Considering you've said that tennis on tv is poor in conveying the athleticism because of the the angles used, not sure why you would think this is far-fetched. The camera angles were even worse in many matches from the 70s/80s, like they were shot from the roof.
If you get copies of the BBC & NBC versions of the Borg-Mac '80 W final(I can refer you to sellers if you care), it should be pretty obvious to anyone that sound is important as well as camera angles(the BBC didn't have any ground level cameras or on court mics, but NBC did) A santoro slice forehand sounds harder hit today than a lendl or borg forehand in some of the matches I have, because there were no on court mics in many matches. Unless you think slice forehands are hit harder today because of the improved athleticism?
Believe what you want, I have hundreds of old matches on tape/dvd, many in which it seems so slow & many with the same players that seem to be of a much faster pace. If a match has poor sound, its hard to get into it. I bought some Federer matches from Doha last year(a french feed with soft sound) that are hard to watch, it just feels so flat without good sound.
Yup totally agree, soft sound, and you really can't get into a match, as you said everything just feels REALLY flat.
The Tennis Channel I believe recently showed a Fed match from earlier this year that was a soft feed, and you got that same garbled, muted playing tennis underwater feeling to it. Now just imagine if that were a third or fourth generation hand me down copy on VHS or DVD, it's only going to be worse. It makes a dramatic difference.
Fastdunn is also right about the whole indoor thing as being a good example. When I play indoors, I mean I feel like superman, every ball sounds like a rocket going off my racket even just random ball feeding to start the really. This naturally perks me up, and makes me like the terminator, I mean feel like it's virtually impossible for me to come off an indoor court feeling like I had a bad day because the tremendous echo effect fools me into thinking I should sell the furniture and join the tour and date a supermodel like my fellow American homies Petey Sampras and Mikey Chang did...oops, Chang never did (what the heck is wrong with that
guy!@#$#%! I'm sorry it just frustrates me when a good man wastes a great opportunity to SCORE!!!! effortlessly).
Seriously though, go watch two decent hackers on a really echoey sunken court, vs. two elite juniors on a crummy chain link fence court. It's amazing that sometimes the two elite juniors will not sound like they're doing anything *that* special or impressive except that they've got perfect form and are way more consistent and have way better footwork.
And YET, I've been shocked to see two so-so hackers on a echoey sunken court "seem" more impressive. I mean it really feels and seems and looks like they're smacking the ball sometimes...even though their technique is Kaarsten Braash on a hangover day awful.
Put these two hackers on a normal, rec court, however, and I find it amazing how nothing they do can even remotely impress me or intimidate me.
It takes a very good player to look and *sound* good on a typical rec court I've found, but only a very mediocre player look and sound almost kind of wow on an echoey show court.
