McEnroe is a closet 606v2 reader

First topic message reminder :

“How about making the size of the rackets smaller, reduce the sweet spot so you can’t get away with mis-hitting shots 17 feet behind the baseline. We need to encourage serve-and-volley. Court surfaces have been homogenised. There is an argument that Wimbledon is slower than the French [Open]..." http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/tennis/article3794367.ece (paywall).

Some will say that Mac is just trying to stir up a little controversy but I can't believe that!

Well I agree that Navrat vs Graf was a huge crowd puller in the 80s/early 90s. Probably as big as any male rivalry of that time. These 2 put on a much better show than their descendants 15-20 years later. The problem is slowing conditions have not helped women's tennis one iota. Its turned it into a ball-bashing fest with little variety on display, its just "drill-tennis" IMO. 5 sets of this is arguable in terms of quality as a viewable spectacle - but I bet Graf/Martina were much more capable of doing 5 sets than today's crop.

lydian wrote:Going back to an earlier BB post, yes the intrinsic brand equity of tennis as a whole may be important to slams and one sex may "subsidise" the other to protect slams' overall value/saleability given they are governed by cross-gender ITF. However, the odd situation in tennis is that under the ITF the main men's and women's professional tours are run separately - ATP & WTA. This arguably hurts tennis as a whole. There are good reasons for ATP & WTA merging - ensures leading male and female players attend the same event increasing gate receipts, giving more opportunity for cross-over PR events and expanded draws to include mixed doubles, etc. However, vested interests will prevent it happening.

Otherwise, the increasing problem for the WTA is that Eurosport, Sky, ESPN, etc, have a choice of which event to buy media rights for each week - and it isn't the WTA they generally plump for. I can only presume that for WTA players to earn similar amounts cf. men, the tournaments must be giving a bigger share of TV/gate money to the players.

Last I heard the WTA tour prize money was hopeless, in line with the interest in the tour.

I love the market, it causes all sorts of brilliant things to happen. It only goes wrong when governments interfere and mess it up (like legalising fraud [fractional reserve banking] and imposing monopolies in means of exchange [currencies]), or Intellectual property law, that sort of thing).

bogbrush wrote:It's like all this sort of stuff, you spend years saying it and being called an idiot, and then it becomes mainstream and "everyone" has been saying it.

It's like the financial crisis of 2008 that "nobody" saw coming. I did, I bored my friends with it and wrote to the government to raise some of the problems (both of that and the unbalanced economic dependence on services and finance). Doesn't stop people blaming it on America and bankers when that's total b*llocks.

America? I thought it was all the fault of Labour? At least that's what that nice Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne say and they seem to know what they are talking about.

Incidentally, who did you write to? And did you get a response?

Sorry, nothing whatsoever to do with tennis, just sounds interesting.

HM Murdoch wrote:

bogbrush wrote:It's like all this sort of stuff, you spend years saying it and being called an idiot, and then it becomes mainstream and "everyone" has been saying it.

It's like the financial crisis of 2008 that "nobody" saw coming. I did, I bored my friends with it and wrote to the government to raise some of the problems (both of that and the unbalanced economic dependence on services and finance). Doesn't stop people blaming it on America and bankers when that's total b*llocks.

America? I thought it was all the fault of Labour? At least that's what that nice Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne say and they seem to know what they are talking about.

Incidentally, who did you write to? And did you get a response?

Sorry, nothing whatsoever to do with tennis, just sounds interesting.

The problem wasn't America, nor was it Labour. It's the fault of people who vote for governments to give them stuff. Those governments then do all sorts of corrupt things, like borrow against future wealth creation to give stuff to people now that hasn't been financed by wealth creation (like Health services, Armies, that sort of thing). Gordon Brown pursued this with a vigour verging on maniacal, but he didn't start it. He also deliberately created the situation to promote the credit boom that allowed him to run this Ponzi scheme to extremes. Have you noticed how the deficit hasn't changed since we stopped bailing out banks? That's because the gap in state spending is no longer being made up by the proceeds of a credit boom - we can now see what was happening for real throughout the 90's (and to a lesser extent before).

The only reason Cameron & Osborne can't tell us all this is (a) the currency would crash on international sentiment when they accept the country is broke, and (b) they want to do some more of it themselves.

As for what I did, I wrote to various ministers telling them what was happening. I wrote to the Sec of State for Industry (Patricia Hewitt at the time) telling her that running the country on a credit orgy with inflation only being kept in check by flooding the country with cheap goods via a staggering deficit to China, based on their miniscule labour costs, wasn't sustainable. I also said that expecting anything good to come of imagining we could just live on selling insurance and hairdressing to each other really wasn't right. She told me that businesses had to be competitive (in the context of my comments on China) and I replied saying that as I'd been running one successfully in a highly competitive international environment for 15 years I knew this, but she wasn't answering the question. She also said that China provided low cost, unskilled type goods and this left room for us to do the high end stuff. I told her that she had no grasp of the long game being played by China and that very soon they'd start buying up our big branded high end producers, as they have. I didn't get a reply.

When I wrote to Brown asking how he justified running the country on a credit boom founded on unsustainably cheap money and telling each other our houses were worth more I didn't get a reply at all.

bogbrush wrote:Exactly where have you been since Chrissie Evert started playing?

As HB said, I have been watching since Willie Renshaw was a toddler. But seriously, I think gender discrimination is not a good idea.

I think Lydian's joint professional organization and a common tour may make things a bit better. ATP Masters and WTA Premier events seem to thrive independently of each other.

One downside to merging the two tours may have a cannibalising effect on both, so it needs to be planned accordingly.

Do we have to have this political stuff here? I don't want to be tempted to say something. I come here to escape this sort of thing...

BB - I always like this cracker:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”

OK - no more politics please - there's a general discussion section for that.

Indeed JHM. But just to add from my side...we either go for the capitalist approach and see the banks that support it run riot via greed (LIBOR, CDOs) or we go for the socialist model (China) and the state runs riot with greed (China's state owned banks are sat on trillions upon trillions of dollars flooding us all with easy credit - just what we needed). The Western public generally have no idea what they're voting in...the runaway economic rollercoaster just seems to get different drivers from time to time trying to get the thing back on track. The problem is we're running out of track and we cant fit everyone on the ride anymore.

Anyway, why has women's tennis got so bad?

lydian wrote:Well I agree that Navrat vs Graf was a huge crowd puller in the 80s/early 90s. Probably as big as any male rivalry of that time. These 2 put on a much better show than their descendants 15-20 years later.

Evert-Navaratilova was good, as was Graf-Seles.

lydian wrote:The problem is slowing conditions have not helped women's tennis one iota. Its turned it into a ball-bashing fest with little variety on display, its just "drill-tennis" IMO. 5 sets of this is arguable in terms of quality as a viewable spectacle - but I bet Graf/Martina were much more capable of doing 5 sets than today's crop.

The challenge is the term quality, which has very subjective connotations. Nadal-Djokovic for 5:53 is very similar to Schiavone-Kuznetsova for 4:44.

What is so different?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/tennis/australianopen/8276760/Australian-Open-2011-Francesca-Schiavone-outlasts-Svetlana-Kuznetsova-in-longest-womens-major-match.html

PS: Another example is this one - http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/sep/05/us-open-2011-samantha-stosur . Also note the 3+ hour reference to Stosur-Petrova match.

The only justification for not paying women the same is if they are not attracting the same revenue - and bb's post suggests that is so for the moment.  However, if the game suddenly throws up the next Graf, that might change overnight.  I think I'm correct in saying that when BJK and co successfully negotiated for equal prize money, the women's tour was extremely popular and so it was warranted.

Flicking between Royal Ascot and Eastbourne atm, and just find Miles M being able to come onto court and coach a sulky/near tearful Robson incredible - how on earth can some of the female players cope in the majors when they can't come through other matches without hand holding.  Not only is making sure you are match fit being part of being the best on the day, but also making sure that you (not your coach) are making the best tactical decisions at the right time.

@TP.. McEnroe was sulky/angry, while Connors was combative/rambunctious. Nadal argued with Mourier (during CoachingGate), Federer argued with Garner. Different emotions. Bepa (Zvonareva) cried after each loss. Sampras cried at AO.

Emotion on the court is perfectly acceptable, and reflects the competitive nature for these athletes. Not everyone can be IceBorg.

time please. I cringe every-time I see a male coach (and I have never seen a female one) come on court and tell a female player what to do. It's one rule I'd definitely like to do away with.

Sure, I take your point LF and of course it is good to see that Laura hates to lose - I don't mind the sulking/tearfulness per se as long as it translates into focus and fight which it didn't today.  I guess my point was that the women's tour is not encouraging resolve when coaches are allowed on court to 'hand hold' during tight matches.

@HE... The gender of the coach may not be as relevant as the ability to influence the future direction of play, with suggestions of shots, analysis of the opponent's weaknesses, etc.. On the ATP side, this is left to the player on the court to a large extent.

@TP... I quite agree. The points that BB and Lydian make about WTA are important to consider, regarding fitness, resolve, strength. There is an archaic weaker-gender attitude, that seems to perpetuate this aspect of the Womens' game.

Those debentures prices are mad. It's just the price for a few people really rich and desperate, not many would pay it. £500-£1000 per ticket, £3000 per ticket for men's final. I don't think that is the true value of every ticket, but I suspect they can sell a few to those who can afford it at that price. Let me put it this way. Imagine they dropped the ballot and giving tickets to clubs and just said on January 1st, right anyone can you to the website from today and start buying tickets in an open public sale. With the prices above. I don't think it would sell out, in fact I am almost sure of it. Most people wouldn't pay that. So, to my mind, the market value is the exact price that would cause every ticket but 2 to sell out, or maybe the last 2 tickets to be bought the night before.

None of that changes your point about the ratios, though. That is very interesting info. So not disagreeing with BB's argument, but making a different one.

Mcenroe's absolutely right. Lets give the top 4 players some proper rackets that don't disguise their frailities and then see how 'talented' they are. It would be nice if he talked about this on the BBc instead of his usual guff about a golden era.

I hear this a lot, e.g. give Nadal an old wooden racquet and he would be lucky to be top 50. Wrong. Talent is talent...what Mac is saying is lets put the emphasis more on skill, not fitness...it doesn't mean the top 10 would be any different at all...but the tennis on show would be.

Henman Bill wrote:Those debentures prices are mad. It's just the price for a few people really rich and desperate, not many would pay it. £500-£1000 per ticket, £3000 per ticket for men's final. I don't think that is the true value of every ticket, but I suspect they can sell a few to those who can afford it at that price. Let me put it this way. Imagine they dropped the ballot and giving tickets to clubs and just said on January 1st, right anyone can you to the website from today and start buying tickets in an open public sale. With the prices above. I don't think it would sell out, in fact I am almost sure of it. Most people wouldn't pay that. So, to my mind, the market value is the exact price that would cause every ticket but 2 to sell out, or maybe the last 2 tickets to be bought the night before.

None of that changes your point about the ratios, though. That is very interesting info. So not disagreeing with BB's argument, but making a different one.

The debenture tickets are for very good seats, so there's one difference.

However, fact is they sell. That means they're priced at east cheaply enough. And there are a lot of tickets sold that way. A lot. Perhaps with higher supply the price would fall - that's generally a fair principle for sure.

Stock brokers are always easily parted with their cash. Holding a debenture ticket sounds cool to their clients, it facilitates hospitality whilst closing deals over Pimms and canapes. It's got nothing to do with a fundamental love of tennis.

How do you know lydian re nadal and wooden rackets? 
Perhaps people say that because he may shank it more with the amount of topspin he generates.
Surely it's a pointless question as we don't know how well anyone would do with wooden rackets no?
Feds shanks high bh's with these rackets, he would probs shank a lot more with wooden rackets, due to the much smaller sweetspots.

lydian wrote:Stock brokers are always easily parted with their cash. Holding a debenture ticket sounds cool to their clients, it facilitates hospitality whilst closing deals over Pimms and canapes. It's got nothing to do with a fundamental love of tennis.

True, I never get why seats don't fill up for the first game. It's not only corporates though.

LuvSports! wrote:How do you know lydian re nadal and wooden rackets? 
Perhaps people say that because he may shank it more with the amount of topspin he generates.
Surely it's a pointless question as we don't know how well anyone would do with wooden rackets no?
Feds shanks high bh's with these rackets, he would probs shank a lot more with wooden rackets, due to the much smaller sweetspots.

They'd both have to play a different game. Hit through the line of the ball, that sort of thing.

LS, there are no empirical measurements clearly. I'm just going by gut (pardon the string pun) feel. You simply don't win all Nadal has without having prodigious talent at basically hitting a ball with a strung bat. We know 100sq.in sounds massive compared to Federer's 90sq.in but the difference is smaller than you'd think. Here's the actual difference:



Nadal played and won many of his slams using old tech strings...which are a bigger influence on performance than the racquet. He used Duralast 135 at 55lbs which makes that string feel really dead. It's an old school string, not like Lux or other poly's. Indeed, Babolat Duralast is almost a first generation poly. It's very, very stiff and loses tension very quick plus its very hard on the arm. The only reason Nadal used it is because when he grew up Duralast was the only "poly-string" option from Babolat but this was even before the first polymono-string. Babolat supplied all string-eating kids with a sponsordeal in Spain with this barb-wire and they grew up with it. So he got used to it but the string was absolutely out of date for any other modern player considering the other far better options on the market.

Despite all this Nadal has exceptional feel around the net so wouldn't have a problem volleying with a wooden racquet and gut string. He also plays with SW FH grip, unlike Djokovic, and is adept at slice so again shouldn't struggle too much adapting to a smaller faced racquet. I think Djokovic would struggle much more actually. But it's semantics.

I think Nadal and Federer should play an exhibition using wooden racquets. That would be fun.

Are all the tennis pundits and past legends who talk up the quality of today's talents also readers of this website and adherents to my view of tennis? Funny we have hundreds of references to the quality of today's tennis by past legends no one takes it as vindication of their beliefs. In fact, if I produced a quote by Mac talking up today's tennis and the level of play I would be hooted and hollered down by the peanut gallery on this website, in fact I have had that very experience. I find it funny that people who slag today's players and today's game as nothing special latch on to this one quote from McEnroe. Do they feel such affinity for Mac's opinion on the current level of today's players, other legends for that matter?

This is why this site is tired and boring and I find little interest here. It is like talking to Bruce willis in the six sense before he realizes he is a ghost, he sees what he wants to see. The same people who are vindicated by this statement are the same people who denounce and deride others when they produce evidence from past legends talking up the quality of today's play.

That's too simplistic Socal. Mac talks up the quality of today...but it's the type of quality on offer that's the fulcrum point. Do you also ignore the pro's of today who often say there is too much homogeneity leading to lack of skills and variety? Federer, Querrey, Tipsarevic...many others - if not Mac's then do you not take the word of the 17 slam winner who has played from 1998 to 2013 and seen the game change in front of him?

Personally I think we're in transitional times. The game IS becoming more attacking again but not in the way McEnroe would like to see. I don't mind a halfway house but you must accept that the ITF has clearly engineered the game into homogeneity where power from the back talks loudest.

bogbrush wrote:

Henman Bill wrote:Those debentures prices are mad. It's just the price for a few people really rich and desperate, not many would pay it. £500-£1000 per ticket, £3000 per ticket for men's final. I don't think that is the true value of every ticket, but I suspect they can sell a few to those who can afford it at that price. Let me put it this way. Imagine they dropped the ballot and giving tickets to clubs and just said on January 1st, right anyone can you to the website from today and start buying tickets in an open public sale. With the prices above. I don't think it would sell out, in fact I am almost sure of it. Most people wouldn't pay that. So, to my mind, the market value is the exact price that would cause every ticket but 2 to sell out, or maybe the last 2 tickets to be bought the night before.

None of that changes your point about the ratios, though. That is very interesting info. So not disagreeing with BB's argument, but making a different one.

The debenture tickets are for very good seats, so there's one difference.

However, fact is they sell. That means they're priced at east cheaply enough. And there are a lot of tickets sold that way. A lot. Perhaps with higher supply the price would fall - that's generally a fair principle for sure.

 
Debenture seats are an incredibly good deal - so good in fact that it's verging on the unfair.  I've got a mate who has debenture seats next door to his cousin, so they can put 4 seats on the market together.  The result is that over the period of their debenture they get to see all the tennis they want with friends and/or clients - they take it in turns to ask 3 guests each and the money they get back from selling their seats on the market when they don't want to go leaves them with a fat profit - it's an absolute no-brainer.  They always go on the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the 2nd week so they see the 4th round, Men's QF's and Men's SF's.  They usually flog the finals and the other days, but not always.  They are also first in the queue for the next issue of debentures.  When you have a CC debenture you also have guaranteed tennis.  If Wimbledon charged more they'd get it and the debenture holders would still profit. If I had the chance I'd buy a couple of debenture seats in a jiffy.

If you have a spare £50,000 knocking about for 2 seats at Wimbledon for 5 years then fine! Like I say, it's stock broker territory...and the tickets are generally only affordable by those into hospitality, etc, those who see Wimbledon like Ascot. It's the British side of tennis, like Queens and its poncery, that I don't like...it reminds us what an elite game it is in the UK.

Still, the holders bring money into AELTC for capital projects, without which there would be no roof, etc. Rough with the smooth.

@SoCal ... No one is denying the progression of skills and technology (in aiding better players). Five years from now, new posters on 606v2 may pronounce 2020 the 'strongest' era, with perhaps Tsonga on French TV extolling the virtues of the a certain #1 in 2020 named Fidovic.

McEnroe, and many others, see variety (the spice of life) missing from the current era. Who knows if 2020 will have only one surface left for Professional Tennis (perhaps clay).

Your favourite player being at the top if the heap, makes it even more special. He can beat recent legends of the sport.

Would you like to see a clone of yours across the net at your club and a stalemate of a match?

laverfan wrote:@SoCal ... No one is denying the progression of skills and technology (in aiding better players). Five years from now, new posters on 606v2 may pronounce 2020 the 'strongest' era, with perhaps Tsonga on French TV extolling the virtues of the a certain #1 in 2020 named Fidovic.

McEnroe, and many others, see variety (the spice of life) missing from the current era. Who knows if 2020 will have only one surface left for Professional Tennis (perhaps clay).

Your favourite player being at the top if the heap, makes it even more special. He can beat recent legends of the sport.

Would you like to see a clone of yours across the net at your club and a stalemate of a match?

There's a clone of socal?

@BB.. Just a figure of speech.

@SoCal... what if the entire world spoke just one language derived from Esperanto-Chinese-Arabic-Hindi (kind of like the FireFly-Joss Whedon series)? It would kill all other languages, correct?

laverfan wrote:@SoCal ... No one is denying the progression of skills and technology (in aiding better players). Five years from now, new posters on 606v2 may pronounce 2020 the 'strongest' era, with perhaps Tsonga on French TV extolling the virtues of the a certain #1 in 2020 named Fidovic.

McEnroe, and many others, see variety (the spice of life) missing from the current era. Who knows if 2020 will have only one surface left for Professional Tennis (perhaps clay).

Your favourite player being at the top if the heap, makes it even more special. He can beat recent legends of the sport.

Would you like to see a clone of yours across the net at your club and a stalemate of a match?

Yes actually laverfan people are denying the progression of skills Lydian and BB do it every day on this site. They go so far as to claim that murray and Djokovic are not really any better than they were in 2007 or 08, and Nadal of course is much worse. We hear about how servers are worse today than in the past and how simultaneously returners are also worse. So actual the first line of your response is just factually inaccurate if you read this website you will be inundated with how awful today's tour and players are and how deficient they are in racquet skills etc.

By the way do not remember the weight of journalistic opinion and past legends talking about the might late 90s or early 2000 boys, so that is incorrect as well.

lydian wrote:That's too simplistic Socal. Mac talks up the quality of today...but it's the type of quality on offer that's the fulcrum point. Do you also ignore the pro's of today who often say there is too much homogeneity leading to lack of skills and variety? Federer, Querrey, Tipsarevic...many others - if not Mac's then do you not take the word of the 17 slam winner who has played from 1998 to 2013 and seen the game change in front of him?

Personally I think we're in transitional times. The game IS becoming more attacking again but not in the way McEnroe would like to see. I don't mind a halfway house but you must accept that the ITF has clearly engineered they game into homogeneity where power from the back talks loudest.

Yes, the game is more homogenized, and I agree lets speed up the balls and courts at a few of the faster tournaments incrementally and see if the fans like it, I don't think they will like quicker points that was why the courts were slowed in the first place people were tired of ace fests and wimbeldon was pretty close to unwatchable in the 90s unless you loved pete. The players I see today play a baseline game but I see more and more emphasis and work on variety and rounding out their skill set. If you look the young players coming up play a much different game than Djokovic or Nadal.

socal1976 wrote:The players I see today play a baseline game but I see more and more emphasis and work on variety and rounding out their skill set. If you look the young players coming up play a much different game than Djokovic or Nadal.

This is a good point. Too often the point that surfaces have become more similar (which is undisputed) morphs into "the game is all about retrieving" which it really isn't.

HM Murdoch wrote:

socal1976 wrote:The players I see today play a baseline game but I see more and more emphasis and work on variety and rounding out their skill set. If you look the young players coming up play a much different game than Djokovic or Nadal.

This is a good point. Too often the point that surfaces have become more similar (which is undisputed) morphs into "the game is all about retrieving" which it really isn't.

If you look at Raonic, Harrison, Tomic, Dimitrov, and Jerzy they all play completely differently than each other and the current top players in the game. And they all volley and move in to net more frequently than the previous generation of players. This again is another square piece that doesn't fit in the round peg of a game just built on retrieving. Volleying is very much alive but volleying on the first ball in a rally is pretty much dead and was losing ground long before the big slowdown.

They're not terribly effective in the game as a whole though - none of the above are looking likely to overturn the top four - watching Tomic being outplayed by Simon as I write.

This is what happens when skilled players get on a fast court that rewards risk taking.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V7Yfv9b2mx4


It's fun.

time please wrote:They're not terribly effective in the game as a whole though - none of the above are looking likely to overturn the top four - watching Tomic being outplayed by Simon as I write.

With players having their best results in their late 20s it may be too soon to judge. They have been underwhelming to date but I do see signs of life and improvement in some of the younger guys mentioned. The point is not about them overturning Djokovic or Nadal, it is a point about how these players don't all play the same way and that they do still volley and use variety.

This is a good illustration of my views:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rz9lZDM-Po

A fast court, so few long rallies and plenty of winners. It would be nice to have some more courts like this.

But also there is no way that Djokovic is playing defensive, retrieving tennis. He's hugging the baseline but it's still attacking tennis and he's hitting plenty of winners from deep. 

That's why I think this labelling of Djokovic (and Rafa and Andy) as defensive retrievers is silly. Get them on a fast court and they're still the top players because they have the attacking weapons too.

socal1976 wrote:

time please wrote:They're not terribly effective in the game as a whole though - none of the above are looking likely to overturn the top four - watching Tomic being outplayed by Simon as I write.

With players having their best results in their late 20s it may be too soon to judge. They have been underwhelming to date but I do see signs of life and improvement in some of the younger guys mentioned. The point is not about them overturning Djokovic or Nadal, it is a point about how these players don't all play the same way and that they do still volley and use variety.

I understood your point socal - and personally I think that the next generation just isn't much cop because even if you take the top players out of the equation, then they are not beating anyone else or each other with any consistency or conviction.

But, by using them as an example as having different variety from the top players you are almost making the point for the other side - namely that homogenised conditions don't reward great variety in play - and that was the gist of my 'devil's advocates' comment.

Actually I agree with Murdoch's post, and I think that Federer, Nadal and Djokovic are all brilliant at turning defence into attack - but it would be nice to see the whole range of their skill sets which different surfaces would showcase to a greater extent.

HM Murdoch wrote:This is a good illustration of my views:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rz9lZDM-Po

A fast court, so few long rallies and plenty of winners. It would be nice to have some more courts like this.

But also there is no way that Djokovic is playing defensive, retrieving tennis. He's hugging the baseline but it's still attacking tennis and he's hitting plenty of winners from deep. 

That's why I think this labelling of Djokovic (and Rafa and Andy) as defensive retrievers is silly. Get them on a fast court and they're still the top players because they have the attacking weapons too.

Exactly, Murdoch I just find it interesting that some feel vindicated by this idea that McEnroe wants to ban technology. I can bring in books of quotes by top legends bragging about what a wonderful period of tennis we have seen the last 3 or 4 years, something that was not universally the case in past periods, and it will be dismissed as puffery and marketing. Yet when a legend mentions a point that they are making, then all of a sudden their quotations matter and are material to the discussion at hand.

Djokovic takes the ball extremely early and goes up the line more than anyone, both very aggressive traits which in our little fishbowl is ignored and only his speed and retrieval skills are commented on.

Timeplease, the youngsters aren't failing to launch because their variety isn't being rewarded. They have variety but also have big holes in their games, and also for years now we have seen the trend of players taking longer to develop. But yes they are not having a great deal of success in their early 20s and they probably will never catch the murray, djoko, or nadal generation in terms of success. If they don't improve and fast we will see a retrenchment and a transitional period quite shortly. Something that many people argued with me for years was a figment of my imagination as all eras were supposedly equally strong.

Fair point socal. I mean whenever we have heard Mac tip Andy Murray for success it is shouted down as a marketing ploy and he is only saying this to please the British media. So he was in error then but spot on now? Very selective eh?

Anyway I have a strong feeling changes are not far away. At the moment there will be no changes as we are being blessed with cracking matches and match ups. However, once this generation have retired and we are left with a big void then I believe the powers that be will look to shake things up.

socal1976 wrote:Timeplease, the youngsters aren't failing to launch because their variety isn't being rewarded. They have variety but also have big holes in their games, and also for years now we have seen the trend of players taking longer to develop. But yes they are not having a great deal of success in their early 20s and they probably will never catch the murray, djoko, or nadal generation in terms of success. If they don't improve and fast we will see a retrenchment and a transitional period quite shortly. Something that many people argued with me for years was a figment of my imagination as all eras were supposedly equally strong.

I think I said that - your first sentence that is

I was simply being a bit mischievous in my comment - you said that the difference and variety in several youngsters games showed that homogenised courts didn't lead to one style of play and I countered with 'they're not much cop'

It's easy to big up the game, as it benefits everyone in the game - as such you won't draw any criticism from players, fellow journos/analysts etc.
It's harder to be critical, and therefore more likely to carry more weight.

Here, for example, a number of ex-pros are worried about string technology - http://www.10sballs.com/2012/06/25/players-are-concerned-about-spraying-racquet-strings/

But if you don't care about such things when you watch tennis, then it's easily dismissed.

The advances in technology are a big reason why the players of today play at a higher level than yesteryear - which is why I find it difficult to say today's players are 'better'. Sure, they play at a higher level, but so would Mac if he was 25 this year - but he wouldn't be able to play the same style that everyone so admired back then (even if you hated him). That sort of artistry can't reap rewards these days.

JuliusHMarx wrote:It's easy to big up the game, as it benefits everyone in the game - as such you won't draw any criticism from players, fellow journos/analysts etc.
It's harder to be critical, and therefore more likely to carry more weight.

Here, for example, a number of ex-pros are worried about string technology - http://www.10sballs.com/2012/06/25/players-are-concerned-about-spraying-racquet-strings/

But if you don't care about such things when you watch tennis, then it's easily dismissed.

The advances in technology are a big reason why the players of today play at a higher level than yesteryear - which is why I find it difficult to say today's players are 'better'. Sure, they play at a higher level, but so would Mac if he was 25 this year - but he wouldn't be able to play the same style that everyone so admired back then (even if you hated him). That sort of artistry can't reap rewards these days.

I don't really understand why the ITF hasn't imposed stricter limits on racquet/string evolution.

Apparently the largest legal frame is 178 sq inches!

http://www.tennis.com/gear/2010/04/big-bubba-and-other-racquet-outlaws/38779/#.UcN1R9Bwa1s

Mac was timed serving at 130mph last year on Seniors tour with new racquets/strings.
I won't say anymore on this topic, getting like a broken racquet, er, record.

CaledonianCraig wrote:Fair point socal. I mean whenever we have heard Mac tip Andy Murray for success it is shouted down as a marketing ploy and he is only saying this to please the British media. So he was in error then but spot on now? Very selective eh?

Anyway I have a strong feeling changes are not far away. At the moment there will be no changes as we are being blessed with cracking matches and match ups. However, once this generation have retired and we are left with a big void then I believe the powers that be will look to shake things up.

Yes and when I compliment murray it is also seen as an attempt to talk up Djokovic's competition and not just that I find a lot to rave about in murray's game. It is just strange craig in that I have quoted people like Agassi, Mac, and Sampras about the strength of today's game and you would think by the reception it received here on 606v2 that I walked into a crowded elevator and ignited a pile of week old dog poo and human hair. Some people acted quite angry that I would try to use the obviously biased opinions of legends of the game to further my arguments and it was dismissed as mere marketing. But it is interesting how some of the same people's tune changes when they agree with said legend.