Wimbledon
- Thread starter PowerBeam
- Start date
pc1
G.O.A.T.
Pancho Gonzalez.
-NN-
G.O.A.T.
Nadal is just lucky to have lived his prime out in a time where he could win Grand Slam tournaments. For those who argue that he was shadowed in being sandwiched by the dominance of Gonzalez and Laver, the same can be said for Nadal regarding Federer and Djokovic. Both were great big match players but Nadal is barely 30 and has done very little over the last 2-3 years. Meanwhile, Rosewall kept going on and on, winning the hugest championships into his late 30s. There is simply no comparison. Nadal is way behind Rosewall, and Federer is only beginning to approach him, but must yet win more late career Slams to truly be his equal.
Nathaniel, I agree.
Oops!
Rosewall and Lendl,
Absurd. Rosewall won 25 majors, Lendl won 15 majors.
Phoenix1983
G.O.A.T.
The clear answer is Pancho Gonzales. Banned for nearly 20 years, he would have dominated Wimbledon had he been allowed to play there. He would have dominated all others of his era, other than Hoad and Laver.
So be it.
So be it.
newpball
Legend
Mainad
Bionic Poster
newpball
Legend
Limpinhitter
G.O.A.T.
Gary Duane
G.O.A.T.
Gary Duane
G.O.A.T.
Partial agreement but I'm going to push back a bit in favor of great clay players and point out, again, the tennis is greatly skewed in favor of fast-court-specialists. By the way, would Rosewall have benefited from more big tournaments on clay?
Gary Duane
G.O.A.T.
The question was about the best player not to win Wimbledon, so I picked Rosewall too. But I would also have favored Gonzalez even more on grass because he was so much like Sampras in being utterly dominant on fast surfaces.
They did? What did I miss??
Mainad, Probably you missed WCT Finals and end-year Masters.
Partial agreement but I'm going to push back a bit in favor of great clay players and point out, again, the tennis is greatly skewed in favor of fast-court-specialists. By the way, would Rosewall have benefited from more big tournaments on clay?
Gary, probably.
NatF
Bionic Poster
Partial agreement but I'm going to push back a bit in favor of great clay players and point out, again, the tennis is greatly skewed in favor of fast-court-specialists. By the way, would Rosewall have benefited from more big tournaments on clay?
That depends on whether more clay court tournaments were added smack bang in the middle of his prime or whether there were always more clay court tournaments. In the case of the later you would expect more players to develop games suited to clay court tennis. Rosewall might be the best of them still but the tennis landscape would surely be different.
pc1
G.O.A.T.
You would tend to think Rosewall would have benefited as you wrote players would learn to play better on clay also. Santana for example may have even been better on clay as would Gonzalez.
Gary Duane
G.O.A.T.
The whole thing about development on clay is a bit strange now because clearly so many more players grow up on clay but make it a priority to develop their games to be good off clay.
I don't think I personally would like more tournaments on clay. I'm simply saying that players these days who have great games on grass seem to do better altogether because for most the adjustment from HCs to grass and the other ways seems to be more natural. I can't think of players who are or were particularly dangerous on grass who did not do well on HCs, but certainly there have been quite a few who were dominant on clay but who had problems on HCs.
Gary Duane
G.O.A.T.
I think so too, Bobby, but unfortunately I have no comparative data for these old players. I don't understand how people get information for games won and other stats in the pre-computer days because it is so tedious to all up all those figures even if somehow you have them all. I depend on sites like the ATP site, and even that can go horribly wrong in some years.
NatF
Bionic Poster
Yeah my point was just that we can't know truly, the circumstances for all pro's would be very different - Laver did lead Rosewall on clay as far as I know so it might not have much difference to those 64+ years where Laver generally led the h2h clearly.
Clay is good to learn on for learning point construction but yeah HC is the surface of today.
In years gone by the USO played faster so we saw a lot of cross over, we saw a lot fo S&V success at both the USO and Wimbledon. Now that the game is baseline orientated I don't think players who favour clay courts are particularly disadvantaged - Nadal has had great success at all venues, even a guy like Ferrer has been a multi-time semi-finalist at both HC majors. Wawrinka's best surface is arguably clay and he's won both HC majors as well.
pc1
G.O.A.T.
Thing is that topspin players tend to have an edge on clay so I do wonder how guys like Santana, a brilliant clay courter would do if the circuit had many clay tournaments.
As traditional as grass was serve and volley points can be very boring. I much prefer clay, hard court or carpet to grass because it promotes better rallies.
Limpinhitter
G.O.A.T.
pc1
G.O.A.T.
That was what I meant. Santana may have even been more brilliant with his topspin and great touch. His drop shots were amazing.
Limpinhitter
G.O.A.T.
Gary, If you mean clay, there were several players who were dangerous on grass but rather weak on clay, f.i. Sampras, Ashe, Tanner, Fraser, McKinley.
Gary, It's similary for me.
NatF, Experts of the 1960s used to write that Rosewall was stronger on clay than Laver and I agree with them. Rosewall won the biggest clay event in 1965 and 1968 but I concede that Laver won the biggest in 1967. 1966 was clearly a Gimeno year.
NatF
Bionic Poster
I'm not talking about overall strength but the match up. Even as a potentially superior clay courter Rosewall trailed Laver on clay - those damn lefties on clay!
pc1
G.O.A.T.
Bobby,
You're correct that they were weaker on clay but I might add that Sampras did win the Italian Open on red clay in 1994 which was an excellent effort and he was amazing in his Davis Cup matches on red clay against Russia. Sampras clearly had the talent to be an excellent clay player with his movement and strokes.
Ashe imo had the ability to be a terrific clay player because he had all the shots. He was a good clay player but never great.
Gary Duane
G.O.A.T.
That's what I'm talking about, Bobby. The great grass players usually did well on HCs, but for some (like Sampras) things were pretty weak on clay. However, they did not have problems getting to #1 on the basis of grass+HC results if they were winning majors.
It was more difficult for Borg and has been much more difficult for Nadal.
Bobby, what is f.i.?
Gary Duane
G.O.A.T.
pc1
G.O.A.T.
No one is switching abilities Gary. I was just writing he had the talent to be an excellent clay player just the way he was.
Gary Duane
G.O.A.T.
pc1
G.O.A.T.
I'm not commenting on your point, which is correct.
I'm stressing that ATG clay players are the Rodney Dangerfields of tennis - "They get no respect."
Not so sure about that. I think that players like Tilden, Wilding, Borg, Nadal, Rosewall, Laver, Lendl, Wilander have gotten great respect.
McEnroe still is upset about his loss to Lendl in the 1984 French Open. Certainly he felt that the French was an important title to help add to his resume.
7
70sHollywood
Guest
Goran Ivanisevic is the one strange exception. Even more strange is that he actually had more success on clay than hard.
Do you not think clay courters can benefit from hoovering up clay titles against a weak clay field whilst the fast grass/hard players have to deal with more competition?
Also, a lot of clay specialists are lacking in certain great attributes. Virtually none of them have a great serve for example. I doubt a player purposely under develops their serve, so it seems like a case of the player simply isn't good enough to attain a certain standard of play for non-clay surfaces and so falls back on clay.
Gary Duane
G.O.A.T.
Didn't Wilander win titles on three surfaces?
Borg, for all his greatness, was clearly #1 in the world how many years? I think one year is disputed, but I think we can only say that he had two years, solid, at to me that is absolutely shocking considering the utter dominance I remember for those Wimbledon years. But his lack of HC majors hurt him. Logically, as good as he was on grass, a couple of AOs would have helped his ranking.
I'm not sure why you are mentioning Laver, and Rosewall certainly was a very good grass player in an era when grass was even more important than today.
I would point more towards players like Vilas, Kuerten, others...
Gary Duane
G.O.A.T.
Good points.
Ivanisevic was a finalist 3 times other than winning Wimbledon, so it looks to me like Wimbledon was his strongest major. I just looked at his career and it seems his only two masters wins on carpet, which has to be considered a fast surface. So although he may have had better results on clay than on HCs, I think it's pretty clear that he was by far a better fast-court player.
pc1
G.O.A.T.
I mention Laver and Rosewall because they certainly were respected. I left Vilas and Kuerten out because I don't think Vilas especially was as well respected and they were two of my all time favorites.
Actually Adriano Panatta could be mentioned here if you talk about respect. The Italians worshiped him.
Limpinhitter
G.O.A.T.
In my view, to the degree that Rosewall had success against Laver, it was in large part because he matched up better against Laver stylistically than most other players.
pc1
G.O.A.T.
I would guess the reason for that would be that a big serve on clay is often returnable so a lot of these players chose to hit high percentage spin serves so they could control the third ball instead of missing and having the returner attack the second serve. Guys like Panatta, Noah, Kuerten, Borg and Lendl were exceptions. Often you think of guys like Solomon and Dibbs who don't have huge serves but endless groundies.
-NN-
G.O.A.T.
The tour bores me. Too much HC, not enough grass.
I hate tennis. TERRIBLE game.
No, good game - need more grass.
Gary Duane
G.O.A.T.
Gary Duane
G.O.A.T.
I think I'm missing an emoticon above. Is my sarcasm detector seriously malfunctioning?
Similar threads
- Poll
- Poll
