Roland Garros 1981 + longest winning streaks

After nearly two-month absence from competition (shoulder injury) and rumors about quitting the game because of the will to become father, Bjorn Borg for the first time since 1975 wasn’t an overwhelming  favorite to get the title. Nevertheless he confirmed once again that Centre Court in Paris belongs to him, dropped sets only in a lopsided final to a new powerful figure of men’s tennis – Ivan Lendl. Borg raised La Coupe des Mousquetaires (a new designed in 1981) for the sixth and last time. The tournament featured an unusual outburst of Eliot Teltscher, who was strangled by a line judge after Teltscher’s attack on a chair-umpire!
***
I’ve prepared a Roland Garros summary given the years 1968-1979. I will make similar pages for other majors in 2013. Read about Borg’s Parisian dominance in the 70s…

10-match winning streak… actually it’s something reserved only for Top 20 players. Usually you have to win two tournaments in a row to notch such a streak, there are other configurations though, for example when a player wins a major (7 matches) and does pretty well in his following tournament. Below the list of the longest winning streaks, here are included longest streaks of particular players (134 surnames). Nos. 1 experienced at least 10-match winning streaks many times.

Update: after Indian Wells 2014

49 – Bjorn Borg (1978); 46 – Guillermo Vilas (1977); 44 – Ivan Lendl (1982); 43 – Novak Djokovic (2010-11); 42 – John McEnroe (1984); 41 – Roger Federer (2006-07)
36 – Jimmy Connors (1975); 35 – Thomas Muster (1995); 32 – Rafael Nadal (2008); 31 – Rod Laver (1969)
29 – Ilie Nastase (1972), Pete Sampras (1994); 28 – Jose-Luis Clerc (1981); 26 – Andre Agassi (1995); 25 – Jim Courier (1992), 23 – Kent Carlsson (1988), Juan Martin del Potro (2008); 22 – Manuel Orantes (1976); 21 – Boris Becker (1986), Mats Wilander (1988), Stefan Edberg (1991); 20 – Stan Smith (1972)
19 – Andy Roddick (2003); 18 – John Newcombe (1974); 17 – Brian Gottfried (1978), Miloslav Mecir (1987), Brad Gilbert (1989), Lleyton Hewitt (2001), Andy Murray (2011)
16 – Clark Graebner (1971), Arthur Ashe (1975), Martin Jaite (1989-90), Juan Carlos Ferrero (2001), Ivan Ljubicic (2005)
15 – Ken Rosewall (1968), Alex Metreveli (1972), Gene Mayer (1981), Emilio Sanchez (1987), Tim Mayotte (1987-88), Michael Chang (1992), Karel Novacek (1992), Sergi Bruguera (1993), Gustavo Kuerten (2000), Guillermo Coria (2003)
14 – Onny Parun (1974), Adriano Panatta (1976), Jose Higueras (1978), Jakob Hlasek (1988), Goran Ivanisevic (1996), Yevgeny Kafelnikov (1996), Petr Korda (1998), Albert Costa (1998), Marcelo Rios (1998), Patrick Rafter (1998), Tim Henman (1998), Todd Martin (1998-99)
13 – Jan Kodes (1973), Yannick Noah (1983), Joakim Nystrom (1986), Andre Chesnokov (1990), Michael Stich (1991), Andrei Medvedev (1993), Thomas Johansson (1997), Carlos Moya (2002), Gaston Gaudio (2004), Guillermo Canas (2004), Nikolay Davydenko (2010), Nicolas Almagro (2011), Fabio Fognini (2013)
12 – Zeljko Franulovic (1970), Tom Okker (1971), Andres Gimeno (1972), Mark Cox (1975), Eddie Dibbs (1978), Jimmy Arias (1983), Juan Aguilera (1984), Guy Forget (1991), Carlos Costa (1992), Alberto Berasategui (1994), Wayne Ferreira (1994), Felix Mantilla (1997), Marat Safin (2000), Tommy Robredo (2009)
11 – Tony Roche (1969), Cliff Richey (1970), Raul Ramirez (1976), Vitas Gerulaitis (1977), Wojtek Fibak (1980), Harold Solomon (1980), Balazs Taroczy (1980), Richard Krajicek (1996), Francisco Clavet (1997), Magnus Norman (1999), Thomas Enqvist (1999), Alex Corretja (2000), Mark Philippoussis (2000), Andrea Gaudenzi (2001), Younes El Aynaoui (2001), Taylor Dent (2003), Dominik Hrbaty (2004), James Blake (2006), Fernando Gonzalez (2008), Mardy Fish (2010), David Nalbandian (2010), Robin Soderling (2011), David Ferrer (2012), Tomas Berdych (2014)
10 – Robert Lutz (1971), Buster Mottram (1976), John Alexander (1977), Victor Pecci (1979), Peter Fleming (1979), Roscoe Tanner (1979), Corrado Barazzutti (1980), Peter McNamara (1981), Johan Kriek (1982), Andres Gomez (1984), Aaron Krickstein (1984), Henri Leconte (1986), Pat Cash (1987), Jaime Yzaga (1988), Guillermo Perez-Roldan (1988), Jim Pugh (1989), Magnus Gustafsson (1991), Magnus Larsson (1993-94), Karol Kucera (1998), Sjeng Schalken (2000), Marc Rosset (2000), Paul-Henri Mathieu (2002), Nicolas Massu (2003), Rainer Schuettler (2003), Jurgen Melzer (2006), Richard Gasquet (2007), Tommy Haas (2007), Marin Cilic (2010)

Precise explanation why different numbers circulate on Internet concerning the longest streaks