surface differences always mattered, goran has only one SF in any major outside of wimbledon and has one wimbledon win and 3 finals losses but it’s impossible to compare anything back then to a fed/djok/nadal final.
Someone is usually ahead of everyone on a surface for a few years or so at least–just how it goes in tennis.
Novak would wreck Sampras. He would get just enough serves in play to be in a few service games every set and Pete would have a lot of trouble vs Novak’s serve
Imagine Novak playing John isner on grass. Obv Pete > isner
Novak would also wreck AA
Novak just does everything better.
And if roger’s early slams are worthless. Are these slams by Novak worthless?
I don’t think so. The number is the number. It’s hard to win slams.
fed was only at four when nadal won his first
What was he on when Nadal (GOAT Claycourter) won his first non-FO though.
As far as I see it,
Nadal GOAT on clay.
Everything else you can make arguments for or against. If that’s your jam to debate and argue it cool, otherwise I’m just going to enjoy watching the sport for what it is.
Always meaningless comparing sports people from different eras.
Since you seem to know quite a bit about this stuff, maybe you can help me figure out something that has puzzled me for a long time. How did Borg dominate FO and Wimbledon? Was late 70s also different from mid 90s?
Wooden rackets made for longer rallies.
So grass and clay played pretty similarly, but hard courts were different? I don’t think he shipped any US Opens.
He was really fucking good. The wooden bats are so different though and they used full gut strings. You ever hit with one of those? Best analogy I can think of for sports is probably persimmons woods for golf.
In that case, it seems weird he couldn’t ship even one US Open.
Well, technically yes, but I was pretty young and was mostly just fucking around. So, it wasn’t a very informative experience.
AA vs Novak
That’s straight from Cahill. He coached Agassi for a long time. He said it’s a nightmare match up.
Think of when dimitrov played Federer. Dude does everything you do. Just better. Same with Novak v Andre.
Clay has always been slower than grass. The new rackets meant that serve/volley dominated on grass (the fastest surface) whearas previously it had been an interesting balance.
I was at the '79 Borg v Tanner (a big serve/volleyer) final and Borg clawed his way back from behind to win. McEnroe (nominally a serve/vollyer but with a superb all round touch game) appearing spelt the end of Borg’s grass dominance and he retired at just 26.
The new rackets appearing in the 80s meant Sampras (massive serve and ground strokes but only block returns) dominating and the end of the short McEnroe era, unfortunately.
Then because of the tedium of rallies lasting one to three strokes, the grass was slowed down to redress the balance, somewhat.
I had to look this up but he lost four US Open finals, and three were after the transition to hard court. Looks like he lost a USO final on clay to Connors before they made the switch, but I don’t know anything about the circumstances of that match. Clay and grass are basically complete opposites in terms of ball behavior. Clay is slow release and high bounce, grass is fast release and low bounce. The similarity is that the footing is different from hard courts which is where I think Borg had a big advantage, especially over American players.
Last time I hit with one it caused a minor injury and I had to shut it down early. They’re heavy but also tiny in total stringbed area, have no power, no spin, no margin for error. Racquet technology plateaued probably around 1990 +/- several years with the graphite molds. I still have a few of those and imagine they hit about on par with anything made today. The revolutionary change was the poly strings circa 2000. Tons of good articles out there about this stuff.
One factor that created the opportunity for a string such as Luxilon has been the increasing slowdown of court surfaces. Responding to criticisms in the '90s that big serves and even more powerful service returns were shortening fan engagement, tournament directors all over the world began to drastically slow down their courts.
And even Wimbledon got in the act, its grass courts of the past five years bearing little resemblance to the lively grass that was heaven for net-rushers and hell for ground-strokers vexed by erratic bounces.
Been years since I’ve been really into tennis, and watching Break Point on Netflix, beyond the Big 3 and Serena I have no idea who any of these people are anymore.
Need to watch more tennis then
The Economist wrote a short piece on homogenization last year and plotted the rally length data I’m referencing from slam finals.
To my knowledge, no one has conducted a proper analysis to estimate the causal effects, and probably because that would be a complete nightmare. It would be worth a publication and probably a speaking role at the MIT conference.
I think Medvedev, Karen, or Nick has a better chance than Alcaraz against Novax at Wimbledon.
Really a tragedy. The homogenization of the surfaces leading to the boring grunty baseliner being dominant is such a bad change in the sport.
