Razer
G.O.A.T.
Thanks for the clarification.
Tell Razer that he is surprised that young people like you have knowledge of tennis legends of yesteryear.
First of all, to compare someone who played 100 years ago to someone who played now, you need to actually be 120+ in age because even footages won't do any justice to you. You need to watch them all live with a keen mind to actually do a proper comparison of their playing levels in your mind. The footages on TV make the old players look much slower than they are in real and sometimes the footages are sped up to make them look quicker, all in all totally unrealistic way. Thats why anyone who has not witnessed an era is better off not comparing them. Pretty sure DEL POTRO understands this, even @NeutralFan said this some days ago, but then people who are under 35 think they can read books/ask historians and just put Bill Tilden in the top 15 as @StefanV so often does. Pre open era club guys being there is a gross disrespect to someone (like say Murray) who is not an ATG but still played at a far greater level than someone like Tilden.
Plus asking any number of historians or read any number of books on Bill Tilden won't change the fact that 100 years ago Tennis was a sport where only the rich guys from few countries who had access to clubs played. How many countries even played tennis back ? When talent pool increases in a sport then the champion who emerges out of it is normally better than the one who emerged from a pool of no talent....this is true for any sport.
Even in CRICKET nobody really rates anyone before 1940s with the current guys. reason is number of countries were just 2 (Aus and England) playing the game 80-90+ years ago and the players are much less evolved, wearing trousers and looking goofy overweight. Speed of the so called "fast bowlers" 100+ years ago is no different from slow bowlers who bowl today. Rating those guys with current players and preparing all time lists is not just snooty intellectual masturbation but also making a mockery of common sense. Thats why in cricket no legend before Don Bradman is ever taking serious enough to be rated with current cricketers, Bradman himself played in 1930s and 1940s when except Eng and Aus all the other countries were weak minnows, but at least people do respect his batting average which is weird and thats why they rate him today.
A proper follower of the eras in Cricket knows that really fast bowlers who bowl 150MPH+ frequently started coming to Cricket in 1960s-1970s, the australians and the west indians. So anyone who did not play in the 1970s has never faced that kind of competition which can be remotely compared to the current ones..... SO you see how difficult it is if you go back 100 years in any sports.... ???? ... Be it Tennis or Cricket....all the same, when the sports evolves to a PRO level then the amateurs who played 100 years ago just get canceled from the conversation.
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