Björn Borg great at AKAI nov 1982

[borg number one]

Originally Posted by kiki

Of course, he should have been allowed to defend his FO title and his great prestige at Wimbledon and Flushing Meadows.I never understood that rule that can only exist because of the political fight that you very properly have detailled in your post.

Exos were the only opportunity for Borg tot est himself against his old time rivals, he did pretty well but, to compete with them, he had to give much more than just an ocassional show up at the Slams.You could see a big difference.

Thanks Kiki. I absolutely agree with you on all of your post. Borg would have definitely had to going "full bore" to regain his foothold in terms of practice and match play, but a slight adjustment relative to his past play/training was what he was contemplating through 1982. He was contemplating fewer "non-major" tourneys and a real focus on the FO, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open.

[kiki]

Originally Posted by borg number one

Thanks Kiki. I absolutely agree with you on all of the above Kiki. Borg would have definitely had to going "full bore" to regain his foothold in terms of practice and match play, but a slight adjustment relative to his past play/training was what he was contemplating through 1982. He was contemplating fewer "non-major" tourneys and a real focus on the FO, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open.

One thing I couldn´t understand, at that time, was Borg didn´t enter a few WCT events, were there were no restrictions at all - and he certainly would be more than welcome-.

As a matter of fact, Borg and Hunt were on the same shore, both fighting the stupid hegemonist attempts of the ITF ( which run the Slams and the Gran Prix ) led by Chartrier.

Do you know why? after all, Hunt was all for free enterprise, isn´t it? and some WCT matches with, relatively low pressure on him, would habe kept Borg´s body, hand and mind in shape enough to wait for rules to change in 1983 or 1984.

[kiki]

BTW, Lendl entered 10 WCT events, including the Spring (Dallas) and Fall (Naples) finals ..and won them all.He certainly owned the tour.He also won a few more WCT events in 83...and then, it all blew off.

[borg number one]

Originally Posted by kiki

One thing I couldn´t understand, at that time, was Borg didn´t enter a few WCT events, were there were no restrictions at all - and he certainly would be more than welcome-.

As a matter of fact, Borg and Hunt were on the same shore, both fighting the stupid hegemonist attempts of the ITF ( which run the Slams and the Gran Prix ) led by Chartrier.

Do you know why? after all, Hunt was all for free enterprise, isn´t it? and some WCT matches with, relatively low pressure on him, would habe kept Borg´s body, hand and mind in shape enough to wait for rules to change in 1983 or 1984.

I'm not certain Kiki, but I really think Borg was most focused on continuing to try and win majors (US Open, Wimbledon, FO). That had become his big focus by 1981 already. Yet, imagine Borg doing that, while he watched his big rivals McEnroe, Connors (who took over #1 again in 1982 from McEnroe), Lendl, face off at the majors. I do like that idea though. If he had done that, imagine how the officials at Wimbledon and elsewhere would have looked as they insisted that Borg could not play in the main draw without qualifying? Back to this match in 1982, you see Borg playing some very good tennis against McEnroe, who should be considered one of the greatest indoor players ever. Recall that Borg took out McEnroe at the Masters too at NY's MSG in both Jan. 80 and Jan. 81, winning both of those YEC (5-0 vs. Lendl, Connors, and McEnroe combined during those two tourneys). That was considered by most to be the biggest proze (4th biggest tournament behind Wimbledon, the FO, and the US Open). Many don't realize just how great of an indoor player Borg was.

[Carlo Giovanni Colussi]

Originally Posted by kiki

... Other great top ten were in the early ...early 60´s: Laver,Gonzales,Hoad,Rosewall,Emerson,Fraser,Gimeno ,Santana,Trabert and ageeing Kramer?

Hello,
if I'm not mistaken Kramer played his last singles tournaments late in 1959 and therefore he didn't play at all singles in the 1960's.

[kiki]

Originally Posted by borg number one

I'm not certain Kiki, but I really think Borg was most focused on continuing to try and win majors (US Open, Wimbledon, FO). That had become his big focus by 1981 already. Yet, imagine Borg doing that, while he watched his big rivals McEnroe, Connors (who took over #1 again in 1982 from McEnroe), Lendl, face off at the majors. I do like that idea though. If he had done that, imagine how the officials at Wimbledon and elsewhere would have looked as they insisted that Borg could not play in the main draw without qualifying? Back to this match in 1982, you see Borg playing some very good tennis against McEnroe, who should be considered one of the greatest indoor players ever. Recall that Borg took out McEnroe at the Masters too at NY's MSG in both Jan. 80 and Jan. 81, winning both of those YEC (5-0 vs. Lendl, Connors, and McEnroe combined during those two tourneys). That was considered by most to be the biggest proze (4th biggest tournament behind Wimbledon, the FO, and the US Open). Many don't realize just how great of an indoor player Borg was.

Amazing set of wins, Borg was absolutely paramount in 1979-80, in the MSG he played his best tennis ever, in my opinion.Remember his matches with Connors and Mac? both, in 1979 and 1980 Masters.Some of the finest indoor tennis ever.

The funny thing is that Borg´s first real success on tour, was the 1974 WCT Finals, where he destroyed seasoned champs like Okker and Kodes and lost to peak newcombe in 4 sets (Newc was a bad match up for him, anyway).After the match, when being presented with the winners trophy, Newc, such a great fella, said " He certainly is the best under 20 player in the world but, above it, he is so chick and sport...I´d like my son to be so chick as Bjorn is when he hest 18..." ( one day we should have a thread on Newcombe, one of the best players in the modern game and, certainly, one of the nicest and fittest sportsmen that I can think of).

[kiki]

Originally Posted by Carlo Giovanni Colussi

Hello,
if I'm not mistaken Kramer played his last singles tournaments late in 1959 and therefore he didn't play at all singles in the 1960's.

Could be... what a pitty he wasn´t 5 years younger...imagine Laver,Pancho,Rosewall,Kramer and Hoad near their peak ? the best top 5 that can be thought of ( altough I like the Budge,Perry,Tilden,Vines and Crawford group, too)

[pc1]

Originally Posted by kiki

Could be... what a pitty he wasn´t 5 years younger...imagine Laver,Pancho,Rosewall,Kramer and Hoad near their peak ? the best top 5 that can be thought of ( altough I like the Budge,Perry,Tilden,Vines and Crawford group, too)

Later 1950's did have peak Gonzalez, peak Hoad, near peak Rosewall, close to peak Segura, Sedgman, Trabert which was pretty awesome.

[kiki]

Originally Posted by pc1

Later 1950's did have peak Gonzalez, peak Hoad, near peak Rosewall, close to peak Segura, Sedgman, Trabert which was pretty awesome.

Completely agreed.

Other big ( 7) were 1971 Laver,Rosewall,Newk,Ashe,Nastase,Kodes and Smith.Tremendous race for nº 1 ( plus Okker,Gimeno and Roche in the backstage)

in 1980: Borg,Connors,Mc Enroe,Lendl and Vilas (plus Gerulaitis and Tanner very close).All multiple slam winners

[Benhur]

Originally Posted by Carlo Giovanni Colussi

As often in your replies to some of my posts you are condescending and wrong, Benhur.
You are behaving as such since the beginning when I told you that 1977 doesn’t CLEARLY belong to Vilas as you claim
My examples aren’t preposterous
and I maintain that whenever anyone wanna slightly change his name into a so-called more noble patronymic it is snobbish.
In other words I don’t see why “Gonzales” had to be changed because in principle it isn’t a pejorative name.
Given that I read somewhere that Gonzalez was supposed to be more noble than Gonzales then I rightly thought it was snobbish to change this name because I don’t understand why Gonzales would be pejorative and so I don’t see the reason to change it into Gonzalez with a z.
So on the substance I was and still am right and unlike what you say I’m not snobbish at all.
However since your answer I have tried to find where I had previously read this supposed difference of nobleness between Gonzales and Gonzalez
but without success
so perhaps my memory was wrong and I have no competence at all in Spanish so I can’t claim if that difference is a reality or not.
Nevertheless I found something else about Gonzales’s motivations :
in a book called “Richard “Pancho” Gonzalez Tennis Champion” written by Doreen Gonzales who has no family connection with the tennis player.
Pages 9-10 it reads like this :
“… Manuel Gonzales (Richard’s father). In Mexico his name was spelled with a z at the end – Gonzalez. In the United States, though the spelling became Gonzales. Manuel Gonzales used the new spelling his entire life and passed down to each of his children. Richard, therefore grew up spelling his last name Gonzales. But around 1970, Richard returned to the Spanish version of his name as an expression of pride in his heritage”
So apparently (but I’m not so sure) Richard Gonzales decided to recover his father’s name before the latter was “americanized”.
I also discovered that Gonzales changed his name to Gonzalez at least in 1966 if not earlier
(and not around 1970 as claimed by Doreen Gonzales)

And about what Ali asked Patterson I don’t know and frankly I don’t mind because Ali wasn’t the best spirited human being on earth, far from that.

Sorry, I hadn't seen this. Look, Carlo, I think it's totally silly to accuse someone of snobbery or vanity for simply correcting the spelling of his name to its standard form. If Pancho G had changed his name to Alexander Magnus Braveheart, or something like that, you might have a small point. As it is, you have none. (The referrence to Ali vs Patterson is about when Patterson had refused to call Ali by his new name, and Ali kept punching him mercilessly and asking him "what's my name?" He did the same to Ernie Terrell)

As I told you before, the notion that Gonzalez is more “noble” than Gonzales is just sheer nonsense. Gonzales is simply a variant misspelling that occurred by transcribing the name by ear (the pronunciation is the same; so if you are an immigrant somewhere, and they ask you to tell them your name, the person might write it down with an s at the end if he doesn't know how it's spelled). The standard spelling is Gonzalez, probably by 1000 to 1 or more.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:A...C3%A1s_comunes

The above link lists the most common surnames in various Spanish-speaking countries. You can see that Gonzalez is the most frequent family name in at least 4 countries, and it's in the top 5 in most of them. And you will also see that Gonzales doesn’t even appear in any of these lists. Not surprisingly, because it's relatively uncommon (and it's uncommon because it's a misspelling). So, someone correcting his name to its standard spelling is supposed to be snobbish? Come on!

Rank of Gonzalez among most frequent family names in various countries (from the link above)

Argentina 1
Chile 1
Paraguay 1
Venezuela 1
Spain 3
Colombia 3
Mexico 4
Costa Rica 4
Peru 7
El Salvador 9

[pc1]

It's funny how this thread isn't so much about Borg as about other discussions now. I actually enjoy it as long as the discussions are civil.

[Carlo Giovanni Colussi]

Originally Posted by Benhur

... I think it's totally silly to accuse someone of snobbery or vanity for simply correcting the spelling of his name to its standard form ...

The problem is that
I didn't accuse Pancho of vanity for correcting his name to its standard form
but because I thought
(wrongly due to a comment I read somewhere and given my ignorance in Spanish language)
that Gonzales considered his then name to be pejorative whereas it wasn't.

So what I wrote wasn't silly.

However apparently Gonzales's motivation wasn't a problem of misplaced pride as claimed in the article I read
but as you suggest a simple correction of a wrong mispelling.

Now I wrote both Gonzales or Gonzalez according to the circumstances given that
his official name was Gonzales before circa 1966
and Gonzalez since that date.

So Gonzales beat Rosewall in the 1960 world pro tour
whereas Rosewall beat Gonzalez in the March 1966 Madison Square Garden tournament.

[pc1]

Originally Posted by Carlo Giovanni Colussi

The problem is that
I didn't accuse Pancho of vanity for correcting his name to its standard form
but because I thought
(wrongly due to a comment I read somewhere and given my ignorance in Spanish language)
that Gonzales considered his then name to be pejorative whereas it wasn't.

So what I wrote wasn't silly.

However apparently Gonzales's motivation wasn't a problem of misplaced pride as claimed in the article I read
but as you suggest a simple correction of a wrong mispelling.

Now I wrote both Gonzales or Gonzalez according to the circumstances given that
his official name was Gonzales before circa 1966
and Gonzalez since that date.

So Gonzales beat Rosewall in the 1960 world pro tour
whereas Rosewall beat Gonzalez in the March 1966 Madison Square Garden tournament.

Carlo,

Like I have written the Gonzalez family prefers you write their name with a z despite the date. So even if it's 1950, please use the z to respect their wishes.

What can I say, it's your choice.

[Benhur]

Originally Posted by Carlo Giovanni Colussi

The problem is that
I didn't accuse Pancho of vanity for correcting his name to its standard form
but because I thought
(wrongly due to a comment I read somewhere and given my ignorance in Spanish language)
that Gonzales considered his then name to be pejorative whereas it wasn't.

So what I wrote wasn't silly.

However apparently Gonzales's motivation wasn't a problem of misplaced pride as claimed in the article I read
but as you suggest a simple correction of a wrong mispelling.

Now I wrote both Gonzales or Gonzalez according to the circumstances given that
his official name was Gonzales before circa 1966
and Gonzalez since that date.

So Gonzales beat Rosewall in the 1960 world pro tour
whereas Rosewall beat Gonzalez in the March 1966 Madison Square Garden tournament.

Okay, Carlo. Don’t get upset. It’s clear to me now that the problem lies not with you but with the article you read being misguided on this issue in attributing the spelling change to vanity or snobbery or whatever. You may take some comfort in the knowledge that s/z (and b/v) are some of the most common misspellings in Spanish because they are pronounced the same in most places.

I remember in one of the 77 Vilas thread polls you saying you intended to study the topic in some depth. It would be interesting to see your detailed views of that year since you obviously know a lot. No doubt from an attendance point of view the French was below Wimbledon and the USO. A good way to to start sorting things out is to see what its real status was in the overall mix of things. Two extreme lines of thought are easily detected here. Vilas defenders tend to refer simply to its status as a major without qualifications. Borg’s defenders often take the opposite route and indulge in offhand dismissal of that tournament to the basement, mainly because of the absence of Borg, Connors and Orantes without examination of the rest of the draw and apparently no consideration of its format requiring 7 rounds of best of 5matches.

In another thread I calculated that the average ranking of the 10 highest ranked participants in the USO, Wimbledon and the French in 1977 were as follows:

USO 5.5 (highest possible, since all top 10 ranked players were there)
Wimbledon 7.2
Roland Garros 10.5

Similar calculations might be done with the best 15 or best 20 etc.

An issue that seems to be systematically ignored is format. It seems to me that the 128-man, best of 5 format must be indicative of something, as only two or three tournaments had it. The difficulty of winning a tournament of those characteristics vs a 16-man draw with best of 3 matches is not at all trivial (if the density of draws is comparable). This must be so because the probability, over 7 rounds, of running into a player who is having a hot day or a hot tourament and can knock you out if you are having a so-so day, is so much higher. Crossing a 40-meter swamp you run a certain risk of being bit by a snake. The risk increases substantially if the length of the swamp goes up to 70 meters, even if the smaller swamp contains a few snakes of higher ferocity. So the topic of where exactly to place the FO in the overall arrangement is crucial, as are other issues like the 72 of 73 match wins interrupted only by the Nastase spaghetti strings and a sore wrist.
(Tiriac, in an interview after the racquet was banned, said that Vilas had a lot of pain in his wrist and had been on antiinflamatories for 3 days. And apparently that’s why he quit (not because of the Nastase racquet). He also said some funny things about the racquet: that it gave tennis a “new dimension" and banning it was the wrong thing to do, and that this racquet in Vilas’ hands, with his spin, the ball would be "bouncing over the stands." He added that the racquet would be excellent for guys like Borg, Vilas and Solomon.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e0oBcgF5qw