9 most unforgettable Wimbledon finals of all time
· Yahoo Sports
Wimbledon finals have a way of turning good careers into legends and long afternoons into tennis folklore that still sparks heated debates decades later.
The 2026 Championships, Wimbledon is marching toward a pair of exciting title matches. In fact, the women’s final is set after Thursday’s semifinal matches. Tenth-seeded Karolina Muchova will face ninth-seeded Linda Noskova in a match of Czech first-time finalists.
Visit mchezo.life for more information.
MORE: 10 reasons Wimbledon still feels like sports’ greatest summer ritual
The men’s semifinals are scheduled for Friday. British wild card Arthur Fery meets second-seeded Alexander Zverev. In the other semifinal, 2025 champion Jannik Sinner, seeded No. 1, faces seven-time Wimbledon champ Novak Djokovic, who seeded seventh and chasing his record 25th Grand Slam title.
Narrowing more than a century of championships to nine finals means leaving out plenty of classics, but these are the matches that still get replayed, referenced and remembered whenever the lawns of the All England Club come into view.
From Borg and McEnroe’s ice-versus-fire duel to a stunning upset of seven-time singles champion Serena Williams, here are the nine best Wimbledon finals of all time, across both the men’s and women’s draws.
9. Arthur Ashe vs. Jimmy Connors, 1975
The 1975 final between Arthur Ashe and Jimmy Connors belongs on any list like this as much for what it represented as for the quality of the tennis. Ashe, already a barrier-breaker as the first Black man to win major singles titles, came in as the underdog against a younger, fiercer Connors who had already built a reputation as a ruthless frontrunner.
Ashe responded with a tactical clinic. Instead of trying to match Connors’ pace, he took speed off the ball, changed spins and kept his opponent off-balance. Connors needed four sets just to get on the board. Ashe closed it out in four by sticking to the game plan.
Beyond the scoreline — 6-1, 6-1, 5-7, 6-4 — this was a milestone. Ashe became the first Black man to win Wimbledon singles, and he did it by outthinking one of the great attackers in the game. On a court and in a sport that had long been closed to players who looked like him, Ashe’s win still resonates every July when new champions walk through the same clubhouse doors.
8. Maria Sharapova vs. Serena Williams, 2004
Upsets that turn into turning points tend to age well, and Maria Sharapova’s 2004 upset of Serena Williams is still one of the most shocking results Centre Court has seen this century.
At 17, Sharapova stepped onto the grass to face a two-time defending champion. Williams changed power tennis on the women’s tour. Instead of shrinking under the moment, Sharapova went straight at Williams, attacking returns, hugging the baseline and taking the ball early in a way few were prepared to try.
The result was a 6–1, 6–4 win that announced a new star and launched Sharapova into global superstardom. While Serena would go on to dominate their head-to-head rivalry, that day in 2004 stands as a reminder of how quickly Wimbledon can flip the script for a teenager who is not bothered by the occasion.
7. Novak Djokovic vs. Roger Federer, 2019
The 2019 men’s final is the kind of match that still does not quite seem real on paper. It was the first Wimbledon singles final to be decided by a final-set tiebreak at 12–12, a format shift that ended up deciding another chapter in the Federer–Djokovic rivalry.
Federer outplayed Djokovic in most of the raw numbers, piling up more winners and winning more total points. But Djokovic owned the tiebreaks, taking both in the first and third sets, and saving two championship points at 8–7 in the fifth on Federer’s serve. When the set reached 12–12, the new rule kicked in and Djokovic grabbed the tiebreak 7–3 to win his fifth Wimbledon title. The final: 7-6 (5), 1-6, 7-6 (4), 4-6, 13-12 (3).
For Federer, then 37, the match represented the last, best chance to add a 21st major singles title to his career total. For Djokovic, it became another entry in a long list of matches where he absorbed haymakers from an all-time great and still walked away with the trophy.
6. Steffi Graf vs. Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, 1995
Steffi Graf owned Centre Court for much of the late 1980s and 1990s, but the 1995 final against Arantxa Sanchez Vicario stands out as her most dramatic finish at Wimbledon.
Sanchez Vicario took the first set and then watched Graf drag the match into a deciding set. The third set turned into a tug-of-war, with Sanchez Vicario repeatedly threatening to flip the script before Graf found a way to shut the door 7–5. The final: 4-6, 6-1, 7-5.
This was a clash of contrasting styles that showed off the best of both players: Graf attacking with that biting forehand, Sanchez Vicario making one more ball over and over again. By the time Graf closed it out, she had added another chapter to an already loaded Wimbledon resume and given the tournament the kind of three-set women’s final it does not always get.
5. Roger Federer vs. Andy Roddick, 2009
Federer appears again here because his run through Wimbledon in the 2000s produced multiple all-timers, and the 2009 final against Andy Roddick might be the cruelest classic the event has seen.
Roddick came in as the underdog but played arguably the match of his career, hammering serves, leaning on his forehand and staying patient in the rallies. He took the first set and had four set points in the second-set tiebreak that would have given him a two-set lead. Federer escaped, edged the second and fourth sets in tiebreakers, and then settled in for a fifth set that refused to end.
The final set eventually closed at 16–14, with Federer finally breaking Roddick for the only time all day for a 5-7, 7-6, 7-6, 3-6, 16-14 win. The Swiss star claimed a record-breaking 15th Grand Slam singles title, but the lasting image is Roddick sitting alone on the sideline, towel over his head, having done almost everything right and still walking away with the runner-up plate.
This was the day American fans who grew up with Roddick as the standard-bearer on grass watched the window close.
4. Marion Bartoli vs. Sabine Lisicki, 2013
Not every all-time final needs five sets or a tiebreak gone wild. Sometimes the meaning of the moment pushes a match onto the short list, and Marion Bartoli’s 6-1, 6-4 win over Sabine Lisicki in 2013 is a good example.
Bartoli had been a surprise finalist in 2007 and spent years as one of the more unconventional presences on tour, with a two-handed grip off both wings and a quirky, high-intensity routine between points. In 2013 she put it all together, tearing through the draw without dropping a set and handling Lisicki a straight-set defeat.
Lisicki had come in riding the emotional high of knocking out Serena Williams earlier in the tournament, but Bartoli never let her big serve settle in. The Frenchwoman’s aggression on return and relentless depth off the ground kept Lisicki under pressure from the first game. Then, in one of the more surprising retirements in recent memory, Bartoli stepped away from the sport shortly after that title, leaving Wimbledon as her lone major singles trophy.
A player’s entire professional dream funneled into one afternoon that actually lived up to the build, both for Bartoli and for the fans who watched someone win a life’s work in just over an hour.
3. Rod Laver vs. John Newcombe, 1969
Rod Laver’s 1969 Wimbledon title was more than a single match; it was the centerpiece of the last men’s calendar-year Grand Slam completed in singles. The final itself, against fellow Australian John Newcombe, delivered the kind of high-level grass-court tennis that still pops on black-and-white footage.
Laver won 6-4, 5-7, 6-4, 6-4, but that undersells the test. Newcombe, with the booming serve and classic serve-and-volley game, pushed hard in the middle of the match. Laver’s lefty spin and court craft eventually carried the day, as he pulled the bigger man around the grass and kept finding answers in the pressure moments.
Laver achieved the crowning moment of his second Grand Slam sweep. He cemented himself as the benchmark for greatness.
2. Roger Federer vs. Rafael Nadal, 2008
If Borg–McEnroe built the legend (see below), Federer–Nadal 2008 dragged it into high definition and tried to knock the power out at Centre Court at the same time. Federer was a five-time defending Wimbledon champion. Nadal, already the standard on clay, had lost the previous two Wimbledon finals to Federer and came in determined to end the grass-court reign.
Nadal took the first two sets and looked ready to run away with it. Federer responded by taking two tight tiebreaks, including a fourth-set breaker he won 10–8 to keep the match alive. Rain delays, fading light and tension that could be felt through a television screen all built into a fifth set that did not end until Nadal finally converted on his fourth championship point, winning 9–7 as darkness swallowed Centre Court. The final: 6-4, 6-4, 6-7, 6-7, 9-7.
The images from that night still sit near the top of any tennis highlight reel: Nadal collapsing on the baseline, climbing into his box, then walking around to comfort Federer at the net. The greatest rivalry of the men’s Open Era shifted from one player’s dominance to a real balance of power.
1. Bjorn Borg vs. John McEnroe, 1980
You can start almost any conversation about great tennis matches with Borg–McEnroe 1980, and no one will argue. Bjorn Borg was chasing a fifth straight Wimbledon title, the king of cool defending his grass crown. Meanwhile, John McEnroe arrived with the top seed, the big lefty serve and a New Yorker’s volume turned all the way up.
The match is remembered most for the fourth-set tiebreak, a 34-point epic that McEnroe finally took 18–16 after saving multiple championship points. Borg had already won the second and third sets, McEnroe had stolen the first, and for 20 minutes in that tiebreaker it looked like neither man would blink. The Swede regrouped in the fifth, broke once, and finally closed it 8–6 in a set that somehow felt quieter and more inevitable than everything that came before. The final was 1-6, 7-5, 6-3, 6-7, 8-6.
The clash of styles and personalities defined an era. Baseline met net rush; ice met fire. And Wimbledon witnessed the signature match it had been waiting for in the modern television age.