Greatest Ground Game of all Time!

[BTURNER]

Originally Posted by halalula1234

Monica Seles

Sorry, she did not prove that ground game effective enough on fast grass compared to either Evert, or Graf, both of whom had established their strokes work well on all surfaces. Not Monica's fault per se because her career was effectively shortened, but can't give her grass titles using those groundies,she did not earn. Great ground game can be readiliy modified to work on clay, hard or grass. I give this category to Graf.

[krosero]

Originally Posted by pc1

It does make you wonder who the greatest 50 year old tennis player was. Was it Tilden? Perhaps John McEnroe now. I would go with Tilden. Beating Perry and Budge among others is something.

In his 40s Tilden notched numerous wins over alltime greats, largely because he was playing them so often on pro tours. He turned 40 in 1933, so he had wins over Vines, Budge, Perry, Nusslein. He last beat Vines at the age of 46, and had those wins over Budge and Perry at the age of 48.

But it's hard to compare against other players with great longevity -- like Rosewall, Pancho Gonzalez or Norman Brookes. Their circumstances were different; Brookes played before there were even any pro tours; and of course the pro tours were gone by the time Ken and Pancho turned 40.

None of those men, at the age of 48, were meeting the top 2 or 3 players in almost daily competition as Tilden was. So it's difficult to compare.

Tilden, at the age of 41, took about 20 of 60 matches against Vines. Pancho, at the age of 41, had a couple of wins over Laver, including a big five-set victory at the Garden. Rosewall, at 40, was beating Stan Smith and John Newcombe in majors. Brookes, at 41, made the Challenge Round at Wimbledon; at age 46 he had one last big win, over No. 5 in the world Frank Hunter, at Wimbledon.