Countries with most Grand Slam Tennis Titles

Ivan Lendl 8 + Navratilova 18 = 26? assuming you consider both Czechoslovakia - looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Grand_Slam_related_tennis_records#Most_singles_titles_.28Open_Era.29 it looks like they can both be considered from USA

Navratilova took out US citizenship in 1981. She won 3 majors prior to that point. Ivan Lendl became a US citizen in 1992, ie. after he won his 8 majors. The other 4 majors won by a Czechoslovak were won by Hana Mandlikova.

Double nationality is messy to handle with sport records I suppose. I went to read wikipedia on navratilova and actually it looks to me that when she won the 3 titles before becoming US citizen she had already been stripped off her czechislovak nationality

If you tweak the instructions to say "Which countries are they from?" you'll avoid fiddling around with exactly when people were citizens of which country.

They had to give up Czechoslovakia nationality. Now Czech republic allows dual citizenship.

Hear hear!

Hear hear

ivanb22 Seles was citizen of Serbia, but also Yugoslavia. Every citizen of Yugoslavia had citizenship of one of the republics he/she lived in.

Seems a bit harsh to not accept "Czech Republic".

Agreed.

Showing Czechoslovakia in one instance and not Yugoslavia in another is not consistent.

No. Lendl won his titles for Czechoslovakia, not the Czech Republic. Dvokovic won his titles for Serbia, not Yugoslavia. Timing matters.

Interesting how by default women are considered part of the stats for tennis, but they are not for some other sports.

Well, it counts for *these* stats. In my opinion, total majors by country is just an interesting way to slice the overall data; never remember anyone really talking about it this way. It seems that it's only when discussing total Olympic medals won by each country do the male/female totals get counted together.

Maybe because sports like tennis, croquet... were considered competitive for women way earlier than the vast majority of other sports.

Mainly to do with the competitiveness. The problem with many female sports is that there isn't much interest in doing them due to low prize money so there's only a few players/teams in the world that take it seriously, a good example of this is women's football (soccer) where USA dominates due to being one of the only national sides made up of full-time professionals in comparison to a team like England (who finished 3rd in the last World Cup) where many of the players have day jobs. In women's tennis though you need to dedicate your life to the game to have any chance of winning a major, which makes it more competitive and so harder to win.

This is a ridiculous excuse I hear Europeans use all the time. There are countries competing in the Women's World Cup from all over the world. It's more internationally competitive as a women's sport than any other. Just because you suck at it or your country doesn't do a good job of supporting its female athletes in this sport doesn't make it less competitive. Nor does the fact that the #1 team in the world is so dominant and has been for decades, as there is still heated competition for 2nd place and below. But it's not even as if they never lose; they do. Imagine how competitive these other teams would have to be to go up against such a dominant squad and still win from time to time. There are many more countries where football is popular than tennis, and they come from every continent other than Antarctica.

A true statement might be that men's and women's tennis are more similar in their level of popularity than men's and women's soccer or men's and women's basketball and some other sports. But it's inaccurate to say that women's tennis is more competitive than women's football.

I am curious why you would not accept Czech Republic for Czechoslovakia since that it what the country is now called. I tried this and Slovakia, but neither worked.

Because Czechoslovakia is a country that comprises the current lands of Czechia and Slovakia. Neither state is a successor state, so the former country of Czechoslovakia stands on its own.

interestingly, the day when Czechoslovakia was established is still of big significance here (it's a national holiday, celebrations take place, president awards people Orders and such). The "problem" with the split of Czechoslovakia is that it was so peaceful that people don't think of it as such a turning point in our history :)

Here's the equivalent quiz for golf majors.

Rog is the only reason Switzerland is on there XD

Mmh, Roger has 20, Stan 3, Martina Hingis 5. So without Roger, 8 is still a good result, as much as the UK, more than France, Argentina or Croatia! Anyway Switzerland has 28, not 29.

The total given for Switzerland appears to include Lolette Payot's French title in 1945. Though born in Switzerland, she became a French citizen in 1937, so if she is counted, she ought to count for France. But she probably should not be counted at all, as the International Tennis Federation does not recognize the championships held during German occupation of France.

Brittons are better at inventing games than at playing them

Only missed Belgium. I only got Czechoslovakia when I read that one doesn't exist.