Recognize this fellow on the left? That’s Rod Laver.
Ever since Roger Federer won the French Open and captured the career Grand Slam, that is, the Australian, the French, Wimbledon, the US Open sometime during their lifetime, there has been discussion of who is the greatest of all time or the less than glamorous acronym “GOAT”.
Discussions don’t go very far without invoking Rod Laver’s name though most people would be hard pressed to say they’ve seen more than a few points. Laver excelled during a period when live tennis was exceedingly uncommon. Those who live through his reign are 50 or older.
Most people pick players they have seen. Thus, few people would pick Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain or Oscar Robertson as the best basketball players ever because so few have seen them play. This fate may befall Michael Jordan except in the modern age of video, many of us can now relive these games of yesteryear.
Some say the question isn’t fair. When players like Becker and Lendl and Agassi began to dominate the sport, those who remembered Laver, such as the venerable Bud Collins, would opine that were Laver using the modern equipment and trained in the modern ways, that surely, he would be among the best. Genius, he felt, transcended eras.
Lately, there are those who say that you should only point to players of a certain era, thus, they divide eras into the wooden era and the graphite era, which almost (but not quite) divides neatly into the Open era and the pre-Open era.
Let’s try this exercise. A tennis “generation” has very little to do with human generations which may last anywhere from 20-30 years depending on how you like to divide up recent history. Since a player typically has about ten good years in them and maybe ten blah years, if they last that long, a tennis generation is perhaps a decade.
It’s arbitrary, of course, to use round years like 1970s, 1980s, etc as the delimiter of a decade. Why not 1973, 1983 and so forth? And why 10? But given a lack of a definitive alternative, we fall back on the tried and true, though completely arbitrary, decade markers.
The 1960s
Let’s start in the 1960s. The 1960s have almost on debate. Laver had his rivals, primarily Australian rivals, that include Ken Rosewall, Fred Stolle, John Newcombe, Roy Emerson, Tony Roche, and so forth. But all you have to say is “two Grand Slams”. Laver wasn’t the first to win the Grand Slam. That would belong to Donald Budge who won it in 1938.
He won 11 titles which the same as Bjorn Borg, but several of the years he wasn’t allowed to compete because the Grand Slam was exclusively amateur until 1968 when professionals were allowed to compete. This became the “Open” era since it was open to pros and amateurs alike.
Laver benefitted from a few factors. The Australians dominated tennis in the 1960s. Indeed, in all 11 of his Grand Slam titles, only two were against non-Australians. And Laver was the best of the Australians who famously trained under Harry Hopman (who later moved his operations to the United States). Hopman infamously made his practices far more challenging than actual matches so the matches would seem like a breeze.
Laver’s two Grand Slams nicely fit as bookends to the decade.
The 1970s
1970s. This is a difficult decade to judge the best. The beginning of the decade featured players like John Newcombe, Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, Ilie Nastase. These were players that started in the last half of the 1960s, and were on the downslide in the second half. The 1970s also saw a major shift away from grass. The US Open moved from grass to clay (Har Tru) then from clay to hard courts. Tournaments were being played on Har Tru in the US, although it did not favor Americans, well, at least, North Americans.
There are three names that come up: Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, and John McEnroe. Connors probably had the best year: 1974, where he won 3 of 4 Grand Slam titles. Borg had his five Wimbledons and 6 French titles, but 3 of the titles more properly fit in the 1980s. Finally, McEnroe didn’t start winning titles until 1979 when the decade was pretty much over. So you have to exclude McEnroe.
If we cheat and say the years are from 1972 to 1981, then you can pick Borg. Borg won 11 titles, include 4 French in a row, 5 Wimbledons in a row, and 3 double French-Wimbledon wins (1978, 1979, 1980).
If you have to quibble against Borg, you can say that the Australians were in decline. There weren’t great serve and volleyers until McEnroe rose to fame. Indeed, between Borg and Connors and Vilas, you were seeing a sea change in the style of men’s play, one that would forever change how the game is played. Serve and volleyers playing with continental grips were being replaced by ground strokes hitting with semi-Western grips and big topspin.
Connors is Borg’s closest rival. He had 8 Grand Slam titles, including 5 US Opens (on 3 surfaces), 2 Wimbledons, and an Australian. Connors won the most titles of anyone, and had a career that spanned not only most of the 1970s, but all of the 1980s, too. If you pick someone based on longevity, Connors is your man.
The 1980s
The 1980s is a really difficult decade to pick a dominant player. Arguably McEnroe did most of wins in the 1980s. He won the US Open in 1979, 1980, 1981, 1984. He won Wimbledon in 1981, 1983, and 1984. 1984 was one of tennis’s most dominant periods where McEnroe won 82 matches and lost 3.
It’s a good trivia question to say who he lost to. The obvious one is Ivan Lendl. McEnroe came as close as he ever had to winning the French in 1984 reaching his one and only final. He steamrolled in two sets before Lendl clawed his way back to win his first Grand Slam title. The second was Vijay Amritraj. Amritraj, whose career in film production may be more successful than his tennis career, was a player of the 1970s, but was still on tour even in the early 80s, and had a shocking win over McEnroe. The final loss was a Davis Cup tie against Sweden played in an indoor clay court in Gothenburg. He lost to Henrik Sundstrom.
Now, realize he only won two Grand Slam titles that year. What about the Australian?
McEnroe simply didn’t like to travel to Australia. For that matter, neither did Borg or Connors. The Australian Open had dropped so far off the radar that for two consecutive years, Johan Kriek and Steve Denton, made the finals. These were not the Nadal and Federer of their days. Indeed, Borg would probably be around 14 titles himself had he actually played the Australian Open a few times. McEnroe could probably have been at 11 titles easily instead of 7.
McEnroe’s career went downhill once he lost at the 1985 US Open to Lendl. Like Borg did in 1981, McEnroe took a few months off. Although he would make the semifinals of Grand Slam events even until the early 1990s, he was never the same player, partly because the new graphite racquets that came in the early 80s were finally being wielded by players that played them since they were 10. Thus, came Becker, Edberg, and eventually Agassi.
If you have to pick a best of the 1980s, it probably has to go to Lendl. If people have qualms about Federer and his inability to handle Nadal (and Murray to a lesser extent), just look at Lendl. On the early end of his career, Lendl had problems beating Borg, Connors, and McEnroe (though he had a brief period where he beat McEnroe 7 times in a row). In the middle and later parts of career, Wilander, Becker, and Edberg gave him trouble. Then, he lost to players like Pat Cash that only ever seemed to play well at the big ones but had mediocre records otherwise.
Indeed, because Lendl could never quite come to a dominant period, he has one of the worst win-loss records in Grand Slam finals. Sampras made it to 18 finals, but has a gaudy 14-4 record. Lendl was in 19 finals. He won only 8, which is admittedly 1 more than McEnroe. That means, he was 8-11.
Here are some stats to Lendl’s favor. Made the finals of the US Open every year from 1982 to 1989. He was in the Master’s final every year from 1981 to 1989. He was in at least 1-2 Grand Slam finals every year from 1981 to 1991 or a decade of solid performance.
So I pick Lendl as the best of the 1980s, as much for longevity and consistency. He just performed badly in finals.
The 1990s
Pretty much, you have to pick Pete Sampras. He won starting in 1990 and won in 2000 and 2002. He won the most Grand Slam titles ever.
He had some competitors like Edberg and Becker, but Edberg and Becker had their heyday in the mid to late 1980s. Though Edberg played well in the early 90s, it wasn’t enough for an entire decade. Edberg suffered a bit from players like McEnroe, Lendl, Wilander, guys who beat him when he first got on tour, and then Becker later in his career. Edberg and Lendl syndrome but worse.
Courier had some good years at the beginning of the 1990s, but had real tough times beating Sampras and eventually faded. Chang used to beat Sampras as a junior and had a decent early career against Sampras until Sampras realized he just hit a lot harder than Chang, and essentially never lost to him. The Americans were very strong during this period, and Sampras was the best of them.
Agassi was his main rival, but in the end, Sampras had a huge serve, and could play well enough off the ground to break him once a set. Agassi’s career was up-and-down. He played well at the start, slumped in the middle, and concluded strongly.
In a sense, Sampras played at a good time. Becker and Edberg were still good, but they had played 5 years earlier than Sampras, and he just enough better than them, and both Becker and Edberg had enough flaws not to get to finals all the time. He was better than the remaining Americans. The other good players of the day, e.g, Kafelnikov, Ivanisevic, Pioline, Bruguera, etc. all had problems with Sampras’s serve or ground game, and the new generation (Hewitt, Roddick, Federer) had yet to come on their own.
The 2000s
Well, so far, you have to give it to Federer, only because Nadal doesn’t have a big enough body of work, and by the time he does, it will be 2010.
Summary
- 1960s Rod Laver
- 1970s Bjorn Borg (if you cheat a little)
- 1980s Ivan Lendl (mostly because his rivals didn’t dominate the entire decade)
- 1990s Pete Sampras
- 2000s Roger Federer