Origin
Open career →Tennis’s living graph
Bridges Across
Eras
Two players do not need to have shared a court for their stories to be connected. Find the shortest chain of head-to-head meetings between them.
Shortest path found
Gillian Van Der Merwe
reaches
Serena Williams
Historical windowComplete archive
The connection uses 4 links and 5 careers. Every step below represents a recorded head-to-head meeting within the selected window.
The complete route
Career by career
01 2 meetings02March 29, 1971 — April 5, 1971View Gillian Van Der Merwe × Margaret Court →02 BridgeOpen career →Margaret Court
4 meetings31January 5, 1970 — January 17, 1977View Margaret Court × Wendy Turnbull →03 BridgeOpen career →Wendy Turnbull
3 meetings21November 19, 1984 — January 27, 1986View Wendy Turnbull × Steffi Graf →04 BridgeOpen career →Steffi Graf
2 meetings11January 11, 1999 — March 5, 1999View Steffi Graf × Serena Williams →05 DestinationOpen career →Serena Williams
Parallel routes
One search may have several correct answers.
Besides the detailed route, we found 4 more sequences with the same 4 links. Every route travels the shortest possible distance in the archive.
- OriginGillian Van Der Merwe
- BridgeMargaret Court
- BridgeWendy Turnbull
- BridgeLarisa Savchenko
- DestinationSerena Williams
- OriginGillian Van Der Merwe
- BridgeMargaret Court
- BridgeWendy Turnbull
- BridgeJana Novotna
- DestinationSerena Williams
- OriginGillian Van Der Merwe
- BridgeMargaret Court
- BridgeWendy Turnbull
- BridgeMary Joe Fernandez
- DestinationSerena Williams
- OriginGillian Van Der Merwe
- BridgeMargaret Court
- BridgeDianne Fromholtz
- BridgeSteffi Graf
- DestinationSerena Williams
How we calculate it
A search from both sides of history.
The portal traverses the head-to-head graph from both careers at the same time and stops at the first proven minimum distance. When a period is selected, only matches inside that window create links; walkovers never create connections.
Reverse the route →