Gary, I have not studied enough the week-for-week domination of Rosewall and Laver but I guess they were pretty even on that field. Buchholz wrote that the seedings changed every three weeks (I erroneously had thought every four weeks) and Rosewall must have dominated several of those periods as he succeeded more than Laver in both parts of that tour. But Laver was better in their early NZL tour and played longer( and well) than Rosewall at end-year.
As I said elsewhere, I look at tennis in "periods". The term "era" gets thrown a lot and is confusing. The main three players in mind from the 50s through to the 60s are Gonzales, Hoad/Rosewall, Laver. I remember them as 28, 34, 38, born in those years. Hoad is like some of our modern players who had an amazing peak but a shorter career because of injuries.
Otherwise I see a Gonzales period followed by a Rosewall period followed by a Laver period. Rosewall was in the shadow of Gonzales, and I don't see that he ever got the better of Pancho until Pancho started to fade. I don't mean that he didn't win matches but rather that Gonzales was so dominant, he sort of "sucked the oxygen out of the room". In a modern system he would have dominated points for a number of years, and he would have been the clear #1 I think.
Laver came into his own around 1964. Regardless of his unofficial ranking, I think it was pretty clear in 1964 what was going to happen. But in saying this, again I have to point out that Laver was 26 in 64, and Rosewall was 30 at the end of that year.
I always try to compare things back then to today. Even with all the advantages players have now with diet, surgery, training, physios, and so on, 30 remains a barrier. Before age 30 in most cases we see players losing a half step. Fed's peak years were shortened because of mono. He may even have had some of that starting in 2007. Regardless, his absolute peak was from around 2003-2006. He still had an amazing 2007 in terms of slams and winning, but his stats were dropping. Then he had a resurgence in 2009, but by 2011, around the age of 30, his total dominance was over.
Now people think Novak will go on winning forever. People are already giving him 18 slams, or more, but some of us have seen cracks this year and think his true peak was in 2011. But he is only 29 right now, just barely.
Just a couple years back people thought Nadal would go on winning RG every year, but we started seeing major cracks in 2014. Nadal is around 30 right now.
So Rosewall's peak years should have been up to around age 27 or 28 at the most. Rosewall turned 28 at the end of 1962. That's important.
Laver's dominance at around age 30-31 in 69 is a very rare thing in tennis and is something that should be more appreciated.
