You are creating a false opposition here. Conditions (and equipment) influence play and playing styles may either go along with these conditions or override them.
Not really. If anything, the high bounce helped two big serving giants to get to a semi and who in turn played, well, lots of serve and volley (2) (and glorious S&V at that, if I may add). Using S&V as a proxy for grass is itself a flawed premise which is the point I have been making from the beginning. Would the fact that two S&Vers actually contested the AO semi in 96 actually make, er, Rebound Ace similar to Wimbledon? (3) Would the fact that two S&Vers reached the RG semi in the same year again make the slowest clay on earth similar to the then fastest tournament?(4) By the way, an overzealous Nadal fan actually once put forth this proposition to me, hence showing the limits of this logic once extended to its ridiculous extreme. Correlation does not amount to causation. Just because old grass saw a lot of S&V doesn't mean the presence of it implies similarity to old grass (let alone playing near identical to the point that any differences would be irrelevant) (5). Therefore, I find it unnecessary to break down the rest of your wall of text because from the beginning your argument has been based on the flawed premise that because S&Vers continued to dominate Wimbledon in 2001, it must be the same as before. OK, to a limited extent, it would be but only because Wimbledon was already changing through 1999 and 2000 (i.e. from 99 it was already no longer playing like before, whatever the reasons for that may be) (6). But I cannot be made to account for the AEC's parsimony with facts. What I do know is, as with Isner in 2018, Wimbledon changed enough in 99/00 to help Rafter to his then career best results at Wimbledon which he nearly bettered the next year (7). Again, Rafter played S&V but didn't necessarily have a great grass court game or strengths suited to the surface (8). The only grass titles Rafter ever won were against such frightening opposition as Pavel or Escude (9). It was the increased bounce at Wimbledon aiding his kick serve that propelled him to better performances on grass (10). In the case of Isner, it appears (so far) to be a one off induced by both the extremely hot weather during this year's tournament and Isner's form but with Rafter doing it three years in a row, it clearly indicated a change in the surface (11). Which was also otherwise evident, independent of Rafter, from the more true bounce and the balls sitting up a little more (creating the chance for more baseline rallies).
Bolded: maybe you should start reading more carefully, because not only what you are saying that I am doing is not true: what I am saying is exactly the opposite. I just made the distinction in your example, and I was talking
only about the difference in the conditions.
If you were reading carefully you would have found this sentence I especially bolded for you when I posted it:
One just needs to consider how the changes influenced the conditions/the way the game is played, not just that some changes happened.
Not all changes are created equal, and claims to the opposite are an effort to brush aside important variables that played a role in the real events.
as if I knew that you would try to pull such a piece of dishonesty on the discussion.
Bolded 2: you have no idea what you are saying: Modern grass has a more even, and higher bounce, and that is the main difference with the older grass. Since the conditions in 2018 were suggesting even higher bounce it is as I say.
You are making the mistake of conflating the conditions with the unique two players that both players are, since their success is built around their massive serves. You might want to review the curve of development of their careers to see that they are basically at their absolute best in their entire careers in the last couple of years not only at Wimbledon, but basically everywhere. That has nothing to do with grass. In fact, you do EXACTLY the same with Rafter, ignoring his overall massively improved results everywhere, to speculate that his best results on grass are caused by unique to the surface changes.
Bolded 3: Really? S&V is not a proxy for the way the grass was played for decades right up until around the change of the grass?
The following hotchpotch of inadequacy show clearly, that you are confusing several things:
1) drawing conclusions from exceptions: if the grass at Wimbledon was conductive to the S&V , more players would have used it more often. Nothing like that happened. Hell, by your own admission Isner and Anderson S&Ved less than Brown in his match with Nadal at Wimbledon some years ago, when Wimbledon was certifiably stable in its grass-constitution.
2) there are other variables than the playing conditions,
but that doesn't mean that the weight of those variables is the same in all playing conditions for all players. Sometimes they have more weight, sometimes not, depending on so many things (playing style, opponents, draws opening up, improving parts of one's game, technology etc etc).
If players of all hues were reaching consistently the latter stages of AO on RA by S&Ving, yes, I would say that
for that time RA was playing similar to grass. Same, if S&Vers were consistently dominating AO at the time. Nothing like that happened, so your example is basically useless (in fact, it is useful, but for my stance).
Bolded 4: No, it wouldn't. See the above.
Bolded 5: Again, you are repeating something that is not true by suggesting that I am saying that "any differences are irrelevant".
Also, while the first bolded sentence is true there IS a correlation between the S&V and the playing characteristics of the grass: the best indicator of whether the playing characteristics of the grass have anything to do with the S&V displayed is the dominance of the S&V as a playing style in the tournament. That way it is evident that the chosen style is not a result of anomaly (like in the case we have in the Isner-Anderson match, for example).
Bolded 6: "OK, to a limited extent"?
No, buddy, just "No". Go watch the matches in the later rounds of Wimbledon 2001. There is no "to a limited extent". All matches were played in the same "extent" (meaning "style").
I had to laugh at your effort while you were saying that the playing conditions resembled the old grass "but only because Wimbledon was already changing through 1999 and 2000". Unless you can show me considerable differences between 1999/2000 and previous years
in the predominant playing style, I will have to call BS on that.
Or do you mean the same type of "change" that occurs since around the beginning of the 50ies, when Wimbledon started working with STRI in Bingley?
Bolded 7: even a blind squirrel in a pitch-dark room could see that your examples are flawed: do you even make a difference between results of a player, and conditions at a tournament?
Both Rafter and Isner have had their best results not only at Wimbledon for the respective periods you were talking about, so pointing at the fact that the conditions somehow were responsible for the particular success of those particular individuals at those particular tournaments is erraneous at best. The only reason that they fared SLIGHTLY better than at some other tournaments was that grass takes better on their biggest weapons than other surfaces, but
that is it. There is not enough difference in comparison with their other results, to infer from them what you here do
Bolded 8: yes, he did. Just like the overwhelming majority of the rest of the field in those years
Bolded 9: Hahaha
Rafter beat a certain player on grass, shortly before the same player made waves at Wimbledon that year. The name of his opponent? Roger Federer
He also beat Haas and some other less-known, but equally formidable opponents (and that is outside of Wimbledon, which means that the number of tournaments a player can commit to on grass was not that great to begin with), not to speak of the fact that once he hit his stride, he was rarely stopped by anyone, who didn't make big impression on grass (his match against Ivanisevic at Wimbledon was one tight affair). Amongst the players he lost, sometimes in very tight matches were Becker, Ivanisevic, Henman, Rusedski etc.
You are selling him short. The man has 4 grass-court titles, which is more than almost (?) anyone who is not an ATG/Multiple Majors winner.
Bolded 10: Too bad that all those clay-courters didn't get the memo. BTW, how do you explain his massively improved results everywhere after 1996 off of grass?
Bolded 11: I would have thought that a player with Rafter's game would have taken up on the opportunity to play more all-court game, based on your assumptions here, but, no, he S&Ved his way to those grass results. Interesting, isn't it?
May we see two things: 1) how you establish that there were "more" baseline rallies, and 2) the causation between the two things
Hell, I was wrong for years. I actually did think it was changed after 2001.
