(Getty Images)

Chris Evert. Martina Navratilova. Serena Williams.

The three greatest female tennis players in American history are now tied on the only list that matters: career Grand Slam wins. With a convincing 6-3, 6-3 victory over her good friend Caroline Wozniacki, Williams earned her 18th major title, tying her for second with Evert and Navratilova on the all-time list in the Open Era.

It was Serena’s third-straight U.S. Open title, a feat that hadn’t been pulled off since Chris Evert won four straight from 1975-78. Overall, this was Serena’s record-tying sixth championship in New York (Evert also won six) and comes 15 years after she won her first one. Those six titles are the most she’s won of any Slam, going along with her five Australian Opens, five Wimbledons and two French Opens.

(Reuters)

Though her run through the draw was expected and as routine as ever — Serena didn’t lose more than three games in any of her 14 sets at the tournament — the win carried special meaning, as evidenced by the 32-year-old’s lengthy on-court celebration after Wozniacki’s final shot went long. Serena had the poorest Grand Slam showing of her career in 2014. The season that was supposed to be her coronation as the undisputed queen of American tennis instead turned into an odd mix of major disappointments buoyed by domination in lesser events. It was her career in reverse.

In Melbourne, Paris and Wimbledon, Serena fell in shock upsets. She never made it past the fourth round at the year’s first three majors, a run of failure she hadn’t experienced since her major debut as a 16-year-old in 1998.

(Getty Images)

Now that she has No. 18 on the shelf, the attention shifts from American supremacy to world supremacy. Steffi Graf is the all-time leader with 22 Grand Slams. Serena is four away from tying the German legend and five away from passing her. With her 33rd birthday at the end of the month, does Serena have enough time to pass the great Graf?

By ending 2014 on a high note, there’s no reason to expect Serena to stop anytime soon. In the past 26 months, she’s won five Slams in 10 starts. If she keeps that pace, she’d get to Graf at the French Open in 2017, when she’s 35 years old. No woman has consistently won Slams while that old. But the game has skewed older in recent years and Serena has accomplished plenty that other haven’t.

If she wants Graf, she can get there. As Serena Williams showed over the past two weeks, there’s no one in the sport who can compete with her when she’s on top of her game, whether she’s in her teens, twenties or thirties.