Women's Tennis : Most weeks as WTA World Number 1

#4 Chris Evert

Chris Evert at the 2018 BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore

American Chris Evert was the first woman to be ranked as number 1 when the WTA rankings first came out on November 3rd 1975. Chris Evert holds the record for the most Grand Slam final appearances with 31 appearances. In a glittering career, she won 18 Grand Slam singles titles including winning at least one in 13 consecutive years - an all-time record. Her singles winning percentage of 89.97% is the highest among both men and women.

She is widely considered to be the most dominant clay court player w of all time among women with 7 French Open crowns and a clay-court win percentage of 94.55%. Evert won an impressive 157 Singles titles. Post-retirement she has had two stints as President of the WTA and is presently serving as a tennis analyst for ESPN.

Evert had a joint-record of 9 stints at the top of the WTA rankings ( a record she shares with Martina Navratilova). In all, Evert spent 260 weeks as the top-ranked player including on 113 consecutive weeks between May 10th 1976 to July 9th 1978.