Moose Malloy said:
chaognosis, you really changed your list a bit since your initial post. Why did you move Federer up so much & drop Gonzales from your list completely since last week?
I've kind of been waiting for someone to ask me that.
I actually had a rather lengthy description written out the first time I edited my list, but it disappeared when TW had to restore everything the other day. It comes down to this: choosing players in the 5-10 range for me is rather complicated, and comes down to a preference between two methodologies. On the one hand, I could base my rankings off titles and records--i.e., looking through the books, Rosewall has many more titles than Hoad, therefore he must be a greater player. On the other hand, I could take into account the "impression" a player makes--i.e., for decades journalists, players, and spectators alike have proclaimed Hoad's majesty on the tennis court. People sing Rosewall's praises as well, but it's usually a respect for his fighting spirit, his versatility, and of course his longevity, not a genuine sense of "awe" for what he brought to the game and to the court.
Asking myself what contributes more to my love for this sport, I must admit that it is the power of a player's presence, his skill, his strength, his creativity, and his genius, that is most important. Granted, that is not at the expense of achievement. I could not select a Safin or a Rios over, say, Lendl, because they were never able to sustain their excellence for a period of several years. The players I have in my top ten, on the other hand, were able to sustain that excellence. Hoad was very arguably the best player in the world for much of 1956-58; though he ultimately fell to Gonzales and a troublesome back, Pancho himself admits that Hoad at his best was unbeatable. Something similar can, I think, be said for Vines, who is always spoken of as brilliant but inconsistent--yet despite his high-risk approach to tennis, he was the best player in the world throughout 1932, as well as arguably for the period 1934-37. One can easily argue that Rosewall played at the top of his game far longer than Hoad did, and likewise that Perry played at the top of his game longer than Vines did, but isn't the height that a player reaches with his game as important as his consistency or his longevity?
So really what I'm saying is that the "greatest" players must be the ones whom I would most liked to have seen in their primes--or, if I've been fortunate enough to see them, then the ones about whom I would be most inclined to tell stories to my children and grandchildren. If you look at probably the two most significant polls of tennis experts of the last half-century--one from I believe 1987 and the other from 1999--you find very much the same approach. Players like Hoad and McEnroe are rated above Connors, Lendl, Perry, or Rosewall, because they remind us why we love tennis in the first place; quite simply, they are the artists who ultimately validate the game's existence. (I know
urban will disagree with me here!)
That is why I am finally giving Federer his due. Already I rate him among the most magnificent players I have ever seen; in another year or two, if he maintains this level (and perhaps solidifies his record on clay as well), I may elevate him ahead of Borg and Sampras as well. To be fair, I am tempted to put him in a three-way tie with Budge and Kramer, as I find it difficult to keep any one of these three outside the top five.
The issue of ranking Gonzales has always been a tricky one for me; I have had him as high as No. 1 in some lists and outside the top ten in others. Had he stuck around and earned more amateur success before jumping to the pro circuit, it would undoubtedly be easier to make a fair assessment here. Not winning Wimbledon at least once, when Wimbledon was far and away the most important title in the world, is something of a killer. I must defer somewhat to the judgments of his contemporaries: though they are largely split on the Kramer vs. Gonzales debate, they seem to agree that while both were dynamite serve-and-volleyers, Kramer had the more potent groundstrokes. The greatness of both Kramer and Gonzales is so difficult to measure, because of the amateur/pro split in formats--they typically faced opponents on what was very much their own turf. With Kramer, at least, we have that incredible season of 1947, a 48-match winning streak and perhaps the most impressive performance of all time at Wimbledon.
Mine is just one opinion among many, though, and even at that it's an opinion that I can never keep from changing! The jury will always be out when it comes to these rankings, and I suppose it's better that way, because it keeps us thinking, discussing, debating, and remembering the great champions of the past.
