WIMBLEDON 2016 - HISTORY BECKONS

The Championships at Wimbledon 2016, has the potential to be one of the most historic we've ever seen.  Novak Djokovic, and even Roger Federer, have the chance to extend their achievements beyond the wildest dreams of the kid who's just picked up a racquet and gapes to be the heir of these titans of tennis history.  While the curiosity surrounding their pursuits will most certainly overwhelm the entirety of this fortnight's media coverage, there may be a lot more interesting things at stake at SW19.

RETURN OF THE KING

Novak Djokovic has redefined the notion of the team concept in tennis:  while the depth of his support structure has altered significantly since his undeniable ascension to the top of the tennis pyramid, the breadth and depth of it continues to boggle the mind.  His parents have (with notable exception) receded into their proper place - that of the doting parents marveling at the exploits of their prodigious progeny from afar.  But in addition to his ever-growing dwindling list of celebrity sycophants, he has added a son and another 3-time champion Boris Becker, who at some point looked the more likely to equal or surpass the dominance of his similarly alliteratively named hero Bjorn Borg.  Though some (including this author) doubted the wisdom of that choice, Becker's ingenious re-engineering of his first serve placement, more obvious (but no less insightful and far more difficult) improvements in the second serve and his net play, have launched him into the stratosphere of just 6 other men with double digit major tallies (Federer, Sampras, Nadal, Borg, Laver and Emerson).

As such, the Serbian hero is poised to bring to fruition the notion of 4 separate but equally impressive historical achievements in just two weeks time.  First, he can become only the 4th man to three-peat at the All-England club in the Open era, following in the footsteps of Messrs Borg, Sampras and Federer.  Furthermore, by winning his 4th Wimbledon overall, he would separate himself from Roy Emerson as a 13-time major winner, one short of his former nemesis Rafael Nadal.  He would also, quietly, join Sampras, Federer and Borg as the only players to win at least 4 titles at two separate majors, and his would be a unique combination of Wimbledon and the Australian Open (where he has already joined Emerson as the only six-time champion, although his coming at a time when nobody skipped it).

But the real humdinger would be winning 5 major titles in a row, a feat which has never been accomplished in the Open era, and only once by another (oft forgotten) claimant to the GOAT accolade, the American Don Budge, who, in fact, won 6 in a row from Wimbledon 1937 to the same title in 1938.  Budge too, was halfway to a calendar slam, in 1938 when he repeated his Wimbledon triumph, as if Djokovic needed any additional motivation.  The pressure on him will be enormous on the day, if it comes to it, but for the moment, the only thing anyone seems to be concerned with is whether he can do the deed at Wimbledon.

If pressure is indeed a privilege, the smart money is the Djoker to kill about 5 historical birds with one almighty stone.

RETURN OF THE TITAN

While the prospect is altogether less likely, Roger Federer also has the chance to, once again, distinguish himself from all others who've deigned to whack fuzz as impressively as he has lo these many years.  An unprecedented 8th title would drive him past his historical nemesis, Sampras, into territory that has not only never been achieved in the open era, but wasn't accomplished even when the defending champion needed only one match to add to his tally of titles.  Since William Renshaw racked up 6 of his 7 titles by way of this...shortcut, the Challenge Round has been removed from the pages of Wimbledon history since 1922.  This conveniently predated the opening of French championships to international competition by 3 years, and is one of the many reasons why (de facto) professional tennis can only be considered to be 90 years old at the oldest.  Either way, 8 titles would be the most any man has achieved at the game's oldest and most coveted venue.

18 majors in total would extend the target which Nadal coveted, but in all likelihood (despite hasty proclamations to the contrary) will never achieve, but would still be pursued by Djokovic.  One more major doesn't sound like a lot, but just ask Nadal or Sampras, for that matter, if they would have liked one more to add to their totals...when Federer had 14, that is.  And at the other end of the spectrum, if Federer were to face Djokovic in the final, he would want to win also to avoid being the only player in the history of the game to lose the same major final 3 times in succession to the same player.  He already has a trifecta of futility to Nadal at Roland Garros from 2006 to 2008, and would want to avoid the same fate befalling him vis a vis Djokovic at Wimbledon from 2014 to 2016.

RETURN OF THE UNION JACK

Never in the history of the tennis, and possibly the world, has a Scotsman been so universally beloved and supported by so many Englishmen, as was Andy Murray when he won here in 2013 over the, now invincible but then uncertain, Novak Djokovic.  Back when the Djoker was just really good everywhere, Murray managed to beat him for the second time running at the All-England Club...of course, the first time he was wearing that lamentable

Union Jack inspired monstrosity of an outfit under the British flag at the London Olympics, but why quibble.  The point is, on-grass at least, he has repeatedly vanquished  MacBethovic, and appeared to have his number in general.  Murray had lost the Australian Open final in 2013 to the Djoker, and never figured to be a factor at Roland Garros, but putting together his US Open title in 2012, with his victory in the Olympics, the 2013 victory at SW19 had many outside the bubble of British sports hype believing that the light at the end of the tennis tunnel shone brightly for His Irascibleness.

If Murray could find a way to use the success he's experienced this year over his own personal Serbian storm cloud, who's never more than a moment away from ruining any of his major final days, he would be the first British player to win 2 singles titles at Wimbledon since 1936.  He'd still have one more title to match the inimitable Fred Perry, but the signs are good for Murray in this regard:  he has dropped the deadweight of Amelie Mauresmo from his entourage, a coach who did almost nothing for his game since she was hired, suspended, unsuspended, and finally fired, (ironically) just prior to his (ironic) run to the final at Roland Garros.  He has rejoined his personal sensei, Ivan Lendl, the man who was almost single-handedly responsible for making the necessary alterations to his game to win (both) the major (and sort of major) titles he did manage to win.  And once England are eliminated from the 2016 Euros (I mean...let's be honest), the focus of the nation will once again fall on his shoulders.

But unlike his (truly and pseudo British) compatriots before him, Murray will not only need all the attention he gets, it is my assumption that he will, under the circumstances, thrive with it.

RETURN OF THE REST

Nick Kyrigos would be the first Australian winner at Wimbledon in 15 years, Milos Raonic would be the first Canadian winner ever, Grigor Dimitrov (yes, Grigor Dimitrov) would be the first major winner born in the last decade of the previous millenium, Kei Nishikori the first Japanese major winner ever, and Alexander Zverev the first German (by way of Russia) teenager to win for 20 years since some giraffe-eye-lashed, red-headed, Bavaria albino named Boris...whoever that is.  Now, it is a tall order, and because the odds would (and should) be so remote, it may be worth plunking 10'er on Jack Sock becoming the first American to win Wimbledon since...wait for it...2001!  Aside from one shining moment of lunacy in 2003, when Andy Roddick bazooka'd his way through the draw at Flushing Meadow, Sock would also be the first American to win any majors in 13 years.

Of the modern Mousquetaires, Tsonga, Gasquet, Simon or (the altogether unlikely) Monfils would be the first French major winner since 1983 and the first winner at Wimbledon since (not any of original Mouquetaires, but the unheralded and forgotten) Yvon Patra.  A Frenchman, born in the colony of Vietnam, Patra was a prisoner of war before winning 3 french national titles in succession (played at Roland Garros, but apparently with only European francophiles in the field) after his release, before becoming, in 1946, the last man to win at Wimbledon in long trousers (the warm-ups don't count, Roger).

So if either Sock, Kyrigos or one of the 4 horsemen of the French tennis apocalypse can figure out a way to overcome their historical burdens, perhaps the biggest return to major glory would be for three of the four countries that host majors, but seem to have forgotten how to produce major champions.

THE KEY TO WIMBLEDON? NEWSFLASH: IT'S NOT THE SERVE

Is there a key success factor on grass, and if so, what is it?  I say everyone's serve is better on grass, so that's not the key success factor - that's a myth.

It's the return.

Recently Rafael Nadal opined that "If your serve is good, you can win on grass even without playing your best."  The missing context is that he was clearly explaining how he had won his first tournament on grass without much preparation and without much of a good run of form to speak of leading into the tournament.  But not surprisingly it kicked off an extended debate in the blogosphere about the validity of results on grass, because of the influence of the serve.

I think what Nadal implied (without really meaning to) is that you can lose a match - any match - on grass to a player who serves exceptionally well on the day, and he's right.  That's one of the reasons why Wimbledon is so hard to win:  because you can so easily lose any single match if you have a bad day and your opponent (no matter who he is) serves his socks off.  But unlike what was immediately interpreted as a dig at grass court tennis (something that Nadal, who has always professed his love of Wimbledon and grass court tennis, would never do), you really can't win Wimbledon with just a big serve.

That is just a myth.

The universe of players who have won Wimbledon is much smaller than other majors, and it does not necessarily reflect players with the biggest serve. Serving well (and not necessarily big) like Federer and Sampras helps a great deal, but you have to serve well, not just big.  In fact, I think the reason why Federer and Sampras have won so many Wimbledons, and why the universe of champions at Wimbledon is smaller than the other majors, is precisely because the serve is not the deciding factor in whether you can win it.  Take the following statistics:

# of different FO champions in the open era = 26
# of different Wimbledon champions in the open era = 20

# of different FO champions in the last 20 years = 12
# of different Wimbledon champions in the last 20 years = 8

I don't mean to denigrate Roland Garros, but just as the universe of players who have won 250's is greater than those who have won 500's which is greater than those who have won 1000's which is greater than those who have won majors, the derived conclusion is that the harder it is to win the tournament, the smaller the universe of players who actually do it.  So, by this logic, that the universe of players who have won the FO is greater than the universe of players who have won Wimbledon would suggest that Wimbledon is harder to win.  If you doubt this conclusion, you must accept the opposite:  that the 250's are the hardest to win, and that just doesn't fly.

The reason the 500s are harder than 250s is that the field is typically stronger, because there are more points at stake, and they are more coveted. That is precisely the point of the comparison, and transitively the comparison carries through to each level of more and more coveted titles, including comparing the majors.  Again, no denigration of the the tournaments that lose out in the comparison, but merely a logical conclusion from the evidence of the universe of players who've won the title.

Now, because Federer and Sampras have such great serves, the assumption is that the better your serve, the more likely you are to win Wimbledon.  As such, when sizing up a player's chances, or predicting the result of a particular match, the serves are frequently compared to determine who has the advantage.  But I am of the opinion that comparing serves is actually off the mark.  You are mixing and matching two things - one doesn't compare serves - that is irrelevant because only one player at a time serves. One compares the serve of one to the return of the other. A player with a big serve can escape losses to other players with big serves if they return well.  It is rare that players with really big serves return well, and also why players with just big serves (and little else to their game) rarely win Wimbledon.

Goran Ivanisevic is a perfect example - that man had the biggest and best serve in the history of tennis, but he won Wimbledon exactly once almost by accident.  In his best chance (on paper anyway), in 1992 he lost to Andre Agassi, a player with a relatively weak serve but a relatively oustanding return (who happened to beat Boris Becker and John McEnroe along the way - not exactly slouches in the serve department).  Ivanisevic's other Wimbledon final losses were to another player with a great serve - Pete Sampras.  So what distinguished the two?

The return - Sampras' was a better (as well as the rest of his game - but I digress).

So a big serve gets you a chance to win a match or two here or there - but if you want to win Wimbledon, you need more than a big serve. You need the whole package including a good serve.  But only the best of the best have the whole package, and as such, relatively few players have won Wimbledon as compared to say, the French Open, where a lot of players that did not have the full package, have won relatively more titles than have done so at a Wimbledon.

The logic and the stats on the universe of players who have won Wimbledon versus Roland Garros is very underrated, but it is not a matter of opinion.  As for the effect of the serve on grass, it is inversely overrated - Nadal has 2 Wimbledons, Djokovic 2, Murray 1, even Federer at 7 titles...not one of them could be said to have one of the biggest serves on tour, earning a lot of "cheap" points. Roddick had a huge serve, but consistently lost to players who returned better than him (after all, so few serve better than him they must have had better returns). Ivanisevic had the biggest serve ever and he won once, each time he lost to a player, not with a better serve, but a better return.

To win at Wimbledon you need a good serve among many things, but it is not the deciding factor - the return is.  Of course, even a good return (alone) isn't enough - you need the full package. You have to be able to attack and defend, you need decent volleys, but most importantly you need a good serve, because everybody gets a little help on the serve on grass. That the serve is the deciding factor to winning Wimbledon is a myth of grass court tennis that has persisted for years since the late 40's when serve and volley tennis became a full time tactical approach. There have been a lot of players with great serves who have not won Wimbledon, but almost none with bad returns, and certainly no multiple champions with a poor return of serve.

An example of this is Ivan Lendl - his biggest problem on grass wasn't his serve (which was excellent) it was his return, which he was never able to master on grass, despite years of trying. Lendl just wasn't that talented, and as a result he needed time and a certain bounce to return well, which he would get on clay or hard courts, and won many majors on those surfaces - what foiled him on grass was the return.  Lendl's talent limited his return against the best players with the best serves - this is not an on/off proposition as in "either you're talented enough or not" - it does depend on the guy across the net. He had as good a serve as the players he lost to, with perhaps the exception of Becker, but he lost to a lot more players than Becker, his problem against those players he lost to was that he couldn't make any headway in his returns.  His own serve was excellent.  Just because your return isn't good enough against Edberg, Becker and Pat Cash, doesn't mean it won't be good enough against Jeff Tarango or Brad Gilbert.

Go down the list of players with the biggest serves on tour over the last 40 years and remove those players with good returns (Colin Dibley, Ivan Ljubicic, Steven Denton, Mark Phillipousis, Kevin Curren, Bobo Zivojinovic, Greg Rusedski, Ivo Karlovic, Roscoe Tanner, Andy Roddick) and you'll have a very long list of players with big serves who have never won Wimbledon.  Now, do the reverse - list the players with the best returns in the game, remove those with great serves and you'll still have a list of players who have won Wimbledon (Agassi, Borg, Connors, Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, etc.).  That's just good analysis that dispels the myth that the deciding factor in winning Wimbledon is the serve.  Remember that on grass everybody's serve is a little more effective because of the surface, therefore getting an edge over the field would necessarily come from being able to neutralize that phenomenon, not from benefitting from it, which everyone does and which does not give you an edge.

Whether the return is harder to master or acquire is not relevant - it is whether having an outstanding return or an outstanding serve is the deciding factor in whether you will win Wimbledon.  Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, even Federer to some extent, rarely lead the ATP in aces, 1st percentage won or even service games won - and if they do, it isn't because they get a lot of free points on the serves like the Karlovic's, Isners, Lopez's, Tsonga's, Almagro's and Raonics of the world. They may use their serve better than this lot, but that's because they're better tennis players that are able to do more with less (on the serve). What they all do better than that lot is return of serve, and they've all won Wimbledon in the last 10 years - 3 of them more than once.

Counter-intuitive, I know, but true.

In fact, I'll go you one better - I don't even think it's even critical to have a great serve, to win Wimbledon, because there a lot of players who had just good serves and still won - therefore the serve cannot be the deciding factor in whether you will win Wimbledon.  What Nadal referred to with the big serves is really a reference to the risk a great player runs of being dumped out of the tournament by a guy serving his socks off for one day, but without much of an overall game. That kind of player can be a spoiler, and there are a lot of spoilers at Wimbledon, and from that I conclude (along with the universe of players argument) that that's one big reason why Wimbledon is harder to win than the other majors.  Particularly on grass, where everyone's serve is helped by the surface, there is a greater risk that a spoiler that can serve you off the court in one match.

That doesn't happen as often on other surfaces because the serve doesn't have as big effect - and that is the reason why at Wimbledon a great return is more important than a great serve.  Because if you can't efficiently take advantage of the few opportunities you get to break serve (attack second serves, attack poorly placed first serves, or just get your racquet on the ball a lot), you will eventually run into someone who serves you off the court. The truly great players (among other things) have great returns, so they survive the serving mine field that is grass court tennis better than the other (numerous) players with great serves, but a minimal/weak return game - hence the cream really rises to the top at Wimbledon.

Sampras rarely served above 125mph, even at his best - there were always players on tour with bigger serves, but none with better serves - he used his to great effect. And it helps to use a great serve to great effect if you have the game to back it up, which Rusedski, Roddick, Ljubicic, Phillipousis, Ivanisevic and oh so many other big serving contemporaries did not have - and a big part of that overall game to back up whatever serve you may possess (good to great) is the return of serve.  Federer also rarely serves big (130+), but his placement is outstanding, and nobody uses the serve to set up their game better than Federer - of course it helps that his game is outstanding, but the point is that it's not all down to the serve.

Riddle me this - why is it that Federer was so frequently able to out ace Roddick at Wimbledon when they played?  Because his return was better, not because his serve was.  And if I'm not mistaken, McEnroe never hit a serve over 120mph in his career, not so of the Roscoe Tanners and Kevin Curren's of his era - their serves were huge even by modern standards. But his overall game (including the return) was superior to both of those players, and as such he had more success at Wimbledon.

In fact, two of the biggest modern servers gave us an example in 2010 that put this distinction in relief:  that absurd farce of a match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut where the 5th set had 138 games in it, where it took Isner 69 games to break Mahut's serves.

Does anyone think that any of the players who've won Wimbledon in the last 10 years would take 69 games to break anyone's serve, let alone Nicolas Mahut's? Neither Isner nor Mahut have much of a return game to speak of, and not coincidentally neither has ever done anything significant at Wimbledon other than that match. They may win matches and/or smaller tournaments with depleted fields, but when the best of the best are all there, they just can't serve their way to glory - eventually their inability to return well catches up to them. That's not the case with the best players in the world. That's why only the best players in history win Wimbledon. And that's why Wimbledon is the hardest tournament to win.

And what of poor old Andy Roddick - the argument is that had it not been for Federer, he would have won 4 Wimbledons, right?  I'm not so sure about that - after all, he lost to a lot more players at Wimbledon than just Roger Federer, and that Federer is a better player is a general statement which provides no insight - the better player doesn't always win (if that were the case, the trophy could be handed out at the draw).  On grass, Federer bested Roddick as frequently as he did because he neutralized his serve with a great return of serve, which Roddick could never do.  That was the deciding factor between them, not either of their serves which were both outstanding.


That's not to say that Federer's serve isn't really good - just not the equal of Roddick's - better game, obviously (especially the return) - but not the serve.  But let's set that debatable example aside...can the serve possibly explain his losses to Murray (2006), Gasquet (2007), Randy Lu (2010), Tipsarevic (2008), Lopez (2011), Ferrer (2012)?  Maybe Ivanisevic (2001), but that entire tournament was the outlier - he also lost to Rusedski in 2002, but in both matches to equally dominant serving players, the telling factor was the return - Rusedski broke Roddick 3 times 2002 and Ivanisevic twice in 2001...but he never broke either of them. And equally telling of Rusedski - he lost in the very next round....to Xavier Malisse. Now I can tell you that there were about 25 things Malisse did better than Rusedski, but the serve wasn't one of them - and if there were every a place where Rusedski should have put his serve to use against Malisse (if it were key) it would have been at Wimbledon.  But surprise, surprise, Malisse broke Rusedski 3 times to 2.

To be honest, I watched Roddick play tennis for 10 years, and I can't ever remember him serving poorly - he may have, but it would have been exceedingly rare.  It was the one part of his game that never broke down.  But I have seen a lot of guys get a beat on his serve in one game and the rest of his game fell apart.  He himself rarely broke serve on grass, precisely because it is so hard to do.

I should also point out something that is a logical extension of the "it's the return, stupid" argument:  the better players have better returns of serve precisely because it requires more talent to consistently respond well to the easiest shot in the game to produce - i.e. the serve. For a good return you need particularly good hand-eye coordination, anticipation, consistent strike zone, balance, quickness, footwork, etc.). So a relative donkey, like Lukas Rosol can beat a great player from his serve, here and there, but win the tournament, no chance - not without a great return. There are a lot more players out there with great serves than players with great returns of serve - and it's no coincidence that they tend to do most of the winning. That's because it's harder to do than serve well, and as such it is a more telling factor in who wins the tournament - particularly on grass where the serve is helped so much by the surface, and everyone looks like a world beater with their serve - by the same token, only the best of the best appear to have even decent returns on grass.

My point here is that I'm trying to dispel the myth that the serve is the key/critical/deciding success factor on grass - it's not at all, it's the return. Some would limit their agreement if (and only if ) the serves are equal, but the serves are rarely equal and frequently the player with the better serve loses to the player with the better return. Therefore, it's pretty clear that the return is the key success factor and not the serve - of course your return has to be pretty good to beat a player with a great serve, especially on grass...but that's more to my point of why so few players have what it takes to win Wimbledon.

We've all fallen prey to the blurring of the lines defining the quality of the serve - if there is such a thing as a good serve, there must logically be great serves and below average serves - let's not lump everyone into sufficient/good/great serving category, cite Wimbledon champions (none of whom have a poor serve) and then claim that the key factor is something that they share in common with 90% of professional tennis players.

A key success factor is something that distinguishes players who've had success from those who have not. To point to the serve, which a large portion of players who have not won Wimbledon, and likely will never win, isn't informative. The return, however, is very probative. I happen to think that while the serve is the easiest stroke in tennis, because it's ball in hand, the return might be the hardest (because you must use a broad range of skills to respond to the easiest stroke in the game to hit at you), and by this logic, I am of the belief that the return, particularly at Wimbledon, where even the worst serves in tennis get a lot of help, is the most important stroke to winning the tournament.

WHAT KILLED THE ONE-HANDED BACKHAND?

Stan the Man showed us all that the 1-handed backhand still can...beat a 2-hander that is. Every time somebody new with a one-handed backhand succeeds in the modern game, it always seems to inspire a rush of questions about just what killed the 1-handed backhand anyway.  To this day, the history of tennis is replete with players with one-handed backhands who have won far more majors than players with 2-handed backhands. As a matter of fact, even if you restrict your research to major winners since the first great 2-handed champions emerged from the primordial ooze of modern professional tennis (Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg in 1974) one could argue that the two-handed backhand is nothing more than an historical anomaly that will be blown apart and scattered to the winds of history, when the game gets its collective head out of its collective arse.

Let the record show that of the four majors, 2-handers have won more than 1-handers only at Roland Garros.  This is a little ironic since the place you tend to see the most 1-handed backhands is on slow red clay, where even the smallest and weakest of tennis ingenues can hone this stroke through the imposed patience of the rustic surface.  At 26 to 14 titles, 2-handed backhands have had considerably more success in the last 40 years than 1-handers in Paris, but in Australia, the trend is reversed at 23 to 18, 24 to 16 at the US Open, and the trend is most lopsided at Wimbledon where the record is 27 to 13.  In total, 1-handers have it over 2-handers at the majors 88 to 73.

And just taking a look at the draw for Rotterdam next week I was curious to see how many of the 32 players in a rich field of players, for this 40 year old ATP 500, had let go of the second hand and, despite the presumed death sentence to their careers, have managed to make it in the game.  Of the 32 players in the draw, fully 11 or almost 1/3rd of the draw play with a 1-handed backhand.  Of course, 40 years ago, you'd expect the reverse, but not so today, and this begs the question:  why?

Well, in truth, we all start out with a 2-handed backhand, particularly those of us who got an early start in the game, and the biggest problem a child faces on the tennis court, besides seeing over the net, is the challenge of maintaining racquet head stability.  In the abstract, any good tennis pro will tell you that no matter how weak/strong you are, the best solution to this problem is the quality of your technique - if you do everything right technically before, during and after your stroke, you'll never need that second arm on either side.  But there's the rub: you can't make any mistakes technically - not in your footwork, court positioning, your stroke production or your follow through, because if you do it's nearly impossible to hit a 1-handed backhand properly.  The same cannot be said for the 2-hander.

The second hand gives the added racquet head stability you need when you haven't quite hit your mark in court positioning or footwork.  It allows for that smooth delivery of strings to ball that is essential for a shot even rarer in tennis than the 1-handed  backhand - a flat ground stroke. Freed from the need to sacrifice power for control, a 2-handed backhand is more likely to be delivered flat and straight as an arrow - just the sort of thing a modern player approaching the net could take advantage of, but hardly anyone consistently rushes the net anyway, so this advantage is lost on this generation.

So what killed the 1-handed backhand anyway?  Was it Bjorn Borg and his Viking-God flowing blonde locks and purple and green pin stripes?  Was it Andre Agassi and his rock and roll, gut-busting, gate-crashing brand of Bollitieri bash-ball?  Perhaps Jimmy Connors and his crotch grabbing, every-cuss-in-the-book uttering, "this is what they want" extolling, histrionics laden game?  No, it was none of these things.

It was the money.

Because there's so much money in the game, and so much of it is committed earlier and earlier in a player's career, the puppeteers have less patience with their marionettes developing the necessary technique to master a stroke as precise, and potentially fruitful, as the 1-handed backhand.  If the money's there, just do the minimum technically with a 2-handed backhand, and you'll be up and running in no time. Why bother taking the time (and eschewing the money) to develop a 1-hander?

As such, typically that stroke is reserved for only the most talented of tennis players who are able to make up for what they lack in technique, with pure god-given hand/eye coordination, until that technique is where it needs to be to cease being a liability.  That's not to say that the only talented tennis players are those with 1-handed backhands - to the contrary some of the nicest 1-handed backhands I've ever seen have come from players who hit a 2-hander by trade, either in training or in between points, or on the rare occasion where it is technically preferable to do so.

But when entire families hang on every result, and armies of masseuses, and physios, and cooks, and coaches, and fathers and WAGS (and whoever else can successfully impose themselves on the career of a promising young professional) amplify the risk of missing out on the big early paycheck, the future begins to look dark as dusk if you can't fight above your weight class. Thus the 1-handed backhand goes the way of the stick-shift:  impressive when you see it, aesthetically far more enjoyable if you can do it, but an unnecessary risk when it's so much easier and safer to simply put it in gear and press "go".

But I have a feeling that this may not be a permanent thing. I think the future of tennis will not change nearly as much as we think.  There certainly seems to be a lot of gentle giants out there, that we all predicted would dominate the game, but ironically the optimal size for a tennis champion has remained for the better part of 100 years between 5'11" and 6'3" with very rare exception.  

Why?  

Because the court is still 27 x 78 feet, you still have to break serve to win sets, and you can't play the game from inside your head or the sofa in your living room.  And because of all of these things, I don't think conditions will persist such that a premium on racquet head stability from a very early age forces the game to continue to evolve towards the 2-handed backhand. And when everyone is doing the same thing and hoping for a different result, something's gotta give.

If the ball goes faster and with more spin on it, then the quality of the athlete will have to improve, and as that happens, the physical side of tennis will require tennis players to be in it for the long-haul, rather than the quick buck (because whether they play with one or two hands, no 17-year old in the world will have what it takes physically to win in what is increasingly becoming a man's game). Therefore results at at 13 and 14 should become less important than results at 18 and 19, and by then physically most will have had enough time to develop their ultimate game, rather than the most expedient one.

One way or another, I believe the game will once again belong to the ancient masters of the 1-handed backhand.

THE DECLINE OF THE MASTERS

Nope, I'm not writing a column about golf's version of Wimbledon - I'm talking about the year-end championships that used to have all the cachet of a major, and had the one thing that the modern incarnation does not - interest outside of tennis.

The year-end championships of tennis have gone through so many iterations over the years, it's hard, even for the most ardent fan, to keep track of what it has been and become over the years. So imagine the difficulty of getting space "above the fold" in major sports media today, which is the surest measure of the popularity of the game outside the game.

The ATP World Tour Finals, one of the most idiotically named championships in the history of tennis, is the current version of what used to be known as "The Masters", and until 1990, it was magically more than just a tennis tournament - it was an event that the sports world followed almost as closely as the crowned jewels of the game (the four majors). And in a rare moment of agreement with John McEnroe, I think the move away from Madison Square Garden was the beginning of the end for the luster that once accompanied the event.

Of course, in his native-New Yorker narcissism, he thinks the answer is to move it back to the Garden, and while I think he's on the right track (and wouldn't necessarily disagree with such a move), I think the event is missing something that the other majors have in abundance - an identity. And it is by finding its identity that I think this once great sporting event can return to the pantheon of great sporting events, where it belongs.

In 1970, two years following the advent of open tennis, Grand Prix tennis had been initiated with the help of Jack Kramer, as an answer to the disparate hodge-podge of semi-professional circuits controlled by anyone with enough money to cobble together what passed as a tour. It competed with the WCT championships held in Dallas, which was based on results from the WCT tour, a tour run by Lamar Hunt as an answer to the open invitation to Grand Prix tennis which was controlled by the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF - the ancestor of the modern ITF).

The first year-end championships were held in Tokyo, which happened to be the highest bidder, and in their never ending, insatiable appetite for a bigger payday, the event moved six times in six years, to tennis hotbeds such as Paris, Barcelona, Boston, Melbourne and Houston - where it promptly had a problem.

Nobody outside of tennis particularly cared about the event because the rules for qualification, the format of the tournament itself, and the players that participated, were about as reliable as predictions of the weather. In the end, the perceived value of the tournament, outside of tennis, suffered badly, and so too did the event.

Then in 1977, somebody came up with a brilliant idea - bring the mountain to Moses. For the first time in a string of 13 glorious years, the Masters was played at Madison Square Garden - then the mecca of sports entertainment - and with it came all the cachet the tournament could hope for. Sure, along the way there were questions about the format, the rules of qualification, and of course the quality of the tennis. As a matter of fact, very often the tournament was played in the year after the year for which qualification was determined - so late it was in the tennis calendar. And complaints about injuries and fatigue were seen as just a subterfuge for players to tank some matches in favor of bigger fish to fry.

Nevertheless it was an event that people outside of tennis covered with almost as much gusto as the majors. And why wouldn't they - initially the popularity of Connors, Borg and Vilas, would give way to the triumvirate of Connors, Borg and McEnroe, and then Connors, McEnroe and Lendl. In all three cases, the differences in personalities and the personal conflicts between some or all the heads of the tennis families provided the base, spine and glitter to make it a great event. But as the top players got old, retired, or lost their personal animus towards one another, the event petered. And as playing at Madison Square Garden had less and less of a cachet, the brilliant minds at the newly anointed emperors of tennis (the ATP tour) decided to chase the money and move the event in 1990 to, where else...Frankfurt.

Huh?

That's right, given that the game's dominant players were becoming predominantly European, and given the money they offered to host the tournament, Germany became the new mecca of tennis. First it was Frankfurt from 1990 to 1995, then that other internationally known metropolis, Hanover, hosted the event for a stretch from 1995 to 1999. And as you might expect, despite the star power of Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras and everyone else, the tournament slowly lost its identify, and as a result (in my opinion) its luster outside of tennis.

Along the way, it just so happened that when the ITF was frozen out of control of everything but the majors and Davis Cup, they decided (quite rightly) there was a gaping hole that they could fill, and promptly initiated a competing year-end championship called the Grand Slam Cup. And because one thing the ITF is very good at is hiding behind its tradition, they at least had the good sense to keep it in Munich for nine years from 1990 to 1999 as well (although they couldn't resist locating the tournament in Germany - where the money obviously was at the time). The other thing they're good at is hiding in front of prize money, but this time, they smartened up and put up an astronomical $3M payday to the winner of the Grand Slam Cup if they also happened to win a slam that same year. At the time, this was an astronomical sum of money - more than any of the majors, and way more than the ATP Tour World Championships.

As the ATP's year end championships slowly but surely caught up with the prize money of the Grand Slam Cup (money problems caused them to reduce their prize money to make it closer to the ATP's season finale), the latter suffered, and had to change when the event was held, as well as include a women's championship for two years 1998 and 1999 (both not surprisingly won by Venus Williams and Serena Williams respectively), in an effort to remain relevant. It didn't, and eventually was subsumed by the Tennis Masters Cup in 2000 - itself an homage to both year-end championships. They all figured half of a big pot of money is better than all of a small one, so they did the only sensible thing and merged.

But once the Masters moved from MSG, and the Grand Slam Cup lost its purely capitalist appeal, what was left was an event that served as nothing more than a book-end to the ATP tour's nine flagship events, and an anti-climactic denouement to the year's major quadrilogy. This interested nobody beyond the game. Within the game, it can be argued that the importance of the tournament was not only maintained, but improved. After all, points started to count towards ranking and the money was hard to ignore. But something was missing...an identity.

So here's my solution.

If this tournament is really all about (dare I say it) the money, then don't be ashamed of it - embrace it! Put the prize money at $10M for the winner if he is both a grand slam champion and finishes the year ranked #1 - you could clip off $2M for each of the two conditional compensations, and simply call the winner, if it happens to be someone like Nikolay Davydenko (instead of Federer, Nadal or Djokovic), the $6 million dollar man...I'm only half joking, by the way.

Also, they should put it at the same venue and leave it there for at least 10 years (in fact if they had a brain, would build a venue that they could keep it there forever). That way, the event and the venue would both benefit from the cachet of the other, and would help to perpetuate the other's viability. This business of chasing the money by changing the location every time someone shows up with a bigger check is the very reason that the women are now furtively begging to join the men at the O2. Although the venue is new, it has sufficient razamatazz to be an event in and of itself. The problem is that, at the moment, it's carrying the tennis. They should each do their own share of the heavy lifting and that's where the last component would come in.

Put the points to the champion on par with winning a major and make the final a 5-set match. Then the money and the points won't seem to have been capriciously handed out to someone who got hot for 8 sets. Making the final a 5-set match, and putting major-level points on the table would be the final piece to the puzzle making this tournament everything it should be both inside and outside of tennis.

So, $10M to the winner, major-level points, a consistent venue and a 5-set final. Now who could ignore that?

WHY IS EVERYONE SO AFRAID OF GOATS?

It seems to me there’s been a awful lot of fear of the GOAT debate running around, and for the life of me, I can't understand why. After all, this is sports, and we do keep records: who won a match, who won a tournament and who won a slam. All of these elements are important to fans because it is this very context that gives meaning to sports that separates it from the arts. I may love dancing as much as the man standing next to me, but aside from a few technical arguments on the proper form of this step or that, we really have no context for discussing which particular dancer is better than another.

But that’s not the case with sports.

In sports, and in particular in tennis, it is precisely the context of determining who is the better player in a point, game, set, match, tournament, year and era, that makes it compelling for those who follow the game. After all, you can prefer the tenacity of Nadal over the artistry of Federer, over the pure power of Djokovic; but at the end of the day all those elements are merely means to an end of determining who is the better player by something that is indisputable – results.

Yet somehow results have become the least important element in the GOAT debate, and it appears to have become fashionable to invent new and improved ways to look past the obvious (i.e. results) to something else that is the truest measure of greatness. But in my opinion, and as they say in the south, this is a bit like reaching around your ass to scratch your elbow. Today, the GOAT debate, and more importantly, the fear thereof, has been rekindled by the exploits of one Roger Federer.

As often as the fearful argue against the concept of the GOAT, detractors today typically argue more specifically against Federer as the GOAT. Mostly, they don’t debate his results, although some try to (rather convolutedly I might add), but rather offer variations on the problems with the GOAT argument itself. There are so many variations on arguments against his results as the truest measure of greatness that it is difficult to address them all in a single post, but here are some of the more common ones that are currently a la mode.

THE GAME HAS CHANGED

The argument goes like this: tennis is played very differently in 2009 than it was in say 1929 or 1959 or even 1989, and as such it is not reasonable to compare a player in 2009 to a player from 1929 to determine who was the better player. I suppose if you’re asking if say, Bill Tilden went into a time warp and played Rafa Nadal today, who would win, I think the answer is obviously Nadal. After all, Tilden couldn’t hit 100+ mph winners from behind the baseline, or 140mph serves up the T. Enveloped in this argument is that equipment has changed the game fundamentally – and this is very true. Tilden’s shots probably spun, at the most, 500 times a minute, whereas Nadal’s do so at 3200 rpm on average, and peaks at 5000 rpm. And these changes certainly would make it difficult for Tilden to beat Nadal.

But what about the alternate argument: what if Nadal were transported to 1929 without his modern equipment? I would argue that Rafa would at the very least have to completely regenerate his game to play in full pants on grass (almost all the time) with a racquet half the size, twice as heavy and with strings that impart almost no unnatural spin on the ball at all. I'm sure in time he would figure out a way to beat Tilden...or would he? What about Tilden? If you transported him from say, 1925, and gave him modern equipment, nutrition and accoutrements for 5 years, I'm sure he'd still never figure out a way to beat Nadal...or would he?

The point - this is what makes this argument entirely moot - because who would beat whom is not the question the GOAT debate is trying to answer.

The GOAT debate is trying to determine, given their circumstances who more often emerged as the best player at the most important competitions in their respective careers. In that context, if (God forbid) Rafa’s career ended tomorrow you could hardly say his was better than Tilden’s – after all, the pinnacle of both their eras was winning slams and 10 slams is more the 6. But then again, we don’t know what will happen tomorrow and for all we know we have either already witnessed Rafa’s last slam, or the 6th of 20 to come, which in either case, the case would be closed.

So what matters is not whether Rafa could use a slice forehand effectively, or if Tilden ever came over his backhand. It doesn’t matter that Rafa takes 35 seconds between points, but Tilden only played 50 times a year. What matters is that when it mattered the most (namely at the slams) Tilden emerged the best player more often than Rafa, although I am pretty confident that in 5 years, that will no longer be the case. It is, in fact, a macrocosm of determining a tournament champion – we don’t care that my first round was easier than yours, or that I played with wind on one day while you played under the roof. What we care about is who won – and we would no sooner name Ivo Karlovic the Wimbledon champion because he hit more aces than Nadal, than we would consider Rafa the greater champion because he hits harder than Tilden.

At the end of the day, what the players do either in technique or in tactics, is a means to an end - to win as many of the most coveted titles they can, and it is that measure that makes different careers perfectly comparable by this measure, regardless of the fact that the manner in which they achieved that aim has changed.

WEAK COMPETITION

This one is most often cited when comparing Sampras to Federer – the argument is that Sampras' era was full of grand slam winners, and as such, he had more of them to overcome than Federer did, and as such, while they have the same number of slams, Sampras’ slams were harder (due to the competition), and thus he was the greater champion. On the face of it, this seems to be the most damning argument against Federer. After all, very few of his contemporaries have won slams so it seems to make sense that his era was weaker – of course there is a very big problem with this logic.

First, the measure you’re using is not abstract – tennis is a zero sum game – someone wins and someone loses every single unit of competition in the game – there are absolutely no ties in tennis. And when it comes to the measure that we use the most to evaluate players and their place in history, the number of slams won, it is even moreso a zero sum game (if that's logically possible) – because in this case one person wins a slam, and 127 other players who contended lose - hundreds more who didn't don't even show up on the books. And of course there are only 4 slams a year, so if you win 3 of them, your competition necessarily appears weaker because you’ve won more of them.  But does this really speak to the quality of the contemporaries or that of the one who won more often?

Is Federer less of a champion because he won more?

His competitors necessarily won less often and by this logic qualify only as weaker competition?  I would ask you this – which do you think Sampras would have preferred – to win 3 slams a year 3 times or 2 slams a year 4 times – I’m quite certain he’d prefer the former. Why? Not to sound condescending, but because in sports more winning is better. In the latter he'd have 8 slams, whereas in the former he'd have 9 - but his competition would be considered stronger in the latter because he, in fact, won less often.

That just doesn't add up.

There’s also another problem – using slams to measure the competition of a dominant player, but setting aside that same measure when evaluating the dominant player himself, creates two separate systems of valuation that are inconsistent, not to mention contrary to the idea of sports and competition. Furthermore, it assigns more value to a player for something that he didn’t do – in other words Sampras gets credit for Agassi winning more slams when he was a contemporary of Sampras. But isn’t there something Sampras could have done that he didn’t, (that Federer did) that would have made this argument moot?  Of course there is; Sampras could have won the very slams that Agassi did; then he’d have more slams overall and Federer wouldn’t even be in the conversation.

At the end of the day, the competition is as strong as you let it be – never mind that Sampras never beat Edberg in a slam or Davis Cup, Edberg is still used to prop up the strength of Sampras’ competition. Another variation of this argument is that although Federer beat Agassi in slams, Agassi was older and weaker when Federer beat him than when Sampras beat him. So by this logic, was Edberg in 1995 better than Edberg in 1992 or 1990 for that matter? Was Becker in his prime in 1995 or in 1989? So why does Sampras’ competition get better, as they age, than Federer’s? For that you’ll have to ask those who support this argument - because I have no idea...well, I have an idea.

There are all kinds of variables on the competition even within a tournament – the Soderling that beat Nadal at Roland Garros was obviously not the same as the one who lost to Federer – but I give two arguments to the contrary – did Federer have anything to do with the quality of Soderling’s play in the final? Of course he did. And can anyone tell me honestly they think Acasuso, Haas or del Potro could have done in their first grand slam final what they did in the 3rd round, quarterfinal and semi-final? Probably not.

Wrapped up in this weak era argument is a microcosm thereof – Federer’s draws have been easier than his contemporaries. Because Federer always seems to wind up playing someone he’s beaten 10 times, you start to think that his draws are easy. But the rebuttal of this is so obvious that it’s easy to miss – if Federer’s draw is easy because he’s playing someone he’s beaten 10 times, doesn’t that speak to Federer’s greatness because he’s beaten so many players 10 times? 

Is it a sensical criticism that you win too often to be considered that good? 

It's more logical to say his draw is easy because he’s made it look easy, by beating his opponents over and over again in the past, and getting through the current one.  At the end of the day, the draw is as easy as you make it look. Nobody thought Soderling would put up much of a defense against Nadal in Paris this year because Nadal had just beaten him in Rome 6-1, 6-0, and had lost to him 3 times. But suddenly his draw was harder in Paris – why? Because he lost. So in the aggregate, by winning more, your draw looks easier, and thus you’re not as good as you appear? But does that make sense?

Doesn't winning more often make you a better player?

The range of variation from stroke to stroke versus from era to era is immeasurable. What remains the same is this – whoever Sampras played in his grand slam final victories, whether it was Andre Agassi or Cedric Pioline, they won 6 matches in a row, but couldn’t win the 7th. And whoever Federer played in his grand slam finals, whether it was Marcos Baghdatis or Rafael Nadal, they won 6 matches in a row, but couldn’t win the 7th. After all, isn’t 7 wins in a row what everyone was trying to do all along? Does the rest of it really matter?

THE #1 RANK

There is no doubt that earning the #1 ranking is a measure of consistency over the period of time the rankings are calculated. Therefore, how many years you’ve finished #1 seems to be a good measure of greatness. I wouldn't entirely disagree with that and would use that as a tie breaker between two players on equal terms in majors won.  But give any great player a choice between being #1 or winning slams and they’ll all choose slams. That’s because there are so many variations from one tournament to the next, in terms of effort, tours, commitment, etc., that the #1 ranking has a lot of holes in it in determining greatness. Slams, on the other hand, are the only pure competitive pursuits in the game of tennis - everyone covets them equally, and everyone comes to play. But there are other problems with the #1 ranking as compared to slams.

First off all, you can be ranked #1 without winning a slam – the list of players who have been ranked #1 without winning a slam is short, but damning nonetheless - Ivan Lendl in 1983, Carlos Moya in 1997, Marcelo Rios in 1998. Lendl and Moya eventually justified their ranking, but have the rankings always reflected accurately the relative value placed on various titles? If so, then how could the non-slam winning #1 be possible? At best, even though it often convenes with winning slams, the #1 ranking is a calculated reflection that has only existed since 1973, and has always been heavily weighted in favor of ATP events - even to this day (you could win the calendar slam, but if another player wins 6 Masters 1000s and 4 500s, by the ATP ranking you're on equal terms - that doesn't make sense). 

Before the ATP rankings, rankings were arbitrarily determined by various individuals based on a myriad of considerations that included foremost the number of the most important tournaments won but also included factors that changed as the game changed - namely before the game was unified under the single umbrella of the ATP organized tour in 1990.

Even so, there have been cases of players who have won fewer slams than their nearest rival, but still somehow finished the year ranked #1: Jimmy Connors in 1978 won the US Open – it was his only slam that year – Bjorn Borg, on the other hand won Wimbledon and the French Open – guess who finished the year ranked #1.

And on January 3rd, 1983 John McEnroe, who hadn’t won any slams for more than 12 months, somehow usurped Jimmy Connors to the #1 ranking despite Connors having won Wimbledon and the US Open in the previous year. Nobody considers the anomalies as problematic because the second best player at the time and since retained considerable gravitas – but the rankings made little sense then and as such, are not a reliable measure of greatness in the aggregate, because the ranking system has been so clearly flawed and more importantly inconsistent.  The same cannot be said of the majors.

HEAD TO HEAD AGAINST HIS GREATEST RIVALS

This one goes like this: at the end of his career, Sampras had winning records against all of his major contemporaries, whereas Federer appears to have a losing record to many of his major contemporaries – so how can you be the greatest of all time when you’re not even the greatest of your own era?

To this I give two names – Richard Krajicek and Michael Stich. Both players had winning records against Sampras over the course of their careers, and both played him often enough for those records to “matter” in the abstract (10 and 7 times respectively). So who was the better player Sampras or Krajicek? Sampras or Stich? Nobody in their right mind would argue the latter in either case and the reason is because they both won 13 fewer slams than Sampras did. In other words, when it comes to Krajicek and Stick, although their head to heads against Sampras were considerably better, clearly the measure of greatness was slams. But when it comes to Federer, somehow the measure of greatness turns to head to head versus Nadal, and Murray (of all people). So why use slam totals to propel Sampras past those whom he lost to more often than he beat, and not do the same for Federer?

In the case of Murray there is no good explanation. In the case of Nadal there are only two good ones – first Nadal has 6 majors himself, and thus is considered an all-time great.  But Federer has 8 more majors than Nadal, and if he were the better player in this era, shouldn't he have more majors?  That brings us to the other argument:  that Nadal will eventually surpass Federer. Well, then when Nadal surpasses Federer, he will necessarily be the GOAT – until then SPECIFICALLY AS COMPARED TO THE CAREER OF FEDERER he’s just like Krajicek and Stich to Sampras - he just happens to have a few more slams to his name.

The funny thing is, the one player who loses out in this discussion despite years of dominance that exceeds just about any other player in history, is Pancho Gonzales – whereas slam totals is the basis for Sampras’ and Federer’s GOAT candidacy, it is entirely head to head competition that is the basis of Pancho Gonzales’. But that doesn’t do anything for Sampras, who is most often cited as a more worthy claimant to being the GOAT than Gonzales. In fact you won’t get any argument from me if you suggest that Gonzales was greater than Federer – but you will if you say Sampras was – for now they are even, and if Federer gets #15, that’s one more than Sampras and in my view that makes him greater...by 1 slam.

NOT EVERYBODY PLAYED ALL THE SLAMS

It is historically ironic that the championship of the country that has produced more great champions in the history of the game than probably any other (with the exception of the United States) was for so long considered the red-headed step-sister of the slams. There are a lot of reasons for this that are not germane to the GOAT question, so I'll leave that to another post. What is germane is whether this matters to the GOAT argument.

Basically it goes like this - if all the greats always played the Australian Open, they would have won more slams and thus would look better historically.  Ironically, one of the other legitimate GOAT candidates, Laver, played every Australian Open he could, so that argument is not necessarily applicable to him (more on that later). But what about Connors, Borg and McEnroe - since they won so many slams on grass, they would surely have won the Australian Open more often, right?

Well, if that's the case, then Sampras and Federer should have won 5 Australian Opens, since they've both won 5 US Opens - oops...they've only won 2 and 3 respectively. In fact, Connors won 3 slams in 1974, and then proceeded to reach the final in 1975 of each slam he won in 1974 - the result - he lost all 3 finals all to players that he had easily beaten the year before, and generaly bettered in his career.

The point? There are no guarantees in tennis, so you can't argue that a player who won Wimbledon 5 times would have won the Australian 5 times, just because the surface was the same - why did Laver go 4, 3 and 2 in Wimbledons, Aussie's and US Opens? They were all on the same surface when he played, so he should have gone 4, 4 and 4 for that argument to hold.

There's another side to this argument - all the slams that were not available to professionals would have added to their career totals.  This is mostly an argument to pad the accomplishments of those that suffered the most during the schism between amateur and professional tennis before the open era began.  The most common example given is usually Laver, who finished his career with 11 slams, but supposedly would have had a lot more if he had been able to play as a professional. But there's a problem with this argument - if Laver had been able to play majors after turning professional, so too would Hoad, Rosewall, Gonzales, Trabert, etc. Thus they would all have been in a position to add to their totals as well, and more importantly prevent Laver from winning more. At the very least, we must discount Laver's total of 11 by the 6 he won as an amateur and start from there in this hypothetical slam total. He may very well have won 10 more majors, but it would have to be added to the 5 he won as a professional, rather than the 11 people normally use as the jumping point to arrive at his hypothetical total of 20+.

In fact even if he won half the majors from which he was banned from 1963 to 1967 he goes from 5 to 15. Speaking of which, Laver won 9 out of 15 of the 3 biggest professional tournaments he entered during that period (those tournaments considered the professional slams), which takes his total from 5 to 14.

So by this analysis, the best you could extrapolate from Laver's banishment is a total of 14 majors. Remember that the first US Open was in 1968 and the final was contested by 2 amateurs (Arthur Ashe and Tom Okker), even though professionals played that tournament (Laver lost in the round of 16), so there's no guarantee of how many he "would" have won had professionals played. But the best you can assume is that he is on par with Federer...for now.

CONCLUSION

We measure who is the best player on a surface by how often they win the biggest titles on that surface. Vilas may have a better record on clay, but few consider him greater than Borg because of their starkly contrasting records at the French Open. We measure who is the best player in a year by how often they win the biggest titles in a year – Connors may have amassed more arbitrarily assigned points in 1978 than Borg, but would anyone say he was the better player that year? No. Why? Because of Borg’s results in slams – 2 wins and a final, versus 1 win and 1 final for Connors. We measure who is the best player in an era by how often they’ve won the biggest tournaments in the game – so nobody considers Connors a better player than Borg even though he won 30 more titles – why? Because many of those were rinky-dink titles contested by rinky-dink opponents. But when everyone equally pursued the same title, Borg won more – namely 3 more.

So the question is – why are so many afraid to anoint the player who wins the most slams ever as the greatest player ever? One thing is for certain – it has nothing to do with results. And isn’t that more than mildly ironic when it comes to sports?

VOX POPULI, VOX DEI?

The ATP came out with a new look and feel to their website (http://www.atpworldtour.com/1/en/home/default.asp), and one of standard features, a link to head to head player comparisons, defaulted to one between Nadal and Federer. In the last incarnation of the old site a poll asked fans who would finish 2009 as #1 - guess who won?

Apparently, a few Nadal fans took umbrage at the poll itself, but more likely with the result: a majority of fans who answered the poll expect Federer to return to #1. This is an amazing conclusion given a few facts – in their 18 meetings, Nadal has won twice as often as he has lost, he's younger than Federer, his game appears to be continuing to improve and his 2008 season was one of the best in the history of the game.

So where’s the love?

A quick look at some statistics of their rivalry reveal something that may (sub-collective-consciously) contribute to why so many feel so confident that Federer will overturn last year’s results. First, of their 18 meetings, 10 have been on clay, of which Federer has won only one. To be fair, that’s about the same winning percentage on clay against Nadal as the rest of the tour combined, but nevertheless it shows one thing – those who would suggest their head to head is lobsided, without considering that more than half their encounters occurred on clay are ignoring the obvious question – what would the head-to-head look like if the encounters were evenly dispersed on multiple surfaces?

If we remove the clay court encounters between the two, we are left with 8 matches, and in these matches, Federer is up 5-3. On grass he’s 2-1 and on hard courts he’s 3-2. So if we extrapolate this out to have their encounters split evenly between 3 surfaces (clay, grass and hard courts) the record might look something like 1-5 on clay, 4-2 on hard courts and 5-1 on grass, in which case the overall head-to-head would be 10-8 in favor of Federer.

Fair enough, the number of grass encounters would, in reality, be minimal, but even if we give Federer the same results on grass as hard courts they're an even 9-9. But given Fed's dominance on grass, the 10-8 record probably represents what most feel is the relative difference in quality between the two.  So it seems the collective wisdom of ATP fans favors Federer, and the (adjusted) record seems to support it.

Of course tennis doesn’t work that way – it’s about results, and Nadal’s against Federer are better, but let’s compare another pair of titans and see how their results may have differed had their results been skewed towards one clearly favorable surface.

Borg and McEnroe played 14 times in 4 years, and split their results. Grass 1-1, Carpet 5-3 in favor of Borg, leaving their hard court results at 3-1 in favor of McEnroe – but fascinatingly conspicuous in its absence are results on clay. 15 years BN (that’s Before Nadal) Borg was universally considered the greatest clay court tennis player in the history of the game. In 9 years he lost twice at the French Open (to the same player) and skipped the tournament entirely in 1977. His career record on clay was 245 to 39: he lost as many on that surface as any of the others (except grass) but also played on it more than any other – in fact he won twice as many matches on clay as any other surface.

So, does anyone really think McEnroe would have split their encounters on clay?

Fair enough, McEnroe is underrated on clay because he never won the French, and it wasn’t his best surface, but not so underrated that he’d split his encounters with Borg.  In fact I’d say that if they’d played half their matches on clay (as have Federer and Nadal), and the rest on others, nobody would be comparing the Borg/McEnroe rivalry with any of the other historically great ones – the results would be too heavily in favor of Borg.

At the end of the day, it turns out that even head to head rivalries are a weak comparison of players because an anomaly like the number of times played (or not played) on one players’ obviously favorite surface, can skew the results.

Taken in a broader context, aside from his victory at Wimbledon and the Olympics this year – comparable to another hard court MS shield – Nadal’s results this year are comparable to his results in the previous 4. Federer, on the other hand has had a very unusual season – he failed to win a Masters Series shield for the first time since 2001 and failed to win more than one major for the first time since 2003.  Even so, he still reached 3 out of 4 grand slam finals, and remains, albeit precariously, #2 in the rankings. (I say "precariously" because I haven’t included Djokovic in this analysis.  No disrespect is intended - this column was inspired by the head-to-head between Federer and Nadal - but on a side-bar, The Djoker would have to repeat his victory in Australia to stay on Federer’s heels for #2, whereas Federer would need only reach the semi-finals in Melbourne to “defend his points”.)

Nadal on the other hand, has won just 3 of his career 12 Masters Series events on anything other than clay, with one each in 2005, 2007 and 2008, and would have to come up with a second Wimbledon and an additional non-clay MS victory (to match is Olympics victory) to defend his points in 2009 – a tall order for any man, including the best player in the world.

Perhaps in comparing the likelihood of each man repeating his performance of 2008 in 2009 the collective wisdom of ATP fans have concluded that Nadal has a harder road, whereas Federer would need to win at least 1 MS series tournament and reclaim an additional GS in 2009. Apparently, the fans believe the former is less likely than the latter.

Vox populi, Vox dei?

We shall see…