winstonplum
Hall of Fame
It just dawned on me that McEnroe didn't play the AO in 1984. During his prime years, '79-'85, he played in it twice. After '75, Connors never even played the AO. Would he have added to his to his slam count of eight? Roy Emerson (who was Australian) won six AO, which largely helped him get to the twelve that Pete ultimately broke. Slam count cannot be the be-all and end-all of the GOAT discussion because the entire slam discussion needs an asterisk that for a long time there were three slams that everyone cared about and now there are four, so anyone that had their prime after the point where everyone started to respect the AO as a must-attend tournament had four chances a year to pad their slam count while people who came before the AO was a must-attend had only three chances. So my question to my tennis-knowledge superiors on this board is, What is a good demarcation line for when the AO became what it is today--an absolute must-attend even for the pros, where every top player in the world is there and winning means just as much as winning one of the other four? Obviously this date is after 1984 because that year the player who was having one of the greatest tennis years in the history of the sport choose not to go down under for the last slam at the end of the year.