The biggest celebration in tennis will soon be upon us; we start our countdown for Wimbledon 2024.
Currently, fans worldwide are flocking to platforms to secure their Wimbledon tickets and attend the All England Lawn and Tennis Club.
In the run to the Wimbledon in 2024, here’s a look at the best of the best in the men’s game at the Wimbledon.
Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray are male tennis players who have won Wimbledon twice, while Boris Becker and John McEnroe are three-time champions.
But four players have bettered that total and are profiled in our list, which covers the players with the most men’s singles titles at Wimbledon in the Open Era.
Roger Federer: 8 Titles
Federer has the record for winning the Wimbledon on 8 occasions and holds the men’s record.
The Swiss great has with him a total of 20 titles during his career and made it to 31 major finals.
But, the grass court at the All England Lawn and Tennis Club took him to invincible status.
Federer made the finals on 12 occasions and won 8 of them. Seven of these wins came at the showpiece Centre court.
It is said that fans used to book Wimbledon tickets to the Centre Court beforehand in the last decade, knowing that Federer would be in the final.
But 2003 marked the start of the Swiss great’s remarkable period of dominance for Federer, who was at the peak of his powers.
In 2013, injuries slowed down progress, with an upset to Sergiy Stakhovsky in one of the opening rounds.
Soon after, when Federer returned, he could not go the full distance with an in-form Djokovic.
A knee injury hindered him in a last-four defeat to Milos Raonic in 2016. At 35, many critics came out with claims that Federer would not be able to set a new record, but he defied them the next year.
However, the veteran did just that in 2017 and achieved it emphatically. He won the tournament without dropping a set, only the second man to do so at Wimbledon in the Open Era.
He avenged previous losses to Raonic and Berdych en route to seeing off Marin Cilic in the final to become an eight-time champion.
A year later, injuries were again a problem for Federer, who lost in the last eight.
The 2019 final might be Federer’s biggest regret. Facing Djokovic in a classic final, Federer needed just two points for a ninth title but couldn’t get it through the line.
Fans described this as one of the greatest finals the tennis world had seen, and fans who had Wimbledon tickets on the day were on the edge of their seats.
Overall, he won just one of his five grand slam finals against Djokovic and was beaten in all three of the major finals against the Serbian at Wimbledon.
Had Federer won that contest, which lasted almost five hours before being settled by a final-set tie-break, Federer’s record would’ve been unbeatable.
The cancellation of Wimbledon in 2020 meant it was 2021 when Federer played what proved to be his last match on Centre Court.
Shortly before his 40th birthday, Federer made it to the quarter-finals despite being short of his fluent best. After battling injury, Federer looked rusty after a lack of matches on tour.
While he initially hoped to return to the ATP Tour, Federer ultimately did not play singles again and retired knowing Djokovic was still in with a chance of catching him in the Wimbledon rankings.
His championship total at Wimbledon is one behind that of Martina Navratilova, who won the women’s event nine times and holds the record for most singles titles among male and female players.
Novak Djokovic: 7 titles
With seven titles at the All-England club, Djokovic is firmly established as one of the best-ever players to have walked the Wimbledon Centre Court grass.
Now he still believes that he has the ability to make it 8 titles or even surpass Federer for a 9th.
It took Djokovic to become a familiar figure at the All England Club, but he was unstoppable as soon as he familiarized.
Djokovic made the last four twice and a quarter-final in his first six appearances.
But then he reached four finals in five years, including 2011, when Djokovic won his first Wimbledon crown by defeating Nadal in four sets.
A year later, Federer halted Djokovic’s purple patch in the semifinals. This meant that Djokovic still only had one Wimbledon title. The 2013 loss to Murray was defeaning.
And Djokovic was still stuck on one grass-court major after 2013 when he lost to Murray in front of the Briton’s boisterous home crowd.
His only two Wimbledon finals losses were with Andy Murray in 2013 and exactly ten years later against Carlos Alcaraz.
Two successive battling final wins over Federer, including a five-set triumph in 2014, started the Djokovic era of Wimbledon dominance.
Djokovic defended his title in an epic 2019 final against Federer, the longest in tournament history.
The tennis world believes that it will be a long time since they have seen a final of the sort that they witnessed in 2019.
Djokovic somehow saved match points before adding to his major tally.
That famous contest with Federer was followed by him twice returning from a set down to win finals against Matteo Berrettini (2021) and Nick Kyrgios (2022) as Djokovic continued to cement his status as the man to beat on grass.
But Djokovic could not win a fifth straight Wimbledon in 2023, losing in a shock to Carlos Alcaraz. He remains one behind Federer’s eight titles.
He will aim to equal Federer’s record this year at the Wimbledon.
Pete Sampras – 7 Wins
Among the illustrious list of winners, no other player has won three or more titles in the Wimbledon Championships and has gone undefeated in showpiece matches.
That makes Sampras’ 7-0 mark in finals even more remarkable.
He made seven finals, winning all of them in eight years and losing just once, in the 1996 quarter-finals against eventual champion Richard Krajicek.
Fellow American Jim Courier was Sampras’ first victim before he defeated two of Wimbledon’s best-known figures, Ivanisevic and Becker.
Cedric Pioline was powerless to stop Sampras in 1997 before Ivanisevic was toppled again the following year – the first and only time big-serving Sampras was taken to five sets in a final.
When he played his final major tournament in England a year later – going out in round two in a stunning upset against George Bastl – Sampras must have thought his record of seven titles would be safe for some time.