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 next Top 10 countdown, we look at the Top 10 WTA Players to never have won a Grand Slam title, and coming in at our top spot is the player with the most Grand Slam finals appearances without having won one.

#1 Helena Sukova (921 matches – 66.7% winning record, 10 career titles, #4 career-high ranking)

It takes a special kind of player to top this list. So many talented tennis stars have failed to win Grand Slams, whether it be through careers being cut short or just pure bad luck. For Sukova, she still had a solid career winning an admirable 10 career titles and holding a 66.7 per cent winning record. There were others better than her no doubt, but what brings her in at number one on this list is the fact she reached a record four Grand Slam finals but could not win any of them. Like most of those in the top half of this list, Sukova did win doubles Grand Slam titles – nine in fact – whilst also winning five mixed doubles Grand Slam titles.

On pure numbers, Sukova’s career does not look any more special from a singles perspective than most, but the fact she was able to reach four Grand Slam singles finals a total of nine years apart, shows she was able to sustain a level of tennis that took her to the top few in the world over a decade. She reached fourth in the world as a career-high and came close to completing the golden quartet of winning four Grand Slam titles in a calendar year in 1990. Unfortunately she lost the US Open final having triumphed in the other three tournaments.

Her first singles title came in 1982 where she would win at Newport and follow it up with a couple of finals at Indianapolis and Austin. After a dry year in 1983, she would break through in November of 1984 with a title at Brisbane as the third seed, and enter the Australian Open ranked ninth. In a remarkable run to the final, she would defeat world number three Pam Shriver, and world number one Martina Navratilova before facing Chris Evert in the final. Stunning the experienced Evert with the first set tiebreaker win, it looked as if the 19-year-old Czech was about to cause a massive boil over by beating the best three players in the world. Unfortunately for Sukova, Evert would bounce back to win in three sets and take another Grand Slam title.

In 1985 she would lose a couple more finals – this time to Navratilova – before having one of her best years in 1986. The year would yield two titles and four runners-up trophies, including another narrow miss at the US Open where she would this time knock off Evert in the semis before succumbing to Navratilova in the final.

Fast forward to the following year and Sukova went one better at Eastbourne this time around, defeating Navratilova in a reverse result of the 1986 final. She also knocked off Evert again in the semis, giving all indications that the world number four was capable of a Grand Slam title. A semi-final; appearance at the US Open ended at the hands of guess who? – Navratilova – bowing out in straight sets.

Three quarter finals appearances at Grand Slams in 1988 signalled she was still there abouts, but she went without a title, losing finals in Berlin, Tokyo and Sydney that year. Instead 1989 had a more promising feel to it as Sukova won the Brisbane International final in January ranked sixth in the world, but none of the top five had played in the tournament. She entered the Australian Open full of confidence, and with Navratilova out of the way in the quarter finals – courtesy of a 9-7 epic third set win over the American – she reached the final to face world number one, Steffi Graf. Unfortunately it would be a similar story to her previous two attempts, losing in straight sets to the German.

Over the early 90s, Sukova would rack up the doubles title and win three singles titles – her third one at Brisbane and maiden ones in Indianapolis and Osaka. The former came late in the year and hoped to give her confidence. A strange 1993 year saw her have a number of disappointing losses as she had dropped outside the top 10 and had failed to make it past a semi-final until the US Open rolled around. Again she took care of Navratilova, this time in the Round of 16, and then triumphed in a come-from-behind win over Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario who at that point was ranked second in the world. A fourth Grand Slam final and a second against Graft would end with a familiar storyline – Sukova falling short of glory.

The Czech would continue playing for a further five seasons, making two more WTA Tour finals but losing both. Her final match would come at Wimbledon, now ranked outside the top 100 and aged 33, Sukova went down to 13th seed Swiss talent, Patty Schnyder after winning the first set, closing a curtain on her illustrious but ultimately unfilled career. She was a champion in the sport, but the top player to never win a singles Grand Slam title. Winning 69 doubles titles for a total of 84 tennis titles all up would certainly help showing just how strong she was at her best on the circuit.

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Top 10 WTA Players without a Grand Slam title:

#10 Manuela Maleeva (Bulgaria/Switzerland)
#9 Zina Garrison (USA)
#8 Jelena Jankovic (Serbia)
#7 Elena Dementieva (Russia)
#6 Agnieszka Radwanska (Poland)
#5 Mary Joe Fernandez (USA)
#4 Wendy Turnbull (Australia)
#3 Pam Shriver (USA)
#2 Dinara Safina (Russia)
#1 Helena Sukova (Czech Republic)