1970: an Almost Complete Picture

Gary Duane said:

@Dan Lobb
So true. Again, making a comparison between tennis and what I teach:

If you follow great pianists and read stuff by fans, the impression you will get is that there is continuous evolution. The best get better and better. The young players are faster, or more powerful, or more accurate. You have young players like Lang Lang who have their rabid fans, saying that nothing like what they do ever existed before.

When in fact that's not true at all, and several players who are now dead remain right at the top in terms of what they did.

But there are two huge differences. First, stereo recordings have been around since the late 50s. And there has been no important improvements in the construction of pianos. To get to the time when the instrument itself was still evolving you have to go back more than a century, to a time when recordings are not available.

In tennis you have something very different. Obviously we do not have hi-def videos going back more than 50 years, but by the 70s at least we have a pretty good record of matches. But when we go back to the time of Connors and Borg, we're back to wood and guys (leaving aside the T-2000 that no one but Connors could control), so as we start forward from there, through all the changes, people keep comparing the strokes with the idea that tennis itself is evolving.

But what is evolving are the rackets.

Certainly today's athletes are insanely well-conditioned, traveling with teams, physios, and so on, but the apparent evolution in strokes is actually a change in technique to utilize the modern rackets and strings to the max.

Comparing technique using wood and gut to technique with modern rackets and polly is like comparing harpsichord technique to technique on primitive pianos to technique on modern pianos.

The difference: people are still playing on all three. There are modern harpsichord players, and there are "period" players who perform on older pianos. Technique on these three instruments is amazingly different.

If we still had tournaments played by the best players in the world where they had to use the old wood rackets, small heads, only gut, you'd see in a flash that a lot of things being done today would not work at all.

Even if you lived during that time I think it's harder because none of us remember things as perfectly as we assume. We can watch whole matches between top players in the late 70s. Early 70s? Where is the complete Dallas match between Laver and Rosewall?

Where is the complete RG final between Laver and Rosewall?

Where are all the complete finals of Laver's GS in '69?

The answer is that we are forced to "reconstruct" what went on then, based on what we read and what we remember. But I don't trust my memory of matches played almost 50 years ago, not without being able to watch videos for a "reality check".

What convinces me that things have not really "evolved" is watching matches between players who are close to retirement against up and coming players. We have at least one clay match between Laver and Borg. Laver does not look like "a thing of the past" except that obviously he is much older, so at a disadvantage. We have old McEnroe 92 still getting some impressive wins against top players in '92, old Agassi against top players still in the game right now, Sampras playing young Fed, and that just scratches the surface. Now we have old Fed with a comparatively new racket.

When I watch these match-ups it's hard not to conclude that the only reason these aging players were not longer fully competitive was age, not "evolution".

I started playing in the mid '60s. But even though I watched tennis keenly back then, when matches were shown, I can't revisit them. Whereas I can check out videos of the late 70s, so I'm pretty much limited to forming impressions from that era. That means that I'm only able to rewatch full matches of Rosewall and Laver when they were very old, even more true of Gonzalez. So even though I was older than you were, at that time, my really strong memories are of Conners, Evert, Borg and McEnroe. My interest faded to nothing when Wilander and Lendl played. I just never warmed to either. I think the emphasis on the Lendl forehand as the link to the modern ATP forehand is not quite right, because people confuse racket evolution with stroke evolution.

There you have a great example of age vs. evolution. The difference in age between those two is about the same as that between Djokovic and Federer. People are going to look at Becker's strokes as "modern" and then assume that it was inevitable that Becker was going to get the upper hand. Then people will assume that the way Mac played was more age related than "unique technique used by no one else" related.

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Gary Duane said:

@Dan Lobb
So true. Again, making a comparison between tennis and what I teach:

If you follow great pianists and read stuff by fans, the impression you will get is that there is continuous evolution. The best get better and better. The young players are faster, or more powerful, or more accurate. You have young players like Lang Lang who have their rabid fans, saying that nothing like what they do ever existed before.

When in fact that's not true at all, and several players who are now dead remain right at the top in terms of what they did.

But there are two huge differences. First, stereo recordings have been around since the late 50s. And there has been no important improvements in the construction of pianos. To get to the time when the instrument itself was still evolving you have to go back more than a century, to a time when recordings are not available.

In tennis you have something very different. Obviously we do not have hi-def videos going back more than 50 years, but by the 70s at least we have a pretty good record of matches. But when we go back to the time of Connors and Borg, we're back to wood and guys (leaving aside the T-2000 that no one but Connors could control), so as we start forward from there, through all the changes, people keep comparing the strokes with the idea that tennis itself is evolving.

But what is evolving are the rackets.

Certainly today's athletes are insanely well-conditioned, traveling with teams, physios, and so on, but the apparent evolution in strokes is actually a change in technique to utilize the modern rackets and strings to the max.

Comparing technique using wood and gut to technique with modern rackets and polly is like comparing harpsichord technique to technique on primitive pianos to technique on modern pianos.

The difference: people are still playing on all three. There are modern harpsichord players, and there are "period" players who perform on older pianos. Technique on these three instruments is amazingly different.

If we still had tournaments played by the best players in the world where they had to use the old wood rackets, small heads, only gut, you'd see in a flash that a lot of things being done today would not work at all.

Even if you lived during that time I think it's harder because none of us remember things as perfectly as we assume. We can watch whole matches between top players in the late 70s. Early 70s? Where is the complete Dallas match between Laver and Rosewall?

Where is the complete RG final between Laver and Rosewall?

Where are all the complete finals of Laver's GS in '69?

The answer is that we are forced to "reconstruct" what went on then, based on what we read and what we remember. But I don't trust my memory of matches played almost 50 years ago, not without being able to watch videos for a "reality check".

What convinces me that things have not really "evolved" is watching matches between players who are close to retirement against up and coming players. We have at least one clay match between Laver and Borg. Laver does not look like "a thing of the past" except that obviously he is much older, so at a disadvantage. We have old McEnroe 92 still getting some impressive wins against top players in '92, old Agassi against top players still in the game right now, Sampras playing young Fed, and that just scratches the surface. Now we have old Fed with a comparatively new racket.

When I watch these match-ups it's hard not to conclude that the only reason these aging players were not longer fully competitive was age, not "evolution".

I started playing in the mid '60s. But even though I watched tennis keenly back then, when matches were shown, I can't revisit them. Whereas I can check out videos of the late 70s, so I'm pretty much limited to forming impressions from that era. That means that I'm only able to rewatch full matches of Rosewall and Laver when they were very old, even more true of Gonzalez. So even though I was older than you were, at that time, my really strong memories are of Conners, Evert, Borg and McEnroe. My interest faded to nothing when Wilander and Lendl played. I just never warmed to either. I think the emphasis on the Lendl forehand as the link to the modern ATP forehand is not quite right, because people confuse racket evolution with stroke evolution.

There you have a great example of age vs. evolution. The difference in age between those two is about the same as that between Djokovic and Federer. People are going to look at Becker's strokes as "modern" and then assume that it was inevitable that Becker was going to get the upper hand. Then people will assume that the way Mac played was more age related than "unique technique used by no one else" related.

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Gary Duane said:

Obviously it's different. You don't get ranking points for looking good.

But there are also sort of unofficial competitions in piano. These come from comparisons of top players playing the same virtuoso pieces, and there are certain instances when one player or another simply smokes everyone else.

Here is an example of a piece of music I don't even like, and I would never say that pianist A or B is better because of being able to play a showpiece:

But if you play piano and watch this, you simply say: "This is just not possible. It's a lot like watching some of the insane tennis moments when player A, B or C puts together a few shots that don't seem humanly possible.

Maybe. Or maybe we should just find the greatest moments of all of the players who are dominating some era. Or study each era for the best of the best.

Here's where the whole GOAT thing fails for me. Concentrating on GOAT lists I'm not even going to pay attention to certain players, so I'm unlikely to pay much attention to a guy like Safin. He's never going to make it to the top of any GOAT list because his dominance was so short, but I'd hate not to know about him just because I was not watching tennis during the brief time when he was insanely good.

A better example for me would be Hoad. I never really paid much attention to him because he was obviously peaking before I watched tennis. Who is going to put Hoad at the top of a GOAT list? But then you read about how his contemporaries viewed him, when he was at the top of his game, and it makes you wonder: What if he had stayed uninjured and had greater longevity?

Each of those players should be studied as standout players in their eras. But people are either going to respect history and learn something, or they are going to be like the fans in the General Forum who worship only the players who are on top right at the moment.

A happy medium in fan-worship would be a welcome change.

But I think rabid fans actually turn people against great players. It's not just Rosewall, or Laver. Look at the Federer worship. It's not enough that he is without doubt one of the greatest players we've ever seen. Fans turn him into Savior of the World!!!

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treblings said:

* * *
btw, if you could transfer a prime Laver to 2017, he couldn´t adapt his technique to todays equipment. of course he could
play with modern racquets and strings, but he couldn´t change his technique to fully use the advantages. not on world class level.

* * *

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Gary Duane said:

@Dan Lobb
So true. Again, making a comparison between tennis and what I teach:

If you follow great pianists and read stuff by fans, the impression you will get is that there is continuous evolution. The best get better and better. The young players are faster, or more powerful, or more accurate. You have young players like Lang Lang who have their rabid fans, saying that nothing like what they do ever existed before.

When in fact that's not true at all, and several players who are now dead remain right at the top in terms of what they did.

But there are two huge differences. First, stereo recordings have been around since the late 50s. And there has been no important improvements in the construction of pianos. To get to the time when the instrument itself was still evolving you have to go back more than a century, to a time when recordings are not available.

In tennis you have something very different. Obviously we do not have hi-def videos going back more than 50 years, but by the 70s at least we have a pretty good record of matches. But when we go back to the time of Connors and Borg, we're back to wood and guys (leaving aside the T-2000 that no one but Connors could control), so as we start forward from there, through all the changes, people keep comparing the strokes with the idea that tennis itself is evolving.

But what is evolving are the rackets.

Certainly today's athletes are insanely well-conditioned, traveling with teams, physios, and so on, but the apparent evolution in strokes is actually a change in technique to utilize the modern rackets and strings to the max.

Comparing technique using wood and gut to technique with modern rackets and polly is like comparing harpsichord technique to technique on primitive pianos to technique on modern pianos.

The difference: people are still playing on all three. There are modern harpsichord players, and there are "period" players who perform on older pianos. Technique on these three instruments is amazingly different.

If we still had tournaments played by the best players in the world where they had to use the old wood rackets, small heads, only gut, you'd see in a flash that a lot of things being done today would not work at all.

Even if you lived during that time I think it's harder because none of us remember things as perfectly as we assume. We can watch whole matches between top players in the late 70s. Early 70s? Where is the complete Dallas match between Laver and Rosewall?

Where is the complete RG final between Laver and Rosewall?

Where are all the complete finals of Laver's GS in '69?

The answer is that we are forced to "reconstruct" what went on then, based on what we read and what we remember. But I don't trust my memory of matches played almost 50 years ago, not without being able to watch videos for a "reality check".

What convinces me that things have not really "evolved" is watching matches between players who are close to retirement against up and coming players. We have at least one clay match between Laver and Borg. Laver does not look like "a thing of the past" except that obviously he is much older, so at a disadvantage. We have old McEnroe 92 still getting some impressive wins against top players in '92, old Agassi against top players still in the game right now, Sampras playing young Fed, and that just scratches the surface. Now we have old Fed with a comparatively new racket.

When I watch these match-ups it's hard not to conclude that the only reason these aging players were not longer fully competitive was age, not "evolution".

I started playing in the mid '60s. But even though I watched tennis keenly back then, when matches were shown, I can't revisit them. Whereas I can check out videos of the late 70s, so I'm pretty much limited to forming impressions from that era. That means that I'm only able to rewatch full matches of Rosewall and Laver when they were very old, even more true of Gonzalez. So even though I was older than you were, at that time, my really strong memories are of Conners, Evert, Borg and McEnroe. My interest faded to nothing when Wilander and Lendl played. I just never warmed to either. I think the emphasis on the Lendl forehand as the link to the modern ATP forehand is not quite right, because people confuse racket evolution with stroke evolution.

There you have a great example of age vs. evolution. The difference in age between those two is about the same as that between Djokovic and Federer. People are going to look at Becker's strokes as "modern" and then assume that it was inevitable that Becker was going to get the upper hand. Then people will assume that the way Mac played was more age related than "unique technique used by no one else" related.

You'll see Nalbandian hitting more like Nadal, rifling BHs down the line or even cross court with the left leg splayed out to the left and even sliding:

2:05

I think he probably did have the best 2HBH of all the modern players.

Whereas Borg, I don't believe, could use that technique with wood and gut, so you see him stepping into all backhands much more. I also loved the release of the LH, really making his 2HBH more of a 1H-2H hybrid.

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treblings said:

You'll see Nalbandian hitting more like Nadal, rifling BHs down the line or even cross court with the left leg splayed out to the left and even sliding:

2:05

I think he probably did have the best 2HBH of all the modern players.

Whereas Borg, I don't believe, could use that technique with wood and gut, so you see him stepping into all backhands much more. I also loved the release of the LH, really making his 2HBH more of a 1H-2H hybrid.

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Dan Lobb said:

Cziffra was a phenomenon...but how many of his recordings of Brahms or Beethoven or Bach are still played today?

Technique is only part of the story.

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Dan Lobb said:

I would rank Richter and Gould, both pianists who emerged in 1956 recordings, as the greatest, but not because of technique, more because of their ability to give some new interpretations of standard compositions.

Gould brought a contrapuntal approach to everything, even Mozart and Beethoven, and showed how that could work to reveal new possibilities.
Richter always had an individual view on everything he played.

Their success was as much related to conception as technique. They still remain at the top, according to surveys of listeners of classical music.

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treblings said:

the difference between music and sports, imo, is that you can´t separate the athletic side from the other skills in sports.
the fact that todays athletes are better athletically makes them superior.
that doesn´t mean of course that you can´t appreciate the skills and the determination and everything else of the older generations.
i would pick a Laver-Rosewall encounter to watch on video every day of the week.
a great match is about much more than athletic ability.

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Players like Federer can compete with the young guns because they never stop improving. in many ways, Federer in 2017 is
superior to his younger self. it´s only age that is stopping him.

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there are other examples of world class players who weren´t able to continuosly get better during their career.
they weren´t succesful for long though.

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the fact that the equipment has changed so much over the last 50 years of course makes comparisons much more difficult.

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btw, if you could transfer a prime Laver to 2017, he couldn´t adapt his technique to todays equipment. of course he could
play with modern racquets and strings, but he couldn´t change his technique to fully use the advantages. not on world class level.

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different questions, can you or do you rank musicians? Is there a no.1 pianist for example in your opinion?

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Gary Duane said:

Absolutely, you can't compare music and sports for the reasons you gave. You never divorce interpretation from technique in music, and the greatest musicians I've heard continued to improve as musicians long after they peaked technically. It doesn't work that way in sports.

I'd say that you could graph a player's understanding of the game and mastery of tactics against his physical peak, and to some extent you would have two different curves. I'd say that Fed has continued to improve as a tactician, and I'd even say that his backhand is the best it's ever been right now. How much of that is due to the new racket is debatable. But he is definitely not the same player, physically as he was 10 years ago. That is obvious.

Not all players continue to evolve their mental approach to the game, and perhaps some are amazingly precocious, tactically, even early in their careers. We are also in a period right now in which the technological changes directly impacted players who started dominating in the early "naughts". I know that people who have examined strings far more than I have claim that not all players got on board the "poly train" at first, so those who did had a decided advantage, then over the next 10-15 years it moved from that to everyone using that technology. This would mean, perhaps, that things have actually become tougher for Fed, and logically he was pushed to continue evolving.

Did all the great ones do that? I'm not sure, but it is likely, because how else are ATGs going to continue to dominate, even on good days, as they pass the age of 30 and even approach 40?

Absolutely.

That's too far into "what if" for me. Laver, trained as he was from a young age playing only with wood and gut, would be very different from a modern clone, trained from day one with today's equipment. But maybe his clone would be an inch or two taller, growing up with modern nutrition, and I'd imagine that insane amount of athletic talent would manifest itself in some manner.

More than the equipment I think that bounce of today's courts would be a problem for guys like Laver and Rosewall. It seems to me that being built lower to the ground was once an advantage playing on low-bouncing grass, with it's very unpredictable bounce. Even today players say that they get sore at first when transitioning to grass, but it seemed so extreme on old grass, when three majors each year were on grass. I remember BJK always talking about how rough grass was on her knees.

No. I never rank musicians. I think it's absurd to try to pick one pianist who is supposedly superior to all others. I would merely talk about those who are, in my opinion, unique. Something they do or did is worth listening to because no one else does it.

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Gary Duane said:

Dan, I would only recommend Ciffra to people who do not know about him, and he has an incredible story. He was a technical force of nature, and at times he was surprisingly musical. But most of the time he's more like a circus act.

I can't write more here because it is 100% off topic.

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Gary Duane said:

Artist, great pianist. Top musician. World-renowned artist.

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• 
  artist
  noun
  • 1A person who creates paintings or drawings as a profession or hobby.
    
  1. 1.1 A person who practises or performs any of the creative arts, such as a sculptor, film-maker, actor, or dancer.
• 1.2 A person skilled at a particular task or occupation.
  ‘a surgeon who is an artist with the scalpel’
• 
  
• 2informal with modifier A person who habitually practises a specified reprehensible activity.
  
  ‘rip-off artists’

thrust said:

Actually, an nice switch of topic. Claudio Arrau was my favorite. Not so much for technique but the lush sound he produced.

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treblings said:

lots of good points.

i think that players not only continue to improve tactically or in their understanding of the game.
they continue to improve because they need to react to the rising level of play.
they need to change parts of their game because of new opponents. Federer had to react to Nadals unique game for example.

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a famous example on the womens side was Steffi Graf, who dominated the game for years before young Monica Seles arrived on the scene.

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Graf had seen no need for years to develop her game further, since she won nearly everything.

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i like the fact, that just at the moment when we all agree that modern tennis has become a game for tall players, along comes someone
like Schwartzman who shows what is possible and keeps us on our toes.

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Lavers "clone" would very likely be a bit taller. i think every generation of humans grows a bit taller than the previous ones.
if you want to know how Laver would have played had he grown up today, look no further than Denis Shapovalov.
Shapovalov has yet to prove that he can be a great player, but he sure has the strokes

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Gary Duane said:

This is pretty standard:

• 
  artist
  noun
  • 1A person who creates paintings or drawings as a profession or hobby.
  1. 1.1 A person who practises or performs any of the creative arts, such as a sculptor, film-maker, actor, or dancer.
• 1.2 A person skilled at a particular task or occupation.
  ‘a surgeon who is an artist with the scalpel’
• 
  
• 2informal with modifier A person who habitually practises a specified reprehensible activity.
  
  ‘rip-off artists’

This is not sarcasm: Is English not your first language?

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hoodjem said:

Sorry. I was an art historian for 33 years.

In my discipline, an artist is more than a great doer of something.

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hoodjem said:

No, English is my first language. But I am very particular about its use, having practiced it at university-level for the same 33 years in the writing of articles and books, and the grading of undergraduate research papers.
I reject this use of the word:
1.2 A person skilled at a particular task or occupation.
‘a surgeon who is an artist with the scalpel’

That person may be a skilled practitioner, or even rise to the level of a crafts person, but is not an artist.

(Sorry, this is not the place for a debate on aesthetics. The word artist gets thrown around way too loosely and much in modern culture, in my opinion. Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and Beethoven were artists. Lady Gaga and Jay Z are not; they are performers. A highly skilled car mechanic, bricklayer, pizza-maker, or surgeon is a practitioner or skilled craftsman or craftswoman. But that is just my opinion.)

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Gary Duane said:

Arrau would be close to the top of my list too.

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Limpinhitter said:

I don't know enough about Jay Z, but, I disagree with you about Lady Gaga. I don't think it is necessary to be among the greatest in history to be an artist.

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Limpinhitter said:

I don't know enough about Jay Z, but, I disagree with you about Lady Gaga. I don't think it is necessary to be among the greatest in history to be an artist.

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hoodjem said:

No, English is my first language. But I am very particular about its use, having practiced it at university-level for the same 33 years in the writing of articles and books, and the grading of undergraduate research papers.
I reject this use of the word:
1.2 A person skilled at a particular task or occupation.
‘a surgeon who is an artist with the scalpel’

That person may be a skilled practitioner, or even rise to the level of a crafts person, but is not an artist.

(Sorry, this is not the place for a debate on aesthetics. The word artist gets thrown around way too loosely and much in modern culture, in my opinion. Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and Beethoven were artists. Lady Gaga and Jay Z are not; they are performers. A highly skilled car mechanic, bricklayer, pizza-maker, or surgeon is a practitioner or skilled craftsman or craftswoman. But that is just my opinion.)

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Gary Duane said:

I'll only say that the moment you give yourself the position of "guardian of the English language", giving the nod to one commonly accepted definition and thumbs down to another, you have to accept that any number of other people will assume the same right.

This puts you in the "prescriptivist" camp.

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hoodjem said:

Yep, that was my position for 33 years: “Guardian of the Univer . . . English language.”
Standing at the gates of civilization, facing the barbarian undergrad hordes who wanted to throw “like” into every sentence and formulate incoherent ideas in incomplete ones.

Subject—who needs it; verb—does not exist. But of course I knew what they meant, because they told me so: “know what I mean.”

I was implacable and merciless.

I believe that definitions are useful. They help us to categorize, comprehend, and communicate fairly logically and more clearly. So yes, maybe I am in the prescriptivist camp. (See my discussions of Grand Slam. Fed has 19 grand slams, and Laver has only two. Fed is thus so much greater.)

I’ll take the OED over UDC any day.

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Gary Duane said:

But "just between you and I" I don't worry much about grammar/usage. The battle has already been lost.

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hoodjem said:

That’s okay. Could be.
Perhaps American universities’ art departments are filled with many young artists.

(Sometimes I disagree with myself, about certain issues. )

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Limpinhitter said:

Is Curtis Lundy an Artist?

(Posted in another thread but wanted your feedback).

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Waspsting said:

Summing up our discussion to now, there are two broad schools of thought -

a) Laver #1 for the year, based on consistent good results throughout the year

b) Newcombe or Rosewall #1 for the year, based primarily on their titles at the Big 2 Slams

---

Can we further dissect school of thought b) - Newcombe vs Rosewall. If one has to be #1, who would you choose? And why?

In the context of the period in question and what sense I can make of it, I'm inclined towards John Newcombe

I imagine the ATP Player of the Year (started in 1975) and ITF World Champion (started in 1978) are a reasonable substitute for whatever intuitive criteria was used to rank Newcombe/Rosewall #1 in 1970

Without exception, both awards went to the Wimbledon champion until 1985, as often as not contradicting the computer rankings

The ITF award was chosen by a 3-man panel - Fred Perry, Don Budge and Lew Hoad - upto 1984 and it's implied on wikipedia that all their decisions, sans 1983, were unanimous

To me, the players opinion is the Gold Standard in the matter - far, far more important than the experts. How can it not be? - It's the horses mouth. And messrs Perry, Budge and Hoad make for quite a horse

Note also that Bjorn Borg, who never won the US Open, was clearly considered a GOAT candidate.... but the absence of a Wimbledon crown was commonly used - and to some extent, still is - as a humongous point against players with an otherwise equally impressive resume of accomplishments (Rosewall and Ivan Lendl)

The implication is that the common perception was Wimbledon >> US Open, just as Wimbledon/US Open >>>> everything else

Hence, it seems to me a logical extension of Newcombe/Rosewall > Laver in 1970 on the grounds of USO/Wimbledon >>>> everything else is -

Newcombe > Rosewall in 1970 on the grounds of Wimbledon >> USO

I'd like to hear what others make of the matter

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Waspsting said:

Summing up our discussion to now, there are two broad schools of thought -

a) Laver #1 for the year, based on consistent good results throughout the year

b) Newcombe or Rosewall #1 for the year, based primarily on their titles at the Big 2 Slams

---

Can we further dissect school of thought b) - Newcombe vs Rosewall. If one has to be #1, who would you choose? And why?

In the context of the period in question and what sense I can make of it, I'm inclined towards John Newcombe

I imagine the ATP Player of the Year (started in 1975) and ITF World Champion (started in 1978) are a reasonable substitute for whatever intuitive criteria was used to rank Newcombe/Rosewall #1 in 1970

Without exception, both awards went to the Wimbledon champion until 1985, as often as not contradicting the computer rankings

The ITF award was chosen by a 3-man panel - Fred Perry, Don Budge and Lew Hoad - upto 1984 and it's implied on wikipedia that all their decisions, sans 1983, were unanimous

To me, the players opinion is the Gold Standard in the matter - far, far more important than the experts. How can it not be? - It's the horses mouth. And messrs Perry, Budge and Hoad make for quite a horse

Note also that Bjorn Borg, who never won the US Open, was clearly considered a GOAT candidate.... but the absence of a Wimbledon crown was commonly used - and to some extent, still is - as a humongous point against players with an otherwise equally impressive resume of accomplishments (Rosewall and Ivan Lendl)

The implication is that the common perception was Wimbledon >> US Open, just as Wimbledon/US Open >>>> everything else

Hence, it seems to me a logical extension of Newcombe/Rosewall > Laver in 1970 on the grounds of USO/Wimbledon >>>> everything else is -

Newcombe > Rosewall in 1970 on the grounds of Wimbledon >> USO

I'd like to hear what others make of the matter

Click to expand...

Waspsting said:

Summing up our discussion to now, there are two broad schools of thought -

a) Laver #1 for the year, based on consistent good results throughout the year

b) Newcombe or Rosewall #1 for the year, based primarily on their titles at the Big 2 Slams

---

Can we further dissect school of thought b) - Newcombe vs Rosewall. If one has to be #1, who would you choose? And why?

In the context of the period in question and what sense I can make of it, I'm inclined towards John Newcombe

I imagine the ATP Player of the Year (started in 1975) and ITF World Champion (started in 1978) are a reasonable substitute for whatever intuitive criteria was used to rank Newcombe/Rosewall #1 in 1970

Without exception, both awards went to the Wimbledon champion until 1985, as often as not contradicting the computer rankings

The ITF award was chosen by a 3-man panel - Fred Perry, Don Budge and Lew Hoad - upto 1984 and it's implied on wikipedia that all their decisions, sans 1983, were unanimous

To me, the players opinion is the Gold Standard in the matter - far, far more important than the experts. How can it not be? - It's the horses mouth. And messrs Perry, Budge and Hoad make for quite a horse

Note also that Bjorn Borg, who never won the US Open, was clearly considered a GOAT candidate.... but the absence of a Wimbledon crown was commonly used - and to some extent, still is - as a humongous point against players with an otherwise equally impressive resume of accomplishments (Rosewall and Ivan Lendl)

The implication is that the common perception was Wimbledon >> US Open, just as Wimbledon/US Open >>>> everything else

Hence, it seems to me a logical extension of Newcombe/Rosewall > Laver in 1970 on the grounds of USO/Wimbledon >>>> everything else is -

Newcombe > Rosewall in 1970 on the grounds of Wimbledon >> USO

I'd like to hear what others make of the matter

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thrust said:

Newcombe beat Ken in the Wimbledon finals, Ken beat John in the USO semi's. Ken beat John, I think 4 of the 5 times they played in 70. Ken also had a much better winning record against the top 10 that year. The USO had the same competition as Wimbledon, therefore, Rosewall definitely had the superior results for 1970 an should have been ranked higher than John.

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BobbyOne said:

thrust, They were 5:2 that year. Rosewall was also better in the GP rankings, finished third at the Masters and reached final in the TCC.

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thrust said:

All of which makes it more absurd that Tingay ranked Newcombe #1 just because he won Wimbledon, which was no more competitive than the USO. Did Mr Tingay's tennis season consist of only Wimbledon?

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thrust said:

Newcombe beat Ken in the Wimbledon finals, Ken beat John in the USO semi's. Ken beat John, I think 4 of the 5 times they played in 70. Ken also had a much better winning record against the top 10 that year. The USO had the same competition as Wimbledon, therefore, Rosewall definitely had the superior results for 1970 an should have been ranked higher than John.

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Limpinhitter said:

Agreed. Rosewall finished ahead of Newcombe in 1970. Newcomb won the more prestigious major. But, Rosewall won the second most prestigious traditional major, and won five more titles. Newcombe only won two more titles. Plus, Rosewall had the winning head to head record against Newcomb that year.

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Dan Lobb said:

You have to bring your best game to the top event.
Otherwise, all you get is a pat on the back for a job well done.

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Dan Lobb said:

You have to bring your best game to the top event. . . .

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Limpinhitter said:

The TCC?

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treblings said:

in Europe, i dare say, Wimbledon was considered just a little bit more important than the US Open.
maybe it was different in the US?

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Dan Lobb said:

You have to bring your best game to the top event.
Otherwise, all you get is a pat on the back for a job well done.

Click to expand...

treblings said:

do we know the current panel who decided 2017?

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thrust said:

All of which makes it more absurd that Tingay ranked Newcombe #1 just because he won Wimbledon, which was no more competitive than the USO. Did Mr Tingay's tennis season consist of only Wimbledon?

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Waspsting said:

Summing up our discussion to now, there are two broad schools of thought -

a) Laver #1 for the year, based on consistent good results throughout the year

b) Newcombe or Rosewall #1 for the year, based primarily on their titles at the Big 2 Slams

---

Can we further dissect school of thought b) - Newcombe vs Rosewall. If one has to be #1, who would you choose? And why?

In the context of the period in question and what sense I can make of it, I'm inclined towards John Newcombe

I imagine the ATP Player of the Year (started in 1975) and ITF World Champion (started in 1978) are a reasonable substitute for whatever intuitive criteria was used to rank Newcombe/Rosewall #1 in 1970

Without exception, both awards went to the Wimbledon champion until 1985, as often as not contradicting the computer rankings

The ITF award was chosen by a 3-man panel - Fred Perry, Don Budge and Lew Hoad - upto 1984 and it's implied on wikipedia that all their decisions, sans 1983, were unanimous

To me, the players opinion is the Gold Standard in the matter - far, far more important than the experts. How can it not be? - It's the horses mouth. And messrs Perry, Budge and Hoad make for quite a horse

Note also that Bjorn Borg, who never won the US Open, was clearly considered a GOAT candidate.... but the absence of a Wimbledon crown was commonly used - and to some extent, still is - as a humongous point against players with an otherwise equally impressive resume of accomplishments (Rosewall and Ivan Lendl)

The implication is that the common perception was Wimbledon >> US Open, just as Wimbledon/US Open >>>> everything else

Hence, it seems to me a logical extension of Newcombe/Rosewall > Laver in 1970 on the grounds of USO/Wimbledon >>>> everything else is -

Newcombe > Rosewall in 1970 on the grounds of Wimbledon >> USO

I'd like to hear what others make of the matter

Click to expand...

Waspsting said:

I had rather formed the impression that the gap was wider than "just a little bit". See -

1) Rosewall and Lendl's reputations (how strongly not having Wimbledon title held against them)... and compare to Borg, (how not particularly strongly missing US title held against him)

2) Connors' 5 US titles not seeming to carry the weight of Borg's 5 Wimbledons (in old articles I've seen, not all that much is made of the 6 Frenches, that's something we savour now. The old articles usually just talk about the "X time Wimbledon champion" when celebrating Borg). And of course, Connors won a couple of Wimbys too, while Borg won no US

If Wimbledon was considered only "just a little bit" more important than US Open, there would be no justification for either of the above

These ATP and ITF awards also seem to indicate Wimbledon significantly more valued than US Open

Borg - the Wimbledon champion - won in both in 1976 and 1977

In 1976, he won Wimbledon and was runner-up at USO. Connors won US Open and was out early at Wimbledon but far and away outstripped Borg in other tournaments as well as swept him 3-0 head-to-head

In 1977, Borg won Wimbledon and was out early at USO. Vilas meanwhile, won USO, the French and was runner-up at Australian Open (the rest of the year is about the same for both players)

Unless Wimbledon >> US Open, at least one of the above would be strange

What I'm deducing from the pattern of the awards - the Wimbledon champion winning every year until 1985 - is that the thinking of the time was along the lines laid out by @Dan Lobb -



Whether that was the same mentality in 1970, I don't know.

Going by the trend of Wimbledon's status going down, as the other majors and non-Slam events going up... I would speculate that if anything, it was even more true in 1970 than during Borg's Wimbledon ruling days 5-6 years later
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In 1985, the pattern for the award winners changed. Since then, they've almost invariably gone with the World #1... Wimbledon's special status as a de facto "World Championship" event seems to have changed round about then

In 1990 Stefan Edberg was both #1 and the Wimbledon champion... but the award controversially went to Lendl (I suspect there's a healthy amount of dirty pool behind this, though)




I don't know

Doesn't matter much these days though... World Rankings is all they seem to look at. Just one non-World #1 winning an award since 1990 (Djokovic 2013, ahead of Nadal)



thrust, I don't know how much of this thread you've gone through... but we've been down this road backwards, forwards and inside-out

It leads to Laver #1 (everything counts) vs Newcombe/Rosewall #1 (Wimbledon, US Open counts way, way more than anything else)

I have no further interest in that particular discussion - I know what everyone thinks and what they'll say - its a dead horse.

If your curious, feel free to go over the last 20 pages

All I'd like to do is look at what kind of values people had at the time, and try to find a #1 based on those values, with respect to the values of the time

Click to expand...

Waspsting said:

I had rather formed the impression that the gap was wider than "just a little bit". See -

1) Rosewall and Lendl's reputations (how strongly not having Wimbledon title held against them)... and compare to Borg, (how not particularly strongly missing US title held against him)

2) Connors' 5 US titles not seeming to carry the weight of Borg's 5 Wimbledons (in old articles I've seen, not all that much is made of the 6 Frenches, that's something we savour now. The old articles usually just talk about the "X time Wimbledon champion" when celebrating Borg). And of course, Connors won a couple of Wimbys too, while Borg won no US

If Wimbledon was considered only "just a little bit" more important than US Open, there would be no justification for either of the above

These ATP and ITF awards also seem to indicate Wimbledon significantly more valued than US Open

Borg - the Wimbledon champion - won in both in 1976 and 1977

In 1976, he won Wimbledon and was runner-up at USO. Connors won US Open and was out early at Wimbledon but far and away outstripped Borg in other tournaments as well as swept him 3-0 head-to-head

In 1977, Borg won Wimbledon and was out early at USO. Vilas meanwhile, won USO, the French and was runner-up at Australian Open (the rest of the year is about the same for both players)

Unless Wimbledon >> US Open, at least one of the above would be strange

What I'm deducing from the pattern of the awards - the Wimbledon champion winning every year until 1985 - is that the thinking of the time was along the lines laid out by @Dan Lobb -



Whether that was the same mentality in 1970, I don't know.

Going by the trend of Wimbledon's status going down, as the other majors and non-Slam events going up... I would speculate that if anything, it was even more true in 1970 than during Borg's Wimbledon ruling days 5-6 years later
---

In 1985, the pattern for the award winners changed. Since then, they've almost invariably gone with the World #1... Wimbledon's special status as a de facto "World Championship" event seems to have changed round about then

In 1990 Stefan Edberg was both #1 and the Wimbledon champion... but the award controversially went to Lendl (I suspect there's a healthy amount of dirty pool behind this, though)




I don't know

Doesn't matter much these days though... World Rankings is all they seem to look at. Just one non-World #1 winning an award since 1990 (Djokovic 2013, ahead of Nadal)



thrust, I don't know how much of this thread you've gone through... but we've been down this road backwards, forwards and inside-out

It leads to Laver #1 (everything counts) vs Newcombe/Rosewall #1 (Wimbledon, US Open counts way, way more than anything else)

I have no further interest in that particular discussion - I know what everyone thinks and what they'll say - its a dead horse.

If your curious, feel free to go over the last 20 pages

All I'd like to do is look at what kind of values people had at the time, and try to find a #1 based on those values, with respect to the values of the time

Click to expand...

Limpinhitter said:

If you attribute the current ATP point allocation system to Laver's, Rosewall's and Newcombe's wins for 1970, Laver was #1 by a large margin. He would have more than twice as many points as Rosewall and Newcombe - about 12,000 to 5,000, more or less. Newcombe himself has said that Laver was #1 in 1970.

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Dan Lobb said:

My interest for each year....#1...who won Wimbledon? (exception: 1973)

Pre-Open era....who won the top event?

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Waspsting said:

All I'd like to do is look at what kind of values people had at the time, and try to find a #1 based on those values, with respect to the values of the time

Click to expand...

Dan Lobb said:

My interest for each year....#1...who won Wimbledon? (exception: 1973)

Pre-Open era....who won the top event?

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KG1965 said:

I think I understand what you're looking for but there's an problem, IMHO.
The problem is this: Waspsting, you write "number one" but the "number one" in 1970 can not exist. The "number one" of the world exists only if there is a calculation system (a ranking), in fact it exists since 1973. Or it can be "number one" but limited to WCT Tour Laver in 1971 and 1972, but only in WCT, not "number one" of the world.

Critics, the media, the old champions can not decree who the "number one" was, but only who was the strongest / greatest / best for them.

Bud Collins will be able to write in a newspaper who was the strongest, can say in an interview who was the best, will explain that the biggest is Newcombe because he won at Wimbledon, but can not explain who was the "number one".

I could be wrong but nobody in those years spoke of "number one", but simply of the stronger or better or bigger.
The "number one" presupposes .... numbers.

Paradoxically, Laver was not "number one" in 1969.

Even today, the number one is the one that commands ATP Ranking.
Federer will be able to win the prizes he deserves, he was the best, the strongest, but "number one" was Nadal, not Sports Illustrated, Equipe or ITF. Nadal is the "number one".

Even if you analyze the previous clumsy years, Ashe was the strongest in 1975 but not the number one, Vilas was the most successful in 77 but not the number one, Borg in 1978 was huge but not number one, Connors was mythical in 1982 but not number one.
The 4 will have won ITF awards, major newspapers, etc. but they were not numbers one.

A newspaper, 10 critics, and even ITF can't decide who is the number one.
They can decide who was the best, this yes.

Without ranking it's all subjective.
With the ranking there is something objective, maybe wrong. It is therefore necessary to reason on the wrong parts of the "objective".
But everything that is "subjective" risks derailing.

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Limpinhitter said:

In my view, the TCC was possibly the top event in 70' and clearly the top event in 71'. Even those titles don't secure the YE #1 ranking. If the top event determined YE rankings, then the remainder of the tour would be rendered meaningless surplusage.

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