Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Debunking Tennis’ Biggest Myths
Once in a while, I will get into discussions with friends, tennis fans, and even on a few message boards about some of the specious points of views lingering around tennis circles and clubhouse dialogues regarding men's tennis. It never ceases to amaze me to find out that people have developed opinions based on spurious facts, or simply based on something that they have heard so many times that they now believe it to be genuine and sound.
In the process, facts become distorted, certain players undeservingly become failures, and what starts out as a harmless exaggeration turns into a "well-known fact." Unless anyone takes the time to do a little research and find records or facts, these claims turn into "common knowledge" in the blink of an eye. Some of these may sound obvious to people who follow tennis closely. My advice to them is to bring these up with their friends and see if it's that obvious to them also. I doubt it.
Let's start with one that I hear more often than any other, and yet it is perhaps the easiest to find out with a few clicks on the Internet. It's the misguided notion that Rod Laver won all his titles during the amateur era, hence should not be considered when debating who should be the greatest player in the history of the game.
Just to set the record straight, Laver won the Grand Slam twice, the second one being in 1969, more importantly, during the open era! To exclude Laver from the open era discussion would be no better than excluding Rubik's cube from an '80s games discussion or excluding Bob Marley from a history of reggae discussion.
Another misguided fact about Laver is that he was lucky because three of the four slams were played on grass. Roger Federer and Pete Sampras fans love mentioning this, in hopes of eliminating Laver from the greatest of all-time discussion, in favor of their idols. Unfortunately for them, it does not change the fact that Laver won French Open twice, which their idols have yet to do once, and won many important tournaments on various surfaces, including the Italian Open on clay, U.S. Pro hard courts in Boston, and Philadelphia Indoors, to name a few. If this does not sound convincing enough, just to name a few, put your idol against Tony Roche, Arthur Ashe, John Newcombe, and Stan Smith on grass back in those days and see if he can win all three grass court slams in the same year.
Simply put, the man was a winner on every surface, indoors and outdoors. Out of major players since the start of the open era, Roger Federer, Andre Agassi, and Bjorn Borg are the only ones who have proven to be winners on every surface (sorry, John McEnroe, Sampras, Mats Wilander, and Ivan Lendl fans).
Speaking of Federer, that brings up the next fallacy. Who in the world started the rumor that Federer is a weak clay court player? Superficial followers of tennis who only see the red dirt occasionally during Roland Garros pickup the newspaper on Monday following the tournament, see that Federer did not win it, and label him as a clay court failure. Not only Federer is an excellent clay court player, he is probably the best clay court player for the last three years outside of Rafael Nadal, who himself happens to be the best clay court player in the history of the game (okay, I am willing to entertain the Bjorn Borg vs. Nadal clay court discussion, but only because it's Borg). If it takes Nadal to dethrone Federer from being the best on clay, I will argue with anyone and everyone that Federer is one of the best clay court players in the open era.
Here is another good one: Borg never won the U.S. Open nor the Australian, therefore he should not be included in the discussion with Federer, Laver, and Sampras. Please! During the late-'70s, none of the top players bothered to go to Australia to play. Borg declared many times, he would have gladly gone to Australia if there was a chance to complete the Grand Slam for him (back in those days, Australian Open was the last Slam to take place). He did not because he lost four times in the finals of the U.S. Open, twice to Jimmy Connors and twice to John McEnroe.
The U.S. Open for Borg was not the same case as Sampras at the French Open or Lendl at Wimbledon. Borg could win on all surfaces and reached the finals of U.S. Open twice on hard courts, losing to the best talent tennis has seen in those days by the name of John McEnroe. Even when he passed up on the French to prepare for Wimbledon, the best that Lendl could do was to reach the final. Sampras was quite miserable in Paris outside of one semifinal appearance. This is not the case with Borg and the U.S. Open. And just for good measure, think of how many players won Roland Garros on slow clay and came back few weeks later to win Wimbledon on slippery and fast grass, just once. Well, Borg did that three times in a row.
I will finish with the latest invalid belief. It's the one claiming that Rafael Nadal is strictly a clay court player and has not proven himself on any other surface. It's a matter of time before Nadal wins a Slam other than Roland Garros. In fact, if not for Federer, Nadal may have won on grass courts of Wimbledon already. He has already won several big hard court tournaments, including a title in Dubai's hard courts with a win over Federer in the finals. At this point in time, I am willing to go even a step further and claim that he would be the best player on all surfaces if Federer was not around. Nadal and Federer are both getting these undeserving reputations because they happen to be playing during the same period.
At the end of the day, I love discussing the game and the players. Setting the record straight happens to be a necessary evil that comes occasionally with those pleasant debates.