Yes. This again.
It's also facetious to theoretically gift people achievements they didn't achieve. They either got them, or they didn't - no matter what the reason was.
I haven't theoretically gifted people anything. I said that Gonzales was banned from the majors from age 21 to age 40. That is a fact, and has unquestionably harmed his reputation with the fans who only judge all time greatness by the number of mainstream majors. That should not be the case.
Hello fans,
TMF: Why do you exaggerate Federer's achievements? Roger won many majors against relatively weak competition. For years Roddick was his main opponent. Roddick is hardly an all-time great. When Nadal came along, Roger lost mostly to him.
Let's not go down that road. Federer can only beat who is in front of him, and he has won 17 majors.
In the 50's and 60's there wasn't toughest competition. Tennis is much harder now, physically and mentally. The end of the 70's, beginning of the 80's are the strongest era of tennis (Connors, Mcenroe, Borg, Vilas, Nastase, young Lendl, etc.).
Gonzales had serious challenges from Segura, Sedgman and Hoad during his career. You think that's easy? Back in the 1950s and 1960s, you couldn't even sit down at the change of ends. Fitness in those days was much more based on stamina than today. These days, there's the wear and the tear on players' joints. Whether that's harder depends on your point of view.
I recently watched the 1970 Dunlop Sydney Open final between Laver and Rosewall. After Laver won in 5 sets, Rosewall was allowed to leave the trophy ceremony early because he had a men's doubles final to play straight after the ceremony! Yes, easy.
Most likely Pancho Gonzalez would have won a huge amount of majors as Tilden, Rosewall, Laver would have if they could enter those tournaments. Gonzalez crushed players like Trabert and Cooper who won three majors in a year. I doubt if he would have won only nine majors considering his dominance and his longevity as a player.
Exactly. Tony Trabert won the French Championships, Wimbledon and the US Championships in 1955 to become the dominant amateur player in the world. He turned professional in the fall of that year and was pitted against Gonzales on a 101 match pro tour. The two men had a really intense feud, and Gonzales crushed Trabert by 74-27. Ironically, Trabert beat Gonzales in 5 sets in the 1956 French Pro final, which stopped Gonzales winning the professional Grand Slam as Gonzales won the Wembley Pro, US Pro and Tournament of Champions that year.
Another example. The best amateur player of 1959 was Alex Olmedo, who won the Australian Championships and Wimbledon that year. Olmedo turns professional and goes on a 4-man 1960 world pro tour with Gonzales, Rosewall and Segura, and Olmedo only wins 11 out of 55 matches against these 3 men to finish in 4th place.
Ashley Cooper, who won 3 of the 4 amateur majors in 1958, soon burned out in the professional game altogether in the early 1960s. When Cooper and Mal Anderson, the 2 best amateur players of 1958 went on the 4-man 1959 world pro tour with Gonzales and Hoad, they failed to win a single match against Gonzales, but won enough matches against Hoad to allow Gonzales to win the tour.
