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Is height an advantage for tennis players? There have certainly been successful tennis players both short and tall throughout history. Body size and composition is often rated very low in importance for tennis, however its role is not insignificant.

Tall players with a good arm length can reach more areas of the court with ease, and when serving a player with longer arms can generate more racket speed and contact the ball from a higher height. On the other hand, being shorter is usually associated with greater balance and agility, very important for quickly covering all areas of the tennis court.

As the depth of players and competitiveness of tennis has increased over time, so has generally player height. Analysis of the standing height of Wimbledon winners for the last 100 years shows a gradual increase in average height, particularly since the 1960s.

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Increasing Height Trend since the 1960s

We have data for most of the winners since 1960, and grouping them by decade helps to even out the data. The graph below shows a clear trend of the champion players getting taller. The average male champion in the 1960s was 178cm (5 ft 10 in), and in the 2010s up until 2016 it is 188cm (6 ft 2 in). For the females, it has increased from 170cm (5 ft 7 in) in the 1960s up to a peak of 181cm (5 ft 11.5 in) in the 2000s.

The data for 2010's include all players up to and including the 2016 winner.

Graph of Wimbledon Winners and Their Height

Here is a graph of all the height data for the male and female Wimbledon champions (data from 1881-2016, shown in the table below), which shows the differences in player height over time. There is obviously a lot of variation, though the trend lines show the gradual increase over time, which is more pronounced for the women.

The tallest male winners at 1.96 m (6 ft 5 in) were Yvon Petra in 1946 and Richard Krajicek in 1996. In the last 30 years, only the winners Andre Agassi and Lleyton Hewitt were below six foot. The shortest male winner was Henri Cochet from 1927 and 1929 who was 1.68 m (5 ft 6 in). The 1939 winner Bobby Riggs was 1.70m tall (5 ft 7 in), and we estimate Manuel Santana from 1966 to also be of a similar height.

The tallest female was 1999 winner Lindsay Davenport at 1.89 m (6 ft 2 1⁄2 in), and not far behind her Maria Sharapova at 1.88 m (6 ft 2 in). The shortest at 1.64 m (5 ft 4.5) was Billie Jean King from the 1960s and 70s, and May Sutton from 1905 and 1907. Multiple winner from the 1950's Maureen Connolly was 1.65 m (5 ft 5 in), and more recently Chris Evert Lloyd in 1981 and the 2019 winner Simona Halep were only 1.68 m (5 ft 6 in).

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Table of Winners and Their Height

The table below lists all known heights of male and female Wimbledon champions. There is a lot of missing height data from prior to the 1960s.

* the height of Manuel Santana from 1966 is estimated based on photographic evidence.

source: most of the height values in the table are taken from the Wikipedia page for each player, and though they are believed to be pretty accurate, they may not be.

Olympic Tennis

At the 2012 Olympic Games, the average height of the tennis players was 186.6cm (males) and 173.6 (females).

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Related Pages

• Fitness testing for tennis
• Olympic Games Anthropometry for other sports in 2012
• Athlete Body Size Changes Over Time
• All about fitness testing, including anthropometry testing
• See also the Tennis Ratings Page
• Poll about the fitness components for tennis
• How to measure Height