How does the Calendar Grand Slam in tennis compare to other near-impossible sports feats?

Serena Williams has won 22 Grand Slams since turning pro in 1995

The final of the 2015 US Open will be as exciting as any of the previous editions, but it will also be one of the most significant ones in history. A tennis player from the women’s game is set to complete an elusive and highly coveted calendar-year Grand Slam, which is a rare feat that has been accomplished by very few in the history of the game.

Serena Williams is just two wins away from becoming the most recent holder of this prestigious achievement; the last player to get there was Steffi Graff in 1988. The American enters her semi-final clash against unseeded Italian Roberta Vinci as an overwhelming favourite, having clinically dispatched all her opponents up to this point – including a tough three-setter against her older sister Venus Williams.

The 33-year-old has been consistently brilliant since turning pro in 1995. Her list of Major titles includes 6 Australian Opens, 3 French Opens, 6 Wimbledon titles and 6 US Opens, making her one of the greatest female players to have ever graced the sport. She has also owned the four Grand Slams at the same time on two occasions, once in 2002-03 and the second time being the current spell beginning with her 2014 US Open win.

Despite all these incredible records, Serena will be itching to get her name etched in the record books alongside former tennis greats who have achieved a Calendar Grand Slam. Only five other tennis players have achieved this feat – Rod Laver (twice), Don Budge, Maureen Connolly, Margaret Court and Steffi Graff.

The feat would be rare and amazing, and one which is unique to the sport. But how does this compare to near-impossible feats in other sports? We take a look.

Note: Serena lost to Roberta Vinci in the semifinals to miss out on the calendar-year grand slam.

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Football:

Messi has also won four Ballon d’Or awards, all in consecutive years

The continuing improvement of football over the years makes it hard for the impossible achievements to stay impossible forever. Plenty of records have gone down the drain over the past decade, although most of those have one man’s name on it – Lionel Messi.

Messi has pretty much confirmed himself as one of the greatest players of all time, rewriting records season after season and consistently pulling off something brilliant every time he steps on the field. The Barcelona player is unarguably Barcelona’s greatest ever, having scored 426 goals in 519 appearances for the Catalan club. He has won them plenty of trophies since his debut in 2004.

The one rare achievement that he has accomplished is quite comparable to the Calendar Grand Slam of tennis, as it will probably not be broken anytime soon unless the Argentine decides to do it himself. His 91 goals in the 2011-12 season made him the first player in the history of the game to score more than 90 goals in a season and just the second player to have scored more than 80 goals.

This comfortably beat German legend Gerd Muller’s 1972 record by 6 goals, although it might have been much more had it not been for an injury he suffered towards the end of the year.

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Cricket:

Anil Kumble is the third highest wicket-taker in test cricket

Taking a 10-wicket haul in a single innings of a Test match is such a rare instance in cricket, that it has only been managed by two players so far.

Jim Laker became the first man to take all 10 wickets in an innings when he bowled out Australia with figures of 10 for 53 in the second innings of the fourth Ashes test in 1956. He had also taken nine scalps in the first innings of the same match, making him the only bowler to have picked up more than 18 wickets in a first-class match.

The Englishman is joined by Anil Kumble, whose performance in India’s 212-run victory over Pakistan in 1999 will be etched in the memories of every Indian fan for decades to come. The leg-break bowler ripped through the opposition’s lineup with a clinical bowling performance that packed plenty of pace and accuracy, which have been the two main attributes behind his highly successful career.

Ice hockey:

Martin Brodeu was a two-time Olympic winner and a notorious puck handler

Scoring a goal as a goaltender in an ice hockey game has to be a rarity, as the rules state that they cannot cross the halfway line of the playing surface. These goals have a lot of random circumstances surrounding them, which is confirmed by the statistic that only 11 players have managed to do it since the inaugural season of the NHL in 1917-18.

The first goal by a goaltender was scored by the New York Islanders’ Billy Smith in 1979 when his shot went off an opposition player into the net, while the latest one was Pheonix Coyotes’ Mike Smith in 2013.

There have also been goaltenders who have scored more than once in a game, although the record of Martin Brodeur makes him the most prolific one of the lot. The New Jersey Devils netminder scored twice against the Philadelphia Flyers in 2000 and also managed to better that 13 years later when he scored a hat-trick in his side’s 4-1 win over the Carolina Hurricanes. His overall record of six goals makes up nearly 43 percent of the 14 goals that have been scored by the 11 players who have done it, certifying him as the greatest goalscoring goaltender in the history of the NHL.

While many will argue that the same should be the case for football, they could not be more wrong. Goalkeepers are not restricted to their box in football and they have the ability to roam around or score from set piece situations and penalties, as evident by Sao Paulo keeper Rogerio Ceni’s record of 130 goals over the span of his career.

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Basketball:

Wilt Chamberlain has been included in the NBA All-Star team 13 times

Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game for San Francisco Warriors against the New York Knicks in 1962 is one of the rarest moments in the history of the sport. The former center player shot 36 of 63 points from the field and made 28 of 32 free throws to help his side thrash their opponents in an incredible show, whilst setting up a near-impossible level to reach for any future stars.

The Bel-Air native eventually went on to become the only player to score more than 4,000 regular-season points, with the next highest being Michael Jordan’s 3,041 points in the 1986-87 season. He is also the only player to average at least 30 points and 20 rebounds per game over his entire professional basketball career.

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Golf:

Bobby Jones won 13 majors in his short career

While golf also employs a Grand Slam concept like tennis, the rare feat of winning four Majors in a season has been achieved only once so far. The legendary American amateur golfer Bobby Jones accomplished it in 1930 when he won the four biggest tournaments in the world at the time – the British Open, the US Open, the British Amateur and the US Amateur.

Despite being an amateur golfer who pursued law as a profession, Bobby was regarded as one of the most successful players of all time. He won many professional and amateur tournaments over his short career, beating top golf pros including the likes of Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen, before his retirement from the sport at the age of 28.

The closest anyone else has come to beating this record is Tiger Woods, who won four Majors in a row but not in the same calendar year.

In the women’s game, Babe Didrikson won all three Majors in 1950. There has been one more added since then, and no woman has come close to winning four Majors in a year so far.