Advent calendar day 1 #25 Ilie Nastase

Welcome to this blog's advent calendar. This is the first day of the count down of the top 25 players of all time and the top player of all time will be revealed on Christmas Day. Here is the 25th best tennis player in the history of the sport. Just to say this is my view, it's not official.

25th Best Player of all time

image found here

Ilie Nastase


Grand Slams won - 2
Grand Slam Finals lost - 3
Overall amount of singles titles won - 57
Overall Match Winning percentage - 72.46%  (755-287)
Top rank - 1

A great player from the beginning of the Open Era, participating in 5 Grand Slam Finals and winning 2. His Grand Slam titles doesn't represent his large haul of titles and his winning percentage isn't one you would expect of one of the best of all time but he did bag 4 ATP World Tour Finals titles in 6 years, which is only bettered by 2 players. He also helped Romania to 3 Davis Cup finals in 1969, 1971 and 1972. He was well known for his entertaining abilities and was thought to be a very gifted tennis player. At his best he was excellent at hunting down balls and placing the ball to beat the opponent. He could have been in the top 10 of this list if it wasn't for a weak, frail nervous system and his bad temper. He is better known in doubles taking 45 titles, including 5 Grand Slams. This makes him one of the 5 players to have won more then 100 titles. He was actually one of the first tennis players who was sponsored by Nike.

Come back tomorrow for the 24th best player of all time.