Tennis Pros Getting Taller...
The top three men, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic are all over six feet tall and there are more and more very tall male tennis pros. In fact, there are only three men in the top ten of the ATP rankings who are less than six feet tall. On the women’s side, there are four women 5 feet 11 inches or taller in the top ten of the current WTA rankings including Maria Sharapova who is 6 feet 2 inches and Ana Ivanovic
who is 6 feet 1 inch. At the same time, the shortest man in the top ten is David Ferrer who is 5 feet 9 inches and the shortest woman, Vera Zvonareva, is 5 feet 7 ¾ inches. This quite a change from the past with champions such as Rod Laver, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Mats Wilander, as well as on the women’s side where past tennis legends were much shorter, e.g. Chris Evert, Tracy Austin, Martina Hingis and even Martina Navratilova. There have always been tall tennis pros, but they have been more the exception than the dominant players. This average increase in the height of the top players, both male and female, definitely seems to be a trend rather than a passing phase.
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