What followed was one of the most dominant careers in the history of tennis across any era or gender. Nine Wimbledon singles titles, the most by any player in the Open Era. Eighteen Grand Slam singles titles. Fifty-nine Grand Slam titles total across singles, doubles, and mixed doubles, a record across genders. Three hundred and thirty-two weeks ranked number one in the world. She won on every surface, against every generation of opponent the tour produced across two decades of competition, and she did it with a physicality and a professionalism that changed how the sport thought about athletic preparation. She was the first player to treat fitness as a competitive weapon rather than a baseline requirement, and the women's game has never fully returned to the assumptions that existed before her.

In 1981 she came out publicly as gay and lost her endorsements almost immediately. She was at the time the most dominant player in the sport and one of its least commercially supported stars, a gap that documented precisely what the sponsorship market thought about who she was off the court. She was also known to bring her own food to tournaments, particular about what she ate in the days surrounding a match in ways that teammates and opponents both noticed, a fastidiousness that extended the same total commitment she brought to everything else into the smallest details of preparation. She continued competing, continued winning, and continued speaking publicly on matters of equality and identity for decades after the playing career ended. The defection at eighteen established the pattern: she assessed what something would cost, decided the cost was worth it, and proceeded. She did that with her country, with her identity, and with every opponent she faced across thirty years. The record is what it is. Nobody else has one like it.