In defense of Margaret, her generation had never seen anything remotely like Evert. The last truly great baseliner was Maureen Connolly in the early to mid 1950's. I imagine players like Court, Wade, King and Bueno, thought they knew what a great baseline game looked like with Zsuzsa Körmöczy, Frankie Durr, Yola Ramirez, andNancy Richey, and it wasn't much of a serious thread to the predominant Serve /volley style. Nobody in those days believed anyone could seriously challenge a top player on a fast or medium speed surface by sitting in the backcourt hitting passing shots. Heck even the clay tournaments were mostly won by serve volleyers in the 1960's. That generation of players and coaches had zero reason to spend a lot of time training and strategizing against an Evert. That game style was dying out like the dodo bird!
Excellent question. Perhaps what some persons call reality are actually social constructs.
We all have the right to exercise freedom of choice in personal self-determination, although some people seem to forget that.
I hope you are right.
You don’t get my sense of humor. Alas!
One other thing... since you mention the other players. Margaret seemed to particularly have difficulty against Evert, not just on clay, but grass too. Evert destroyed Margaret at Wimbledon in 1973 and in the US Open that same year (it was a grass court event back then), although Evert lost, she troubled Margaret no end in the first 2 sets and was not that far from a straight sets win. Players like Goolagong and King handled Evert quite well in that same period on grass for sure. And at the same time that Court was having difficulty against Evert, she was holding her own against the other top women quite nicely. So there certainly was a different dynamic involved for Court when she played Evert. She did seem a bit psyched out by Evert. I do agree that nevertheless this by itself should not lead to Court being under-rated as an all time great.
Margaret has a 2-1 head to head on grass. That 6-3,6-0 victory at Newport was Court crushing Evert on grass. I think had Court played her more often on grass prior to 1974, Court would have had a definite advantage. Court never really felt comfortable at Wimbledon, and 1973 semi was just a little more evidence of that, IMO. To your larger point, I do think Court was psched out by Evert for awhile, and that it was a poor match-up for her. Court was the ultimate power player back then. She was not one to employ the kind of junk ball/ slice/dink tactics that could break up the young Evert ground stroke rhythm. King quickly learned that the winning strategy was to force Evert to create the pace, rather than provide it to her, and try to keep the ball out of her comfort stroke zone, either bouncing below her knees or above her shoulders. that's a lot harder to ensure on carpet, hard or clay courts which do not take underspin as perfectly as grass.
Good post. I tend to agree Justinjay. I have always felt that there was more to Evert’s early domination of Court than just the novelty of her game in that era. It was a combination of many things: Primarily Evert’s ability to read Margaret’s serve and game in general; lob successfully against her tall opponent; and the disguise on her shots that Court failed to read. These were followed by (in no particular order) the novelty of Evert’s game; Evert’s ability to use Margaret’s power against her; Constantly keeping Margaret on the run; and the mental edge that Evert established early on with her confident demeanor and lack of emotions on court. With all this, Court did not completely fold against Evert and she does deserve credit for this.
King was #1 five or six times, depending which "expert" you read about. PS: I saw the movie in question and it never even implied that it was a "strange upset" when Court beat Billie Jean. King was #1 in 1972 (and 3-2 vs. Court), but as revealed in the movie, Court knew that her relationship with Marilyn Barnett (which was an "open secret") would detract from her performance on the tennis court, because she wouldn't be laser focused on her matches. I rank Margaret #5 all time, and Billie Jean #9. #10 was a tough one. I almost wanted to make it = between Monica and Maria.
Because there was NO women's pro tour, ALL top women could compete in slams and other tournaments long before 1968. Open era Only applies to men's tennis.
But it does make it a lot easier to win when your major competitors are not playing at that event. That being said, Margaret Court is one of the greatest players of all-time, regardless of how one may feel about her politics. I place her at #5 of all time.
Still has possibly the best volleys of any WTA player ever.
Yeah, that seems to be the big thing. With much weaker fields, Court won eleven of the fourteen (78.57%) Australian Opens she played.
Geez, she had, as I recall, a success or two at the US Championships and RG! It is Wimbledon that was the outlier event, not the other three.
Five wins at both of those events + three wins at Wimbledon.
You were talking depth of draws. The only slam you bothered to calculate was Margaret's absolute worst of the three, to compare to the Aussie. She doesn't have a problem with depth of fields, or she would not have succeeded so well everywhere that is NOT Wimbledon.
Wimbledon had the deepest fields at the time while the Australian Open had the shallowest fields. US was #2 while RG was #3 in depth of field.
How about you find out by calculating the US OPen and see it that number resembles the 25% or you could just use career win/ loss percentage. Just don't pick her worst tournament and call it a day
No one's just picking Wimbledon and calling it a day. This overall post and the specific thread to which I was responding is about why Court is underrated. My point was that Court getting 11 of her 24 haul at the Major with the weakest fields while winning only Wimbledon only 3/12 times she played it is why people have her lower than the raw numbers would suggest.
5 feels a little low to me...but, she's in the conversation, no doubt
good point
I hate to say it, but I still think she's the best peak player. MN '83-'84 was just a killer. Her S&V, when fully clicking, was lights out.
5 + 5 at RG and USO is not small taters! with USO on grass then. Perhaps a bit too much fixation on W, where she did underperform a bit. She has 192 titles...I mean if that's not greatness, what is? Only MN and Evert are even close to that...and there's substantial distance at 167 and 157, respectively. yes her politics suck, but not her tennis.
We agree on the facts, and yes absolutely final conclusion. We do not agree with the 'why' but you aren't considering alternate theories. I think its about her 'Wimbledon nerves' more than the seeds or the draw. If the same exact set of matches gets played anywhere else but Centre Court with the royalty, and that intimidating history seeped atmosphere, the score is likely different.
Absolutely agree, which is she's absolutely in the GOAT debate IMO. But the weakness of the AO fields and her relative lack of success at Wimbledon is why she's behind the likes of Serena and Steffi.
Again, this thread is about why people underrate Court, which is why I focused on her record at Wimbledon and the weakness of the AO fields at the time.
I'm not sure the reason I provide, is all that exculpatory. You have to be able to conquer Wimbledon nerves if that is your impediment.
Love her volley technique. Very crisp, impeccable timing, and the frame so perfectly balanced through contact. Edberg was like this too.
That's useful. I did wonder if the lower bounce of English grass/ weather, might make life more difficult for the taller Court. This suggests that's not much of the problem.
I wonder if Evert had not emerged if the baseline game never makes a resurgence. Today it is serve and volley that is dying like the dodo bird instead.
I might rephrase this. What happens to the baseline game in womens tennis if Evert did not popularize the two hander in the early 70's? What happens to Evert if she did what Daddy wanted, and switched to a one handed backhand? I think she still gets in the top 10/top 5 as a Nancy Richey type baseliner, but I am not sure she gets to #1. I think the deception, the power, and accuracy of that two hander as the world's best passing shot, was a very big deal in her early victories over Court, King, Wade, Goolagong and it was those early victories that was the accelerant to her confidence and everyone else's lack of confidence when they played her. She literally passed her way into glory and fame.
It is great she had the strong will and foresight to refuse her beloved fathers wishes in this case. I agree she does not have the same career with a a 1 handed backhand.
I do think eventually girls tennis coaches, will learn from the examples set by Connors and Borg so I think double handed strokes will find due popularity, but its going to seep gradually rather than take the women's game by storm. there were always these rare, sporatic examples of women with two handers even before Chris, but none of them got near the top of the sport. Jan Lehane of Australia reached #10 briefly in the early 60's.
Perhaps with Tracy
As noted, players would have seen the 2 handers from Borg and Connors and picked that right up.....for me, would Austin have had a 2 hander if not for Chris? Did she model her game heavily on Chris? Certainly seemed that way. Or was it coincidental?
Have to disagree with this. The real reason for most people is that Willaims and Graf are much more recent. younger people simply cannot fathom that the best was before their time. This happens in other sports. If a record is from way back, it is either diminished or ignored.) So they look at ways to diminish what Court did.
Muhammad Ali, Wayne Gretzky, and others seem to refute that point.
IMO, that's a false equivalence. You can what you want about the level of Serena and Steffi's competition, but basically everyone showed up for every Slam in their eras (the Seles stabbing being the notable exception). Tons of top players didn't play the AO in a number of the years that Court won.
