, Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina, just the No. 17 seed, shocked the tennis world by winning the tournament. She enters the 2023 edition as the No. 3 seed and the second betting favorite to emerge as champion. 

Rybakina said she will enter the tournament with a new level of expectations.

 “I’m going to play on Centre Court at the start,” she noted recently.

Will that be a blessing or a curse?

9. Althea Gibson

Wimbledon Champion: 1957, 1958

American Althea Gibson competed in only four women’s Wimbledon championship tournaments, but she managed to win two of them in 1957 and 1958. In doing so, she became the first black person to become a Wimbledon champion.

In 1951, she also became the first black player to compete at Wimbledon. Six years later, she won the competition, beating fellow-American Darlene Hard in straight sets with the Queen in attendance. 

“Shaking hands with the Queen of England was a long way from being forced to sit in the colored section of the bus,” she said.

Gibson was honored with a New York City ticker tape parade upon her return to the United States.

8. Margaret Smith Court

Wimbledon Champion: 1963, 1965, 1970
Wimbledon Runner-Up: 1964, 1971

While not as prolific at Wimbledon as she was at the Australian Open (where she won eight titles), Australia’s Margaret Smith Court still had a very respectable career at the All-England Club.

Court was a three-time Wimbledon champion -- claiming her final title after a thrillingly long match against American Billie Jean King in 1970. Despite lasting only two sets, the Court-King match featured a whopping 46 games (tiebreaker rules were a little different back then). Court defeated King 14-12, 11-9.

7. Helen Wills Moody

Wimbledon Champion: 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1933, 1935, 1938
Wimbledon Runner-Up: 1924

An eight-time Wimbledon champion during the amateur era, Helen Wills Moody famously had a 180-match winning streak from 1927 to 1933.

The Californian lost only twice at Wimbledon, and one of those was as a 19-year-old in the 1924 final. Her most frequent final opponent was Helen Jacobs, whom Moody defeated all four times they played. What a relentless player she was.

6. Chris Evert

Wimbledon Champion: 1974, 1976, 1981
Wimbledon Runner-Up: 1973, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1985

Former world No. 1 American Chris Evert once reached 34 consecutive semifinals at major tournaments from 1971 to 1983. At Wimbledon, however, she often ran into trouble after the semifinals.

Already a two-time champion by that point, Evert lost a backbreaking, three-set final to rival Martina Navratilova in 1978. Navratilova would go on to beat Evert in three more finals -- 1982, 1984, and 1985 (all in three sets). However, our top 10 ranking can’t penalize Evert for playing in an era that featured the most dominant woman’s grass player of all time. Evert’s 10 Wimbledon finals appearances are the third-most by any player in the modern era.

5. Billie Jean King

Wimbledon Champion: 1966, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1975
Wimbledon Runner-Up: 1963, 1969, 1970

Billie Jean King’s Wimbledon career is a testament to her longevity. She made her first final in 1963, five years before the Open Era began, in a tournament that featured only eight seeded players. King went on to reach the semifinals a remarkable 20 years later at age 39 before falling to 18-year-old fellow American Andrea Jaeger, who was 21 years her junior.

In between those two matches, King won six Wimbledon titles and made three more appearances in the final. Once asked if she would retire, King said: “It's like asking Nureyev to stop dancing and Sinatra to stop singing. Why don't they stop?''

4. Venus Williams

Wimbledon Champion: 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008
Wimbledon Runner-Up: 2002, 2003, 2009, 2017

The first Williams sister to appear on this list, Venus broke through as a 20-year-old at Wimbledon in 2000. After beating world No. 1 Martina Hingis in the quarterfinals, she defeated her younger sister, Serena, in the semifinals and world No. 2 Lindsay Davenport in the final. That’s as tough a Wimbledon road as you’re going to find, both in terms of quality and emotion.

Another Wimbledon victory in 2001 was followed by consecutive finals losses to Serena. However, Venus got some revenge by beating her sister in the 2008 final.

“I just look at her as another opponent at the end of the day,” Venus said of her mindset when playing against her sister in a Wimbledon final.

3. Steffi Graf

Wimbledon Champion: 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996
Wimbledon Runner-Up: 1987, 1999

Steffi Graf’s first Wimbledon victory was part of the first-ever same-year Golden Slam, which saw Graf win all four Grand Slam events and the Olympic gold medal in 1988.

Perhaps the most dominant of her seven Wimbledon titles came in 1991, a year when both world No. 1-ranked Graf and her final opponent, World No. 2 Gabriela Sabatini, had not dropped a single set on their way to the final.

The German maestro beat Sabatini in three sets that year. 

2. Serena Williams

Wimbledon Champion: 2002, 2003, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2016
Wimbledon Runner-Up: 2004, 2008, 2018, 2019

A Wimbledon legend, Serena Williams burst onto the scene at age 20 in 2001 and became one of the youngest women’s Wimbledon winners of all time by defeating her sister Venus in the final.

Williams fell in the tournament’s first round in 2022, and Wimbledon 2023 will mark the first edition of the tournament since she retired from the sport. She was a women’s Wimbledon champion on seven occasions. Five of her seven Wimbledon final victories came in straight sets.

1. Martina Navratilova

Wimbledon Champion: 1978, 1979, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1990
Wimbledon Runner-Up: 1988, 1989, 1994

Who won the most Wimbledon women’s finals? Coming in with a cool nine total is the American former world No. 1 Martina Navratilova. In fact, Navratilova won each of her first eight appearances in Wimbledon’s championship match before finally losing the 1988 final to Steffi Graf, who ranks third on this top 10 list.

A full 16 years elapsed between Navratilova’s first and last Wimbledon titles. In terms of women’s tennis history, let’s just call her GWCOAT (greatest Wimbledon champion of all time).

Parameters of Rankings

This ranking of the all-time greatest Wimbledon women’s singles champions is based on four factors. Those factors are the number of Wimbledon titles each player won, the number of Wimbledon finals appearances by each player, each player’s legacy in Wimbledon lore, and each player’s style of victory.

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