WITH no live tennis on currently due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, Draft Central will take a look back at some of the best players of past and present and rank them based on a specific set of guidelines. In our first Top 10 countdown, we look at the Top 10 ATP Players to never have won a Grand Slam title, starting with a Polish star from the 1970s and 80s.

#10 Wojciech Fibak (854 matches – 63.1% winning record, 15 career titles, #10 career-high rank)

Coming in at #10 in our countdown is a Polish player who has been retired for more than 30 years in Wojciech Fibak. He has not played since 1988, and had not won a title in the twilight of his career, but was consistently among the top players between 1976 and 1982. In that seven-year span, Fibak won 15 career titles, across hard court, clay court and the then-popular carpet in what was a varied approach. In a rare feat, all of Fibak’s 15 tournament wins came at different events showing how capable he was at performing across multiple continents and courts.

Along with his 15 titles, Fibak reached 19 finals in his career, the last coming at Basel in 1983. Across 1976-77, Fibak won five titles and came runner-up a further nine times in what was a remarkable two-year stretch. Keeping in mind in his first title year at the age of 24 – he was a late bloomer – Fibak defeated the likes of Arthur Ashe and Raul Ramirez to take out the Vienna trophy. If there was any doubt that Fibak was amongst the top players in the mid 1970s, then you did not need to look any further than his runner-up appearance at the Masters event (ATP Finals of the time), where he lost to Manuel Orantes in five gruelling sets. In the group stage, Fibak had defeated Orantes, as well as Eddie Dibbs, and went on to survive a five setter against five-time Grand Slam winner, Argentinian Guillermo Villas.

If Fibak had converted more of his nine runners-up trophies in those two years, then he could well have been comfortably into the 20s for his career titles. As it stands, with the equal lowest career-high and lowest winning record on the list to come – though 63.1 per cent is still very impressive – Fibak just makes the top 10. He had plenty of potential and matched it with a number of the top players on his day, but was not as consistent as some of the names above who went through to become multiple Grand Slam winners.

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Top 10 ATP Players without a Grand Slam title:

#10 Wojciech Fibak (Poland)