hi slacker,
re: Tennis has improved?
emphatically, yes. the tennis players of today are so much better than the ones of 50 years ago, that the difference is on par with comparing today's "dream team" basketball players against an all-white team from the early 1950s. but unlike basketball, today's tennis is even better than it was five years ago, and ten years ago, and fifteen years ago...
i should mention, i am only talking about men's tennis. women's tennis is not even worth talking about since it is so unevolved (it will be interesting in about 30 years, but i digress...)
most casual tennis watchers in the US have absolutely no idea about tennis today, because they only care about US athletes, and US athletes are a pretty minor part of the men's game today. therefore, they only watch men's tennis if it's Pete Sampras vs. Agassi or whatever. this is of course boring if it involves Sampras, because he is no longer a dominant force (despite winning the US Open) who is a retro serve-centric player. his style cannot win consistently against the players that dominate today.
basically, the serve-centric game was dominant following the introduction of graphite rackets. those with booming serves just cleaned up. this is of course very boring to watch, and that seems to be your impression of what men's tennis is. but that is the wrong impression. or rather, that kind of tennis is not what most of the game is about anymore. (if booming serves were all tennis consisted of these days, i'd totally agree with you that it hadn't evolved at all, but i'm going to tell you why that's wrong, in perhaps mindnumbing detail :)
take a look at the men's top 10. the list is at atptour.com. Hewitt is number 1. he's 5'11" and weighs only 150 lbs. the guy is a soccer player, basically: he runs everything down. but unlike the "retrievers" of yesteryear (like Michael Chang), Hewitt actually has power (thanks in part to more powerful rackets, and in part to better conditioning, and in part to better biomechanics) to hit winners from any part of the court. he also comes to net.
number 2 is Agassi. this guy does not have a big serve. he deserves a lot of credit because he has evolved his game to fit the times. he had great natural talent (hand-eye coordination), and he added strength (he can bench close to 300, which is pretty good for a guy weighing 170 lbs) and great aerobic conditioning. this is why Agassi has been a great success whereas Sampras has become a has-been (Sampras was too complacent to train hard [do you remember him puking at the Open in 96? quite dramatic! but not an indication of the best fitness] and just relied on his big serve...he got lucky, basically, when he served unconscious for 2 weeks at the Open, but he can't do that consistently, which is why it's the first tournament he's won in over 2 years, and why he's not in the top 10 now and probably won't be at this time next year, either).
number 3 is Safin. even though he's Russian by nationality, he's Spanish as a player. that is because he trained in Spain on clay from the age of 14.
number 4 is Henman, who is a classic serve and volleyer. he has a great net game (and you said the volley was dead!) and a decent serve, but his ground game is not good enough to hang with the "soccer players". it is really, really hard to be a serve and volleyer these days, because the soccer players have such good returns. they will take a full swing at a 125 mph serve and hit it right by you (Sampras won the Open not because of his serve speed, but because he can hit both corners, and his toss is unreadable [meaning you don't know which corner he's going to; you can ace anybody at 90 mph if you hit the corner at a good angle; the hard part is doing it consistently through a long match; basically, it is hard enough to do through a set, extremely hard to do through a match, mindboggling hard to do through a whole tournament {which is why even Sampras can only win one tournament every 3 years with this game plan} and probably impossible to do for a year {which is why a soccer player is number 1, and not a serve and volleyer}. to get an idea of just how incredible these soccer-style players are, you should watch the match where Hewitt killed Henman at Wimbledon this year. that was on Henman's best surface, on his home turf (literally), and he had been playing well. but Hewitt was just so fast and his reflexes so quick, he left Henman in the dust. it was just amazing to watch. like seeing a mongoose kill a cobra. after the match, Henman said, "that's why Hewitt's the best player in the world." after watching that match, i don't see how anybody can call the hypertrophic steroid abusers of conventional American sports "athletes".
numbers 4, 5, and 6 are Costa, Ferrero, and Moya. these players are all Spaniards. add in Safin (who is effectively a Spaniard in his training, which is to say his origin as far as tennis goes), and 4 of the top ten players are Spaniards. what can you say about Spanish tennis? i guarantee you it is not at all about "watching two guys blast 120 mph serves and one or two returns".
their native surface is clay. clay is slow. you slip and slide. points are long and fought from the baseline, till somebody can put away a volley (yes, claycourters hit volleys these days) or a baseline winner.
imo red clay is the best surface for the men's game, because it limits the impact of serves. the best tournament in tennis is the Roland Garros, the French Open. what the hell has Sampras or any other big server ever done there? Sampras has never made the finals. somebody who's never made the finals of Roland Garros has no business being called "the greatest ever" (except by the US centric media).
number 8 is Tommy Haas, a German (although trained at Bollitieri's Academy in FLA since age 12, so American in style). his game, and the game of number 10 Roger Federer (Swiss) is basically all court. more power than the smaller Hewitt, but not as fast.
number 9, Roddick, is really the only one in the top 10 with a monster serve (perhaps the fastest in the game). but this has not enabled him to have anything like the success of number 1 Hewitt, who is nearly the same age and doesn't blow people off the court with speed.
so what you'll notice about the top 10 is that it is not full of your 10-year-old cliche of big servers. it is also not full of Americans. it is full of Europeans, mainly. and almost everybody has an all-court style of play. they are thin and fast, and have great endurance. they don't have rallies of "one or two balls" as you seem to think.
there are only 6 Americans in the top 50; only 9 in the top 100. Spaniards and South Americans dominate. they do not play the type of game you imagine tennis to be based on channel surfing through some boring Sampras match. i urge you to recognize that the tennis you have been presented on TV is a very skewed (very Americanized) animal. the real tennis happens on the red stuff (clay) in Europe and, to a lesser extent, in South America.
next year, check out the French Open (it is in May or June). prior to the French, there will be several warmup tournaments on clay in Europe which will be televised on ESPN2 or USA Network. check these out to get an idea of what the game really is. the game Sampras could never handle. |
