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.

Choose both ends of the storyComplete archive · walkovers excluded
Historical windowOnly matches played within this period may create links.
No date limit

Shortest path found

Sachio Kato
reaches
Carlos Alcaraz

Historical windowComplete archive

The connection uses 5 links and 6 careers. Every step below represents a recorded head-to-head meeting within the selected window.

The complete route

Career by career

4,837 players examined
  1. 1 meeting01November 1, 1976
    View Sachio Kato × Tom Gorman
  2. 4 meetings31February 14, 1971 — June 26, 1978
    View Tom Gorman × Jimmy Connors
  3. 1 meeting10August 19, 1991
    View Jimmy Connors × Todd Martin
  4. 1 meeting10August 11, 2003
    View Todd Martin × Feliciano Lopez

Parallel routes

One search may have several correct answers.

Besides the detailed route, we found 4 more sequences with the same 5 links. Every route travels the shortest possible distance in the archive.

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 →