^ I maintain my position that you guys are romanticizing this.
If Edberg could honestly hang in there with today's top pros, don't you think he would try to?
Maybe not for an entire year - but at least for selected tournaments here and there?
That he has not even attempted this tells me that he feels - or knows - that it's an unrealistic goal. And he very likely is in a much better position than you or I or other posters in this thread to judge.
Deuce, you're making too much out of this imo. Edberg can certainly still "hang" with current pros. Rusedski wasn't that long retired, and he still managed to lose at the year-ending masters event.
Players don't just selectively get to "play" a few MAJOR tournaments here and there without committing to it. For one, it's absolutely not fair to all the hungry young players out their busting their behinds trying to get coveted spots in these draws. Two, Edberg was so completely phobic of having to travel again, that he said this was the reason he refused to play the seniors tour all this time. He said when he retired, he never wanted to have to travel and board a plane again it was so bad.
If Ronald Agenor came super close to beating prime Kuerten at a masters event while being the oldest man on tour and after having retired for several years already and also never being close to a top player even during his "prime" it says something. When, Gene Mayer not even in shape or training can more or less roll out of bed on vacation when asked to fill in at the last second as a favor to an old friend at his challenger, and literally DESTROY Cedric Kaufman that says something. The same Kaufman who just a few short months later would give Sampras everything he could handle at the French. On clay? Yes, but still a slam and still Sampras we were talking about here. Bruguera after he reitred didn't pick up a racket at all, didn't do any conditioning work at all, just tried to enjoy life, then he gets called at the last second Gene Mayer style to fill in at a challenger at the last second. He does so to return a favor to the guy, and also is more than competitive. He says after losing in the quarters I believe, that his legs just pooped out on him as he was in no condition.
For some reason, people think it's impossible to take time off in this sport and not still be competitive. Competitive merely means having the INNATE ability to put up games at this level. There aren't that many games in a set, as long as you're reasonably competitive, you've got a shot. The rest of the world, however, who DON'T have world class NATURAL talent will feel incredibly lucky to even win so much as four points a set against these guys. There is a HUGE difference, yet at the HIGHEST level of human ability, however, the gap imo closes significantly. The difference at the world class talent level comes down to all the little things. It's like Federer now, the slightest loss of confidence is all it takes at this level. It doesn't mean that Federer doesn't know how to hit a ball anymore or isn't able to remain reasonably competitive.
The basic hand eye coordination and your strokes do NOT leave you imo, even after taking a long layoff. I took nearly a year off, and jumped right back in and my strokes were pretty much more or less exactly the same as since last I played. I'm not at all shocked by this, however, because I once got a friend, a former fairly decently ranked junior, who quit tennis cold turkey because of burnout for something like 6 years, without so much as picking up a racket (he couldn't even find his old batch of Head Genesis rackets, THAT'S proof-positive of how cold turkey he quit). After much pestering, I finally got him to try playing again. He was REALLY nervous about it. First fifteen minutes, he was all self-conscious and whiffing quite often. Then I said, this isn't working. He's too tentative, and I'm ALLOWING him to be tentative and second guess himself and not use his NATURAL instincts and INGRAINED strokes that I *know* the mind does NOT forget if it was once given enough practice/honing time.
Thus, after fifteen minutes of gingerly feeding him warm-up balls, I not so subtly started turning the heat up on him at full pace. I started dancing with my feet to get HIM to also fall in line, to tango with me, to dance with me, to get into the RHYTHM of what high level tennis feels like. The transformation was truly shocking it was so sudden. Within minutes the guy was hitting like he had never lost a beat. He himself couldn't believe it! After that, he was calling me left and right to start hitting again. Then, a year later, after spending much of the summer hitting with a top 5 ranked ETA boy's 16 junior, he came back saying he was at the "top of his game." Then, guess what? He lost all desire to hit again. It happened quickly enough. The TRUE love of the game was never really there with him.
But, that's not the point. The point is/was that people don't realize that the PRIMARY thing that allows players to compete with one another at the higher levels is distinguished NOT by stroke "types" and techniques, of which there are MANY different possibilities, ALL of which haven proven to be sucessful throughout time if executed PROPERLY...the key distinguishing feature of a certain relative "caliber" of player is imo HAND-EYE coordination. If you're hand-eye coordination is of a world-class level, you're able to hit against world-class pace for one reason. Because you're INNATE ability is "on the level."
THAT'S why when Ferreira was trying to unload on his "modern" forehands on Edberg that first game of their match, Edberg was able to "hold up" against it and not appear to dishevled. It's not that Edberg's forehand is a thing of beauty, not that it's a particularly "modern" technique, but rather because the innate hand-eye coordination IS there and it does NOT leave you *just like that*. Just ask John McEnroe. Just ask Jimmy Connors at 39. Jimmy Connors in old age still managed to give guys like Stich and Chang all they could handle. This is why players of each generation have always maanaged to stay reasonably comeptitive with each other even while one generation was getting old and on the way out. The hand-eye coordination is the most basic aspect of tennis, that allows different styles and techniques to co-exist and "dance" with each other. Put it this way, I've had some friends who had very nice looking strokes, plenty of power, spin, everything. They looked like 5.5 players stroke wise, but were 4.5's. Guess what, I know MANY 5.5 players, heck, even one former pro, whose strokes look LESS than...but guess what? It DOESN'T matter. If I turned up the volume on these friends, their strokes still looked good, but the hand-eye coordination simply was/is not NATURALLY their to adapt, to go with the NEW ramped up flow. The result is they start to look like they're fallling apart at the seams. They'll whiff, etc.
Hand-eye coordination at each new level is what makes time and the tennis ball seem to stand still just enough for you to remain calm and simply execute your stroke. Edberg's groundies may be archaic technique wise, but his hand-eye coordination is what allowed them to hold up and "hang-in" there against Ferreira.
This is why guys like Kafelnikov can gain fat like a walrus, and still comeback to the seniors tour and LEGITIMATELY still put up COMPETIIVE sets. He doesn't have the edge right now to get over the hump mind you, at least not his first tournament back in which he lost all three of his matchs, but the ability to "hang-in" there and remain competitive never leaves you when you are truly of a world-class ability level imo. To me, it's not conjecture, it's fact. It's reality. On my own lowered scale, I've seen it time and time again. It's the same at higher and lower scales. It's all relative. We stay relative to one another. That's why these friends will never ever, have never ever, been able to get over the dreaded 4.5ish hump. For so many players who put so many hours into the game and take so many lessons, they just can't ever take that next threshold step. After awhile, it's not a matter of taking more lessons to hone your strokes, it's about having the hand-eye coordination and INNATE ability to "hang" at the higher-up level.
You either have it or you don't after some point. Gene Mayer doing what he did doesn't mean he should rejoin the tour, it just means that world class ability doesn't just "leave you"....not even when you're an out of shape forty something taking his family on vacation when suddenly "called to duty."
