It wasn't clear that you were making that point, nevertheless, how do you know that you've seen more than everyone else?
From the ignorance that's on constant display in this forum and also from studying old tapes of Laver in my tennis lessons as a teen. BTW I never said "everyone else."
Whether they'd return as well with the same racquets/strings is irrelevant. I was making the point that the returns are better, regardless of whether that fact obtains because of a general increase in player ability in that area or if it's because of technology. If it were just the technology, that wouldn't change the fact that the servers are still having to deal with better returns.
Like I said, this is just media boilerplate, along with the refrain that today's players are fitter and stronger. You obviously buy it, I don't. Many tennis instructors and coaches would dispute both claims.
I disagree, you might be right about not being able to improve the reflexes part, but you can certainly improve your ability to place returns, or clobber returns, by practicing, as most people on these forums who play the game would know. By the way, tennis in general is based largely on hand-eye coordination but you'll see ATP players's form fluctuate based on how much they've practiced/played recently. My point is your level of play in any regard isn't fixed to a point, although the range of of your potential level of play might be fixed by your natural talent. It seems downright false to me to say that you can't improve your return of serve much with practice (but because of the reflexes component, you're probably right that you can't improve it as much as some other strokes).
As you granted at the very end, I only claimed that a player's return of serve cannot be improved
much compared to his other strokes.
Even if youcouldn't improve your return of serve at all, that doesn't show that players today don't have better returns than players of the 90s. They could just be a better crop of returners - a possibility that you implicitly acknowledged when you hypothesised the the 90s crop was actually better.
Again this is debatable. Another thing I briefly alluded to was that today's players can be more safe with their returns since very few players serve and volley these days, which cuts down their return errors. That's just one of the variables you're not taking into account.
Well we aren't talking about players's serves in general here, we're talking about federer and sampras's serve, and because federer uses one of the smallest head sizes on tour, and only uses poly cross strings (his mains are gut), the benefits to the server (federer, in this case) do NOT offset the benefits to the returner, because federer does not fully employ these benefits.
Actually, Federer himself has commented on how switching from his previous Pro Staff 85 (the same racquet Sampras used throughout his career) to the bigger 90 helped his game. And the fact remains that Sampras didn't use poly while on tour.
Don't forget that here the returners also have the benefit of the slower surfaces these days, and don't pretend that the game wasn't alot more serve dominated in the past. It just was.
Yeah, it's true because you say it is. In case you haven't noticed this is called begging the question. You're simply assuming that the benefits of the slower surfaces outweigh the other variables I mentioned. And not only is your second statement about the serve-dominated game of yesteryear is irrelevant to this discussion, you'll also be hard-pressed to name many Wimbledon matches from the '90s that were "a lot" more serve-dominated than last year's final.
So regardless of the higher bounces helping topspin and kick serves, serves were obviously more effective in general in the 90s because of the surface speeds (and to a much lesser degree, the quality of returns).
Like I said, it's not just the speed of the surface that matters. And this is yet more unsupported question-begging.
Based on this (and the service games held stats) I find it reasonable to conclude that Federer had a better hold game in his prime than sampras did in his prime.
A belief is different from a reasonable conclusion.
And because of this I dont understand why everyone thinks sampras was the runaway BETTER grass courter of the two, (although he was the GREATER - 7 wimby titles compared to 6 for fed)
This is a different topic, and one I'm not interested in discussing.
so this thread is for people 70 years old or older
Not necessarily.
btw, have you seen don budge play?
Only a few short clips.
how can you judge a player you've never seen???
You can't, that was my point. This poll would've been more reasonable with choices from just the last 20 or 30 years.