(EPA)

Just a friendly reminder that Serena Williams is still an undefeated 23-0 in 2014. And that’s at age 33, which means there’s the same gap in between Serena’s age and Eugenie Bouchard’s (21 years old) and Serena’s and Steffi Graf’s (45). Wrap your head around that for a minute.

In winning the Australian Open, Indian Wells, Miami, three Fed Cup matches and her first two matches in Madrid, Serena is off to her best start of her career. Her previous best was a 21-0 start in 2003 that eventually ended in a loss to Justine Henin in the Charleston finals.

(AP)

Perhaps more impressively, Serena is on a 48-match winning streak at Premiere Mandatory events, the bulkily named tournaments that are the next tier of tourneys below Grand Slams. (Think of them as big golf tournaments such as The Players or The Memorial compared to The Masters or U.S. Open.) That’s nine-straight tournaments going all the way back to 2012 and with her sights set on another this week in Madrid.

Serena’s last loss in a Premiere Mandatory event was to her BFF Caroline Wozniacki in the quarters of Miami back in ’12, an odd loss given that was at the beginning of Wozniacki’s free fall in the rankings.

Other impressive Serena stats (but aren’t they all): Her 114 consecutive weeks at No. 1 is the third-longest streak in history and her total number of weeks (239) is fourth all-time. Barring a collapse or Simona Halep uprising (neither likely), Serena should move past Chris Evert into third place overall sometime in October.

Serena defeated Steffi at Indian Wells in 1999. (AP)

But it’s going to take a lot more wins to pass Evert on the list of most WTA wins to start the season. In 1981, Evert won 33 in a row to start her season, but that’s only a lowly fifth on the list, well behind Steffi Graf’s record of 47, set in 1987. (Which means Serena isn’t even halfway to the mark yet.) That year, Graf made it all the way to the Wimbledon final before losing to Martina Navratilova, who herself once had a 37-0 start to the year. In case you were wondering, Graf “only” made it to 16-0 in her Golden Slam year of 1988.