treblings
Hall of Fame
On this one point you and I differ, perhaps. I don't think there are always factual answers to some questions due to complexity and various different viewpoints that literally cause different conclusions.
Instead, we can assess certain factors:
1. Who won the most money?
2. Who won the most tournaments?
3. Which tournaments were more important and should be more heavily weighted?
4. How important are slams (really part of #3)?
For me each of these can have different answers, and so who was the best player in any year is a real problem when one player was not clearly dominant in all ways.
I'll also say that I know a lot less than people like you and Krosero, which is why I always read your posts.
Instead of giving you an opinion - I have several - I'd suggest that we when assume that all players have the same priorities, we may make a huge mistake.
For example, and only one possibility: suppose that Rosewall and Laver in 1970 had wildly different goals. Laver, for example, sitting on a grand slam and generally considered THE alpha male tennis player, may have cared less about slams and a lot more about money. We don't know this for a fact, but it is logical. Rosewall, on the other hand, having never won Wimbledon and being so far not nearly so successful winning slams in the open era may have been very hungry for slams and may have set that as his top priority. Again, we don't know this, but it is certainly possible.
My view of Rosewall and Laver is (apparently) different from just about everyone in this forum. I would personally say that Laver at his absolute peak was clearly the stronger player - more weapons, more aggression, more ways to pull out a match with sheer balls-to-the-walls match play. But I would rate Rosewall much closer. The overall H2H does not indicate to me absolute dominance but rather a clear advantage to Laver over their entire careers.
In contrast, Rosewall had an even longer career, one that started four years before Laver's and continued after Laver faded. Some may simply say, "Well, that doesn't count, but Laver wasn't around any more, and Laver didn't start to lose the edge until he had injuries." To me that seems dismissive of Rosewall and of his accomplishments, and no matter how you look at it no one else in the open era has been able to do what he did at such an advanced age.
To this very moment it shocks me to think about how he won the 1970 USO, not only winning it at almost age 36 but doing it by beating Smith, Newcombe and Roche. Then a couple months later he won the AO by beating Emerson, Okker and Ashe. We can say that the AO was "weak" because of byes and fewer matches, but we also have to look at the players he beat.
Then we look back to '68 when he was "only" closer to 34 than 33, and he had to defeat Gimeno and then Laver, back to back.
If anyone today, with all the medical advantages, special teams and perhaps and chemicals that are only legal because they have not been banned yet did what Rosewall did, we'd be in a awe.
So my overall viewpoint remains that Rosewall does NOT get as much credit as he deserves, something I think is even more true of big Pancho.
You have in Laver and Rosewall two unique talents, and I don't understand the continual compulsion to make one lesser by making the other greater.
great post of yours, one of many in this thread. i couldn´t agree more with you, particularly on the last sentence
You have in Laver and Rosewall two unique talents, and I don't understand the continual compulsion to make one lesser by making the other greater