Carlo,
I was glancing through an old tennis instructional book with Jack Kramer as one of the contributors. The first printing of this book was the early 1970's and it's interesting to note that Kramer wrote that the two best shots he has seen was Segura's forehand and Budge's backhand. I have a hunch this is what he truly believed but he decided he had to praise Fletcher's forehand which was a great shot apparently.
Hello pc1,
there is also another possibility.
When you are not a great one you are quickly forgotten even if you are the first in a precise domain.
Though Fletcher seemed to have a pretty good forehand and was good at the net he had almost nothing else and in particular his serve and backhand were null therefore he couldn’t won any major tournament. So nowadays K.N. Fletcher is known by almost no one therefore his forehand is also forgotten. Someone (kiki) cited a similar example : Hans Gildemeister who was one of the best claycourters in 1978-79 but now is completely ignored. Eugene Mayer, Alexander’s brother, is in the same case (however hoodjem recall him in his list), etc...
Had Fletcher beaten Santana in their duel and eventually won the 1966 Wimby title he would perhaps be remembered as one of the greatest forehand strokers ever.
In general “losers” are forgotten.
So perhaps Kramer was politically correct in 1966 but perhaps not. Perhaps Fletcher has simply “slipped” out of Kramer’s mind in the course of time. I have not “The Game” to hand but if my memory is good at the end of his book he cited the players who has the best ever strokes, in his opinion : he always chose players who had won so-called majors. The player, in his list, with the less good record was Wilmer Lawson Allison, Jr. who won the 1935 US amateur Champs over an injured Perry. Kramer considered that Allison had the best forehand volley. Had Allison lost to Perry I am not sure that Kramer would have thought to cite Allison in his book.
In “Portrait in Motion” pages 9-10 Ashe thought that the true cannonballers, when he wrote his diary (Tuesday, June 19, 1973 in this case), were Newcombe, Alexander, Paul Kronk, Smith, Ashe, Zednik (he said that Dibley though the fatest server had a wrong toss way over his head and that Stolle and even Tanner double-faulted too much).
Who would think nowadays about Kronk, Zednik or even Alexander as one of the best servers ? I am not sure that Ashe still thought of them twenty years later.
To come back to Fletcher and Segura and Budge : the latters had won majors and besides they have shared much of their lives with Kramer while Fletcher hadn’t so one can understand that Kramer couldn’t forget his “team” mates.
You can make a parallel with team sports : if the best player is in a losing team he has very few chances to be considered as the best player even if he deserves such a recognition. In football
(true football not American football) most of the time the supposed experts choose, wrongly, the best player of a World Cup or a European Cup among the members of the winning team.
So Fletcher’s forehand stroke as an individual stroke was perhaps the very best of all but Fletcher as a whole so as a “team” which means an assemblage of his forehand stroke with his backhand stroke, his serve, his volley, his smash, and so on ... was a loser and therefore Fletcher’s forehand stroke was discarded in any GOAT forehand stroke list.
As for me I can’t compare Segura’s forehand and Fletcher’s given that I have almost never seen them : for instance in “your” short video one sees only once Segura stroking a forehand and the filmmaker shot so closely that one sees only Segura’s body and nothing else.
