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

Serena Williams
reaches
K Neill

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

4,981 players examined
  1. 7 meetings34January 11, 1998 — August 14, 2000
    View Serena Williams × Arantxa Sanchez Vicario
  2. 2 meetings11March 28, 1988 — May 23, 1988
    View Arantxa Sanchez Vicario × Chris Evert
  3. 3 meetings30August 21, 1971 — June 20, 1977
    View Chris Evert × Winnie Shaw
  4. 1 meeting10May 23, 1977
    View Winnie Shaw × Anne Fritz
  5. 1 meeting10May 29, 1978
    View Anne Fritz × K Neill

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 →