100% agree those volleys were awful. But volleying is such a minor aspect of the women’s game.
But her mindset? Iga has tons of come-from-behind wins and is #1 with multiple huge winning streaks?
Yes, volleying is a minor aspect of the women's game right now because most of them aren't very good at it. Plus, most of them don't serve particularly well either, making serve & volley less viable. But the biggest factor is the modern equipment that makes them all try to out-blast one another from the baseline. Still, saying that the world #1 can't volley well is pretty damning...
As for her mental game, it is well known she has a full time mental coach, and at times that coach has looked perplexed, angry, and/or bemused in the stands. When Iga's game is on, there is little room for the doubts to creep in, but it doesn't mean they aren't there.
And I think that and recency bias makes the 80s seem weaker than it was. How many people actually saw early-round women's matches to judge them when we mostly got coverage of the men? There's just this assumption that they were bad. Now we can see 100 times more matches so of course we can find some interesting ones. But there are a lot of poor matches today as well. Heck, this thread is full of complaints about the quality of the matches and they were contended by the top 9 women in the world.
Exactly. Most people couldn't really see what was going on, because it simply wasn't available. Yes, now everyone knows who Lauren Davis is, and people might even remember her name 20 years from now (although I doubt it), but we wouldn't have a clue if it wasn't for on-demand tennis that lets you watch any match you want, whenever you want.
As far as tough outs, I liked many of those players. But they rarely posed serious threats to the top players. Shriver was a combined 6-57 vs Martina and Evert, while being a top 5/10 player during almost all those meetings. Garrison was 5-54 vs Chris, Martina, and Graf. Graf was a combined 57-1 vs Sukova, and all the Maleevas. So we had a huge gap between top 10 and 50-100 players in the 80s/90 and a huge gap between these legends and players who were consistent top 5/10 players for many years. It was far from a golden era IMO.
Yes, but the argument isn't that it was a golden era, or that it had deeper field. The argument is that the top players were a lot stronger, and more complete, than today's top players. As Zvelf said above, look at the sad spectacle that we just witnessed from the top 8 women in the world. Even given the tough conditions, people watching highlights of these finals 20 years from now will likely think that this was a terrible era.
So sure, you now have a whole bunch of women on tour that play aggressive, high-risk tennis from the baseline, and that look like absolute world beaters on a good day. But their lack of consistency, variety and adaptability (no plan B) means they really aren't that far superior to their counterparts from previous generations, just flashier.
And let's been real about this current generation's deep field. It is still filled with players like Madison Brengle (how long has she been in the top 100 now?), with basically zero outstanding qualities to their game (have you seen her serve?). Or take a look at Jasmine Paolini... as in, just look at her, physically. If she were on a girls high school team she wouldn't stand out as athletic. And her game is also amazingly mediocre. Tatiana Maria made the semi-finals of Wimbledon last year, at age 35. Tatiana Maria! If you put her in a time machine to 1985, she wouldn't stand out as particularly good or different, would she?
So yeah, Graf and Martina racking up the 6-2, 6-2 wins in the early rounds? Do you doubt they wouldn't beat players like Paolini, Brengle, Maria, Bronzetti, Cociaretto, Davis, Liu, Tan (just the first ones off the top of my head) 6-2, 6-2? (A quick google of the first round of this years US Open also turned up these likely 6-2 candidates: T. Prozorova, K. Day, O. Gadecki, P. Udvardy, E. Jaqueumont, F. Crowley... I could go on all day).
I totally agree with you that early-round matches were weaker in the 80s.
When I said fewer women's matches were covered, I meant when they did not involve Graf, Navratilova, and Evert. Today you can watch any early-round slam match with the right subscription. In the 80s, you could only watch women's matches in which the biggest stars played, not two lower-ranked players. Back then, there was no 24-hour channel devoted to tennis and had to fill up that time with something, sometimes anything.
This was poor phrasing on my part. I meant some of these players were tough outs against the rest of the tour (and others regularly made deep runs), not that they were tough outs against the GOAT-contenders. By definition, GOAT-contenders just rarely lose. For example, David Ferrer is one of the best players to never win a major and he is 11-59 against the Big 3. Even Stan Wawrinka is a measly 12-65. Tomas Berdych is 13-65. Marin Cilic is 5-36. Gael Monfils is 6-43. Richard Gasquet is 3-50. So that doesn't mean Shriver, Garrison, and Sukova sucked. They were all solid players who would be considered top 50 players in the 50 years since the WTA Tour began.
See above. I agree but I don't agree. Throw those 1980's players modern equipment, and I really don't see much difference at the lower end of things.
But I totally agree about the TV coverage changing perceptions of things.
And yes, back to the main point again, regardless of the depth of field, none of today's top players are anywhere near the level of recent greats.
