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
Jay Royappa
reaches
Pete Sampras
Historical windowComplete archive
The connection uses 3 links and 4 careers. Every step below represents a recorded head-to-head meeting within the selected window.
The complete route
Career by career
01 1 meeting01August 6, 1978View Jay Royappa × Tom Leonard →02 BridgeOpen career →Tom Leonard
1 meeting01April 14, 1980View Tom Leonard × Bill Scanlon →03 BridgeOpen career →Bill Scanlon
1 meeting01November 14, 1988View Bill Scanlon × Pete Sampras →04 DestinationOpen career →Pete Sampras
Parallel routes
One search may have several correct answers.
Besides the detailed route, we found 4 more sequences with the same 3 links. Every route travels the shortest possible distance in the archive.
- OriginJay Royappa
- BridgeTom Leonard
- BridgeJohn McEnroe
- DestinationPete Sampras
- OriginJay Royappa
- BridgeTom Leonard
- BridgeTim Wilkison
- DestinationPete Sampras
- OriginJay Royappa
- BridgeTom Leonard
- BridgeRamesh Krishnan
- DestinationPete Sampras
- OriginJay Royappa
- BridgeBob Giltinan
- BridgeTim Wilkison
- DestinationPete Sampras
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 →