According to
A. Wallis Myers and
John Olliff of
The Daily Telegraph and the
Daily Mail, Sperling was ranked in the world top 10 from 1930 through 1939 (no rankings issued from 1940 through 1945), reaching a career high of world no. 2 in these rankings in 1936. However, according to Ned Potter of
American Lawn Tennis, Sperling was the top-ranked player for 1936. From 1935 through 1937, Sperling won three consecutive singles titles at the
French Championships. She is one of only five women in history to do so. The others are Moody (1928–1930),
Monica Seles (1990–1992),
Justine Henin (2005–2007) and
Iga Świątek (2022–2024). Sperling's only loss on a clay court from 1935 through 1939 was to
Simonne Mathieu at a tournament in Beaulieu, France in 1937. The score was 7–5, 6–1, and the two sets took 2 hours and 45 minutes to play. Two games lasted an hour. It was Mathieu's only victory versus Sperling in over 20 career matches. Sperling twice reached the singles final at
Wimbledon but never won the title. In 1931, she lost to her compatriot
Cilly Aussem. In 1936, she lost to Jacobs. However, Sperling won the mixed doubles title that year, playing with
Gottfried von Cramm. From 1933 through 1939, Sperling won the singles title at the
German Championships six consecutive times (the tournament was not held in 1936 because of the
Berlin Olympics). This record stood for five decades until Graf won the tournament nine times (but not more than four consecutively). Sperling also won the singles title at the
Italian Championships in 1935 and defeated Moody in the semifinals of the 1938 Queens Club London championships, just before Moody won her eighth Wimbledon singles title. Sperling's last international singles title was at the 1950 Scandinavian Covered Courts Championships in Copenhagen, Denmark when she was age 41. Sperling won several championships in Denmark while that country was occupied by Germany during World War II. Sperling never entered the
U.S. Championships because of scheduling conflicts with the German Championships. In recognition of her winning the French Championships three times, being a Wimbledon finalist twice, reaching the semifinals of the French Championships and Wimbledon an additional six times, and being ranked in the top 10 for 10 consecutive years, Sperling was inducted into the
International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2013. ==Grand Slam finals==