Strong Era/ Weak Era/ Impossible to Compare?

[Omega_7000]

Simple question. Do you believe that a conclusion can be made about the strength of an era based on the tally of tournaments & Majors won by players from that particular era? Or do you think that it is not as simple as just a statistical analysis and there are far too many things to be taken into consideration which makes it impossible to compare eras?

[piece]

You can't do it that way, at least. If a guy comes along with a Karlovic serve, Phau speed, Rosewall footwork, Borg defense, Federer forehand, Nalbandian backhand, Rafter net game and his opponents are guys on the level of Nadal, Sampras, Laver, Connors, Lendl then he's got strong competition by any good standard, but they're not going to be taking many majors from this super player. So the statistical analysis gives you the complete wrong answer in certain cases. Arguably this kind of scenario occurred (to a lesser extent, obviously) when Federer was playing his best. He made everyone look bad because he was so good. But they weren't bad, just inadequate, and there are few who wouldn't have been when playing someone at Federer's level.

The only way I can think of to judge era-strength is to look at the level of play of the relevant players. To make a cross-era comparison tractable on the kind of criteria I'm suggesting you'd have to either have some way to account and adjust for technological development in player equipment, or simply choose to compare two or more eras that played using the same technology, in which case you can start to use objective means of assessing level of play, one of which, for example, would be speed of shots.

So yeah, it's doable, but not in the way lots of people try to do it. There's a long, ongoing thread that is largely concerned with this topic in the former pro player section if you're interested. There's some worthwhile analysis in there.

[darrinbaker00]

If a player you like is #1, then it's a strong era. If a player you don't like is #1, then it's a weak era. It really is that simple.

[Dilettante]

Can't compare different eras' strength based on number of titles won by players. People will keep comparing it for ever, but there's no rational answer.

Also people don't want to be rational about this, they just want to think their favorite players played in the stronger era. And the make up all kind of argument to try to prove it.

EDIT:

If a player you like is #1, then it's a strong era. If a player you don't like is #1, then it's a weak era. It really is that simple.

hahaha, yeah, I was writing the same at the same moment.

[MagneticCurls]

Sampras played in a weak era. Nuff said. Let the wars begin!