To the last remaining Golden Era adherents

There are now only NINE better players today than Juan Monaco.

Juan the Weaponless has broken into (or walked through the open door to) the top 10 for the first time at the age of 28. I wonder how far he can go?

I'm sorry, but a Golden Era this isn't.

BB, this is the golden era.

You forgetting to overlook into certain other things, this is the golden era for oldies or players of late 20's and early 30's to make some serious inroads in their rankings.

Juan Monaco worked hard all his years to be in top 10, finally he ceased an era where he can get his best results on .

I won't be surprised if Roddick makes it into top 10 again considering his recent form, he and Tommy Haas might be the surprise entry in WTF .

I seriously don't see the likes of Berdych, Almagro,Isner [Come on I don't even remember the current top 10, they are getting flipped like coins of WTA] challanging Roddick and Haas in upcoming hardcourts.

Btw I just recently checked ATP [last week I guess] and was shocked to see Almugro in top10 , this seriously have to be the golden era.

It goes to show that the 30 somethings were quite a talented cohort of players - thus leading to the present Era of Golden Lions (TM).

It's also the Golden Era for good young players, in that they are about as abundant as nuggets of gold in my back garden.

I see no reason why Andy Roddick couldnt make it back; as he waved goodbye to Wimbledon the other week he had been surpassed in the rankings by one young prospect.

May I just point out that the strongest adherent of a golden era is conspicuously absent from the boards since that 4-set loss in the Wimbledon SF... :cough:

I kind of agree and semi disagree with BB...there has often been a gulf between the top 2/3 and everyone else, even those at #10. After all we've seen Nadal and Federer both destroy Monaco in recent times. But clearly Monaco is getting the wins against other players outside the elite of the game.

Its hard to say whether the top 3 today are so far ahead of the others or the others are so far from top if you know what I mean. My feeling is that Monaco has had a good run but isnt true top 10 material...but then neither is perhaps Fish...or Tipsy...ahhhhh - its a weak era!!!!! No it isnt...yes it is............oh I dont know!

The telling thing is if you go to http://live-tennis.eu/rankings_under_21 and see where the youngsters are at....there's basically Raonic is at #23, then next up is Tomic at around 50 - and going backwards. So the game has a real paucity of 21s and under coming through,,,not good for the game in my opinion.

Out of the top 100 there are 7 x 21 and under players...and 5 of those are 21! Tomic is the only under 20 player there. We have seen with guys like Federer/Nadal/Djoko, they break into the higher levels of the game quite early on...so this is telling us we may be headed into wasteland for a few years unless someone off the radar suddenly surprises us...but I dont see signs of anyone doing that. I thought Goffin perhaps but he's not physically strong enough to do it IMO. Raonic is probably the only true top10er out of the lot but even he has serious limitations.

So...might not be quite a weak era now...(outside top 4)...but it may be coming!

Addendum....one of the issues for me is that the new breed of up and comers have been taught identikit tennis without much flare...they cant cut it against guys who have learnt the game a bit further back with more variety. Infact next to the older wily guys the youngsters seem 1-dimensional in general. Physicality alone wont do it...they have to have the game as well and outside Goffin and possibly Dimitrov (all of whom need to toughen up) I dont see much potential of variety at all. Raonic is just a big server really, his movement isnt great.

When we get the equivalent of Tommy Haas at No.2 then we can talk about 'weak eras'

lydian wrote:Addendum....one of the issues for me is that the new breed of up and comers have been taught identikit tennis without much flare...they cant cut it against guys who have learnt the game a bit further back with more variety. Infact next to the older wily guys the youngsters seem 1-dimensional in general. Physicality alone wont do it...they have to have the game as well and outside Goffin and possibly Dimitrov (all of whom need to toughen up) I dont see much potential of variety at all. Raonic is just a big server really, his movement isnt great.

Great point. If Raonic get's to No.1 then it'll be time for my Tennis watching to take a back seat for a short while (can never keep away for long )

However, is he any worse than the then one-dimensional Michael Stich, who gave us the most depresssing Wimbledon ever in 1991. Granted, he improved and of course the courts were different, but I do think we tend to be a bit harsh about today's breed

Yes Stich, serve aside, wasnt the most graceful of movers but did have a lovely SHBH though - and to get to finals of Wimby and French Open does show some ability to vary the game given those surfaces were truly different back in the early-mid 90s.

Agree re: Raonic being #1...the 2nd coming of Sampras he certainly is not. Even the fabled serve isnt as good.

The problem is the coaching these days...its lazy, lazy, lazy. Low risk, high percentage. Even the LTA scheme for juniors bases progression around the ability to ralley for ever increasing lengths of time. I go to various junior coaching functions and tournaments and they;re all the same....lightweight, whippy Babolat racquets and DHBHs...if they start to show any different ability, e.g. slice the ball SHBH'ly they're almost told to cut it out and keep to the DHBH topspin shot as its better %. Its this attitude that kills all potential flair in the young players. Can you imagine Sampras being allowed to change to a SHBH these days...?

Totally agree with lydian, this isn't the weak era but boy could one be headed our way soon.

My point isn't that this is weak, but that it isn't 'Golden', as the media would have us think. Not with the age profile Lydian describes, and not with Juan the Weaponless riding high.

I just pray for two things; that the people running the game see this and tilt the odds back to variety - the SHBH, the slice, the volley - and that some kids take as their inspiration Federer and try to emulate that style. Just enough to give us a break from the ball bashing, which like the poor will always be with us.

I just wish somebody had seen this coming. Sorry, I mean someone with clout; there are enough of us who did to put a lie to any statement that it couldn't have been foreseen (just as the 2008 financial crash, and the 2013-18 financial collapse were foreseen by many of us too).

And since when has age got anything to do with how golden an era is?

A conundrum for you all? Roger Federer is widely-regarded as the greatest player of all-time and has just won Wimbledon and his first slam for two and a half years. Why, therefore, if this any sort of a weak era has it taken so long for the greatest player of all-time to win a slam? Surely, he should have cleared up in such a weak era and if not then why not?

It is all very well to use Almagro's appearance in the top ten as evidence of a weak era or whatever you want to call it but equally I could fish players out of any era you want to mention from top tens and I'd guarantee people would say they never rated them. One exampl in July 2003 World No.8 was Rainer Schuttler (4 career titles) to Almagro's (12 career titles).

I don't want this topic to drag on as it never gets anywhere so I have said my one and only piece on this subject.

Good to see there are still some flying the flag!

Almagro is a decent player...always was, and was mooted as such a while back. He's in the Kuerten mould of very attacking clay players...you wont hear complaints from me about him...on his day he can challenge just about anyone. Its the ballbashers, or rather pushers, that are bringing the game down. People blame Nadal but the rot had already set in with the slowing down from 2001-2003. Nadal actually plays with more variety than a lot of them if you watch his game properly. Thats why he's won 11 slams. Its the ones who drill the ball backwards and forwards cross-court at about 80% power of the top guys who are mind-numbing.

Its time for coaches to take risks, make their charges play with risk...and go after their shots. Just 2 problems...modern technology and slow surfaces. Until we see that change then we wont be seeing any changes...just more and more DHBHs and more Monaco's. Never has the expression 'Monte Carlo AND bust' been so apt...

In baseball they have to use wooden bats...not the modern composites...we need some regulation in tennis. Ok not wooden racquets...but no bigger than 90sq.in, no less than 18 x 16 crosses, and no less than 55lbs tension...and ban luxilon (poly) strings...that would make a HUGE difference to the game overnight without even slowing the surfaces down.

SHBH = Single Handed Backhand?
DHBH = Double Handed Backhand?

Is that correct? If so, nice abbreviation.

Aye thats the one!

I think where this old chestnut of a debate invariably gets messy is in the conflation of two assessments which are commonly seen as one and the same but which in reality are quite different.

By which I mean : it might actually be fair to call this a Golden Era, but in the specific sense that the more objective and balanced sections of media often do : ie, that three of the very best players in tennis history are all playing at the same time, firmly ensconced in the top three spots with a combined total of 33 Slam titles between them. I'm not sure how many previous eras - if indeed any - there may have been with quite such a scenario.

However, the tiresome talk of a fictional weak era suddenly being replaced by a Golden one was a fallacy largely peddled by so many of the deluded, shrill and wholly 'unobjective' posters on the old 606. I'm in no doubt that many folk here will know precisely the sort of (now-departed) posters I mean. Many of them of course had their rambling articles shot down in flames so often that they resorted to the use of multiple ID's - both as a doomed attempt at escaping the shame of constantly being proven wrong in so many wild predictions ; and in a misguided effort at convincing the gullible that there were any number of people ready to back up their flawed views.

For some of them the 'revolution' begun as far back as 2008. The theory, touted with so much conviction, was that Federer - who allegedly epitomised the so-called weak era - was now history and a new age had begun with Djokovic winning the A0 O8, joining the already established, multi-Slam winner Nadal. And then a young JMDP conveniently came along to win the USO 09, and the theory was given added credibility - for a short while at least. Djokovic did of course go on to still better things as we know only too well, and no doubt more success lies ahead. But meanwhile Federer - who was meant to have been killed off by the 'young lions' somehow kept hanging around. So much so that in the past 4 years or so the ageing Swiss managed to win as many Slams as Djokovic (although three fewer than Nadal).

The only other Slam winners amongst active players are (I believe....?) Roddick, Ferrero and Hewitt, But of course these are the oldies, not young lions. Ok, only Roddick seems to have anything left to play for but the fact is there isn't exactly a plethora of youngsters ready to pounce and replace him

Which brings me full circle to invisiblecoolers assessment - ie that this CAN be described as a golden generation - but a generation mostly of oldies, not fresh young things, whether lions or otherwise....

And further evidence is provided by the fact that eight years on from 2004 the guy who was World Number One back then is still there now ; and now aged 31.....

Plus ca change .....

lydian wrote:In baseball they have to use wooden bats...not the modern composites...we need some regulation in tennis. Ok not wooden racquets...but no bigger than 90sq.in, no less than 18 x 16 crosses, and no less than 55lbs tension...and ban luxilon (poly) strings...that would make a HUGE difference to the game overnight without even slowing the surfaces down.

This needs publicising.

And of course there is only 1 current player who plays with anything near this spec

lydian wrote:And of course there is only 1 current player who plays with anything near this spec

Now who might that be...

spuranik wrote:May I just point out that the strongest adherent of a golden era is conspicuously absent from the boards since that 4-set loss in the Wimbledon SF... :cough:

To be fair he was on that night and congratulated Federer.

I suspect the usurping as#1 two days later might have been a pill too bitter....

bogbrush wrote:

lydian wrote:In baseball they have to use wooden bats...not the modern composites...we need some regulation in tennis. Ok not wooden racquets...but no bigger than 90sq.in, no less than 18 x 16 crosses, and no less than 55lbs tension...and ban luxilon (poly) strings...that would make a HUGE difference to the game overnight without even slowing the surfaces down.

This needs publicising.

What I like about this suggestion is that it does something to regulate power. We don't want to back to 1990's Wimbledon and modern strings have, to an extent, balanced the pure power of modern racquets. Lydian recognises that you can't take them away without a counter-balance.

bogbrush wrote:

spuranik wrote:May I just point out that the strongest adherent of a golden era is conspicuously absent from the boards since that 4-set loss in the Wimbledon SF... :cough:

To be fair he was on that night and congratulated Federer.

I suspect the usurping as#1 two days later might have been a pill too bitter....

Wait until he's back before having a go eh?

All I can say is once the surface turns to the hard stuff, Monaco will sink like a Poopie sandwich!

The trend tends to be that players ranked around 9-30 hit a purple patch of form and rise through the rankings. Their lack of versatility prevents them from cementing a more permanent place in the rankings. I would probably go as far as saying that from 1-7, there will be little change, whereas beyond that it really does become a pick and mix.

barrystar wrote:

bogbrush wrote:

spuranik wrote:May I just point out that the strongest adherent of a golden era is conspicuously absent from the boards since that 4-set loss in the Wimbledon SF... :cough:

To be fair he was on that night and congratulated Federer.

I suspect the usurping as#1 two days later might have been a pill too bitter....

Wait until he's back before having a go eh?

I'm shocked.

See how shocked I am?

Everyone knows me to be the most peaceable and uncombative of posters.

irrefutable...

I do find it strange that some 'posters' have taken a time out similar to their favourite players

One issue that isn't being considered in this 'wee Kiera' debate is the dominance of the top 3 and solid consistency of #4 and #5. Both Fed and Djokovic have over 11000 ranking points, while Monaco, at the bottom of the top 10 has 2695 (so about a quarter as many as #1 and half as many as #5 and #6). One MS tournament win or good run in a slam can move players a long way up the rankings in the lower part of the top 20.

For comparison, picking the equivalent week from 2003, and Agassi was #1 with 3940 points (roughly 8000 under the current ranking values) and Jiri Novak was 10th with 1945, so just shy of half as many points as the #1. This illustrates how the ranking points were more spread around 10 years ago.

Monaco's ranking is based on winning 3 small tournaments this season (2 x 250 and 1 x 500) - none of the big name players took part in these, so the ranking is based mainly on good targetting of events. Admittedly, it does say something about the lack of young talent coming through that there isn't a 20 year old winning these types of event, and that the youngest player in the top 20 is Nishikori at 22 yo.

I'd say it's a period where there is a lot of strength at the top of the game, but not that much below and a scary absence of promising youngsters coming through - it certainly looks like there could be another transition period (similar to the gap between Sampras and Federer) coming up in 2 or 3 years time as the top 5 or so fade away.

ha ha good one!

bogbrush wrote:

barrystar wrote:

bogbrush wrote:

spuranik wrote:May I just point out that the strongest adherent of a golden era is conspicuously absent from the boards since that 4-set loss in the Wimbledon SF... :cough:

To be fair he was on that night and congratulated Federer.

I suspect the usurping as#1 two days later might have been a pill too bitter....

Wait until he's back before having a go eh?

I'm shocked.

See how shocked I am?

Everyone knows me to be the most peaceable and uncombative of posters.

Of course bb

I miss socal. He is just so passionate and volatile and great to read. I love his crusade against Fed extremists and all his conspiracy theories. He is a really articulate poster and has given us all such memorable moments especially when his heart overrules his head in the heat of the moment - but he is great at sending himself up too .......Fognini anyone?
The sparring between bogbrush and socal has definitely provided some brilliant comedy!

Hope he is back soon.

I'm sure he'll be back to post his gems of wisdom, once his injured pride has mended.

He posted a really gracious congrats on the semi thread I read.

Sometimes life gets in the way.......and sometimes we all need a break

Indeed...

I spat my crunchy nut cornflakes when I heard of this desperat news.

Players like Monaco an Ferrer play a totally different sport to champions like Federer, Sampras and even Djokovic!

reckoner wrote:I'm sure he'll be back to post his gems of wisdom, once his injured pride has mended.

It'd better be really well mended.

I'll be waiting.......

My bet is we won't see him until Djokovic has won the US or he's securely #1 again. In which case, it was nice knowing him.

bogbrush wrote:

reckoner wrote:I'm sure he'll be back to post his gems of wisdom, once his injured pride has mended.

It'd better be really well mended.

I'll be waiting.......

My bet is we won't see him until Djokovic has won the US or he's securely #1 again. In which case, it was nice knowing him.

If he's really not come on since the final because of wounded pride, rather than any other reason, I think we'd see him back in the event of Djoko winning Gold.

Well I expect the poor chap feels a little foolish after all the triumphalist nonsense he spammed the boards with. Time is a great healer so I'd imagine that's all it'll take.

So last of Djokovic fans have left the forum then? , I don't see Djoko returning to no.1 anytime sooner, it might happen in 2013, but guess what Murray would out score him in 2013 for the no.1 title.

Be good to have him back, especially as hes joined the rest of us (apart from bantroban & Craig) in seeing their favourites toppled from the peak and may be a bit less certain.