C_C
International Captain
Lendl played and competed well till he was 32 or 33 i think. Agassi has played longer than most but it is obvious that his fitness level is a lightyear ahead of other 30-year olds- today or in the past.
And Agassi isnt a physical monster ? Can you show me another tennis player who moved as well as Agassi does at the age of 33-34 ?
No- nobody did.
Agassi's continued excellence is due to his superb fitness and not decline in tennis quality.
There is a difference between ' i had retired over 10 years ago' and 'i am comming to the end of my career'.
Yes, thank you for reminding me of Borg- still, players who succeed from the get-go are much rarer.
Agassi beat Federer in the first few years of his arrival - when Federer was still a newbie...He is only 24 right now and 3-4 years ago, he was still learning the trade.
20-21 is a stage where a lotta players are getting dominated by the old guard. Sampras didnt win a title till 2 years after turning pro and didnt win a grand slam for 5 years after turning pro.
Roger didnt win a title for the first 3 years of his professional career and won his grand slam in his fifth year. Like Sampras.
Sampras had a losing record to Becker, Lendl, Edberg, etc in the first few years of his career as well.
That is nothing uncommon..like i said, apart from Borg, Becker and maybe a few others here and there, almost everybody loses far more than they win for the first few years after they turn pro.
Look- it is a fact that competition today, as in the last 4-5 years,is stronger than it has ever been.
That is why you see such a mixed bag of grand slam winners and semi finalists - because today there are atleast 50-60 players who can beat anybody if they are performing at 100% and the other person has so much of a 5-10% drop in efficiency.
That is a fact that every tennis expert acknowledges- You didnt have so many quality players in the 1990s or infact anytime before.
You didnt have players of the callibre of Carlos Moya outside the top 25, you didnt have players like Chela outside the top 30, etc.
The difference between Sampras( or Borg/McEnroe/Lendl/Becker, etc) and Federer's era is this:
Today there are dozens and dozens of players who can win a grand slam because they are pretty good and their games are pretty good.
Back then, there was a group of higly skilled dozen or so players, who routinely featuredi n the QF/SF of all grandslams and the 'can win a grand slam' field was much smaller.
That is something people like McEnroe, Tracy Austin, Becker, Agassi etc. openly admits- and that is evident if you see a 2nd round US open match from 1992 and one from today.
Federer's forehand is predictable ?!?!
Is this why he hits so many winners from his forehand side ?
He takes longer to release his forehand than a quick-releaser like Courier or Agassi but Sampras had a big windup to his forehand too.
Sampras had an excellent running forehand- true. But like i said, Federer rarely plays a running forehand, because he is such a good mover- he is definately a superior mover than Pete is, which means he gets to the ball quicker and is in position quicker than Pete is.
And if you are in position, you dont play a running forehand...running forehand isnt considered a big deal in tennis - its something that is a bonus but you do not require it if you are an excellent mover like Federer.
As per the best forehand, i agree with most names in your list as being near the top but one glaring omission is Magnus Gustaffson- he had undoubtedly the best forehand of the 90s. Players- even players like Sampras- avoided his forehand side almost with the same feindish dedication as players avoided Steffi Graf's forehand.
Muster had a giant forehand and was a superman in terms of fitness.... he was not a typical claycourt bully like Bruguera - he had the game to win on hard courts except for his serve, which was rather weak.
But his backcourt game was definately good.
Federer makes stunning shots almost every match- he made stunning shots when he lost to Safin and Nadal. He simply creates shots that someone like Pete never did- like i said, his level of shotmaking isnt seen since the days of McEnroe.
His back-court game is better than Agassi's IMO. His forehand is much bigger than Agassi's, he has the touch that Agassi( or practically anybody) lacks and his backhand is a rocket- with a single handed backhand, he has more court coverage than Agassi as well.
His serve and volley- his serve is slightly behind Sampras's IMO but his volleying is superior.
He just doesnt volley as much as Sampras did because Federer is one of the few who can truly dominate from the baseline or from the net. It is a harder to pass Federer than Pete IMO...the only volleyers i can say were definately superior to Federer were Edberg, Becker, Rafter and McEnroe.
And having watched Pete all his career, i've never seen Pete beat any baseliner who's playing well without serve and volley. I saw him beat Agassi once in Indianapolis playing from the baseline but that was during Agassi's slump, where he eventually dropped out of the top 100.
You classify them wrong, because every single top 10 today has a game that is superior to Rusedski and his like.
The reason they dont stay there long enough is because the pool is lot more competitive today than in the past- again, hear the expert opionions on this matter and watch a lotta tennis and you'd find this.
The latest generation of rackets and feindish following of the Bollitieri school of tennis has produced players who are much more of a complete packages and not the dodos from baseline like Henman or dodos from the net like Bruguera of the past.
Hewitt is a modern day Agassi, though of slightly lower quality. He is still a damn sight superior to players like Courier though- grand slam or no grand slam.
Roddick doesnt have anything apart from Power- his touch game is totally lacking. But his power from serve, forehand and backhand is good enough to overpower most players- today or from the past. A player who's only grasscourt loss for the past 3 years have come to Federer is by no means a crap grasscourt player. He isnt in the Edberg-McEnroe-Becker-Sampras-Federer-Borg-Rafter category of grasscourters but he is definately in the group immediately below that echelon.
Safin is the Goran of 2000s because of his mental frailty. Oterhwise, his game is much superior to that of Goran's. Goran's backhand was about as reliable as Vancouver's weather(which is to say, non existant reliablity).
Roddick is definately better than Todd Martin/Stich or Scud IMO.
Federer simply has a much superior game to anyone i've seen, barring Laver. And i've seen Laver a lot from videotapes. His game is very much like Lavers- that is, perfection.
The closest to perfection after Federer IMO would be Borg, not Sampras. I consider Borg to be the greatest player of the open era after Federer, with Sampras a close third.
Borg was basically the pioneer of the modern baseline game. He is the first not to have the 'handshake' grip ( something you see Henman having and thus his baseline game sucking so bad- since handshake grip and topspin dont go well together), he was the first to give heavy topspin and his accuracy was unmatched- nobody was more accurate than Borg. If you watch 'the match' between Borg and McEnroe ( the 5 setter wimbledon final that mr loudmouth lost), you'd see how accurate Borg was. He hit the 'T' half the time in that match and McEnroe hung in there basically due to his genius shotmaking. Nothing more.
What more, Borg could volley pretty well too but like Agassi, he didnt control the point from the net but rather came in to finish a point- though IMO he was a significantly superior volleyer than Agassi.
So as far as i am concerned, Federer has the most complete game in the Open era that i've ever seen and Borg had the mental constitution of a behemoth, alongside a fitness level that none could match(not even Lendl or Agassi), the accuracy that nobody has ever duplicated- before or since and a versatility that is hard to match.
That guy retired at the age of 26 with the best record ever at grandslams( in terms of win%) and apart from Laver, he is, i think, the only player who's won wimbledon and French open in the same year- that too, thrice.
In his last year, Borg had a record of winning the french open and comming runners-up(both times to McEnroe) at the WImbledon and US open.
Dont forget, back in those days, Australian Open was considered a 'minor tourney' and nobody payed much heed to the Aussie Open...so essentially outta 3 grand slams and playing for 8-9 years, he won 11 and came runners-up in i think atleast 5 others( r.up at US open 4 times i think).....
All this by the age of 26...i have very little doubt if Borg played OZ open( he only participated once) and played till a normal retirement age ( 30-32/33), his grand slam record would've been untouchable.
