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

Tomas Behrend
reaches
Pete Sampras

Historical windowComplete archive

The connection uses 2 links and 3 careers. Every step below represents a recorded head-to-head meeting within the selected window.

The complete route

Career by career

350 players examined
  1. 2 meetings02September 22, 1997 — October 1, 2001
    View Tomas Behrend × Francisco Clavet
  2. 4 meetings04March 17, 1997 — June 25, 2001
    View Francisco Clavet × Pete Sampras

Parallel routes

One search may have several correct answers.

Besides the detailed route, we found 4 more sequences with the same 2 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 →