I see 1984 as the same, apart from a dominant McEnroe being in the field. Lendl leads Connors 6-0, 1-0 in the Rotterdam final before a bomb scare, and then Lendl beats Connors 6-0, 6-0 in the Forest Hills semi final, but then Connors beats Lendl by the score of 6-7, 6-3, 7-5, 6-1 in the Wimbledon semi final. Big stage again. It's a pity that Connors badly injured his ankle before his 1985 US Open semi with Lendl, because the match would have been fascinating.
The last time Connors and Lendl had met on grass was at Queens Club in '83, and Connors destroyed him 6-0, 6-3. That's what you would call a small tournament. By your own way of looking at things, Lendl did much better when the big stage rolled around -- he pushed Connors in a tough four-set match when they met at Wimbledon. It was actually not a bad performance from him. He had lost in grass Slams to McEnroe and Wilander, both times in straight sets -- but when he met Connors he pushed it to four.
I used to suspect, from the scoreline of that match, that Lendl must have had another mental collapse like he had at the USO. That is, until I saw the match recently. Lendl seems to have physically reached his limit. Connors himself told the press that he thought Lendl's loss was due more to physical reasons than to mental ones. The press reports do not ascribe Lendl's loss to mental factors, and a few reports praise the quality of the match all around.
But instead of looking at Queens Club as their last meeting on grass, you've chosen to look at their Forest Hills match on clay as the significant previous match, which seems an astounding thing to do at any time but particularly in this time period when clay and grass were as radically different as can be. Your post above merely looks at the scores of the matches and the names of the tournaments, creating superficial patterns, without even a glance at the surfaces.
Look at these two alltime greats. Their profiles on the surfaces could not be more different. Lendl's weakest surface is grass, without question; doesn't even have to be debated; Connors' weakest is just as easy to pick out. Connors never made a French final in the 80s, nor did Lendl ever win a grass Slam. We're talking major fault lines here; this is not some ordinary case where someone might be a little better on this surface, a little weaker on another. The differences in skill and accomplishment are about as stark as can be. And yet you keep naming the "big stage" as the reason that Lendl lost that Wimbledon semifinal to Connors.
Connors in '84 was actually still regarded as a better grasscourter than Lendl. But for you the stage is the reason Lendl lost. Presumably, then, the only reason Lendl blanked Connors on clay at Forest Hills was that it was a "small stage", right? But in actual fact Lendl in '84 was easily regarded as a better claycourter than Connors.
And they certified these respective reputations on these surfaces when the French and Wimbledon rolled around. But somehow people have the desire to imagine that Connors could have turned all that around if he had gotten a free pass into the final round at Roland Garros, just because it was Lendl who would have been waiting for him then. And all this when an actual Connors/Lendl meeting at RG is very close at hand, just 12 months away -- and the evidence of THAT scoreline is about as starkly against Connors as you can have. I mean, you've made all these links between the USO scorelines, and Rotterdam and Forest Hills, linking them up with an imaginary meeting at RG. But there's this score available, in an actual RG meeting between the two men in question, and I get the sense you want to explain it away, rather than make any kind of link to it -- when that link would be the most direct and natural of all.
Can't understand this.
Surface comes up yet again when you talk about age. Where do you need young legs the most? Roland Garros. And what about the particulars of their games? Okay, what type of rallies is Connors most likely to win? Short ones or long ones? Obviously, the longer the rallies go, the more likely he is to make an unforced error -- particularly on the forehand. Where are the longest rallies? On clay. Where does the ball travel slowest, giving Jimmy the kind of ball that he hated because he had to generate his own pace? On clay.
On clay Connors would have had trouble merely staying in the rallies, much less mounting an attack. Lendl with his topspin and slice could make the rallies last all day.
Their '85 RG meeting bears all this out. But somehow I keep hearing it explained away.
Sorry about the rant but I can't understand this.
