[BLOG] Open Era Generations, Part Nine: Gen 7 (1964-68) - Mats, Stefan, and Boris

[El Dude]

Its the slow time of year, but here's some reading for your pleasure (hopefully).

I apologize for the lateness of this latest installment - holidays and all. Hopefully the remaining segments will come out every 1-2 weeks. We still have:

Gen 8 (1969-73) - Sampras, Agassi, Courier, etc
Gen 9 (1974-78) - Kuerten, Kafelnikov, Moya, Rios, etc
Gen 10 (1979-83) - Federer, Hewitt, Safin, Roddick, etc
Gen 11 (1984-88) - Nadal, Djokovic, Murray, Wawrinka, etc
Gen 12 (1989-93) - Nishikori, Raonic, Dimitrov, etc
Gen 13 (1994-98) - Kyrgios, Coric, Chung, Zverev, etc

So that's six installments. I might do a seventh wrapping up and an addendum on Gen 14 and beyond. I was hoping to have this done by the AO, but that isn't going to happen.

 

[El Dude]

Whoops, for got to "stick" it.

 

[Kieran]

To me, Mats was the greatest of these players. He had that Nordic myth cool-guy schtick down to a T. Sometimes he was so chilled, he made Borg look flustered and fiery by comparison. After his great season on 1988, he both lost interest and motivation, and his father was unwell, and this affected him. In another typically Borg-like way, he just disappeared from contention. Mats also shared with Rafa the distinction of being the only man to win 2 majors on each of hards, grass and clay.

Boris under-achieved. By a country mile. 2 slams by age 18, then only four more over the next 13 years. I criticised Boris enough here so no need to repeat myself, but we all know he invented the losers lap of honour at Wimbledon, and he seemed to have a huge ego it could accommodate victory and defeat in a way that maybe Kipling didn't quite imagine.

Edberg was class, a svelte game, not a huge serve but busy behind it, and of course one of the great volleyers. I think to an extent he over-achieved beating Boris in the two Wimbledon finals he won, because I always felt that if he'd had a mind like Borg, or Sampras, Becker could have won six or seven Wimbledons. But Edberg was the more honest of the two, in terms of effort, and he was a good #1 after Lendl, and before the resurgence of US tennis...

 

[El Dude]

The difference between the three isn't unlike the difference between, say, McEnroe and Lendl. McEnroe might have been a more brilliant player than Lendl and better at his very best, but Lendl had a better career in almost every way. And so it is with Wilander vs. Edberg/Becker. The only edge Wilander has in terms of career accomplishments is the one extra Slam, and I suppose also the three-Slam year, but Edberg and Becker had more titles, more years as elite players, and Becker five more Masters equivalents. One of the clinchers is that Wilander never won the year-end championship while Edberg won it once and Becker three times (five if you count the WCT and Grand Slam Cup).

But the three are very, very close. At various times over the last few years since I've been playing with systems, I've ranked each of them as the best of the three. I started with Wilander, went to Edberg, and now give Becker the edge.

 

[Kieran]

Mats checked out aged 23. He continued to play but in that way we forgive of great Swedes, he was already gone, a living myth. He also won two slams on each of clay, hard and grass. He had more fortitude and went further with less great talent than the others. He won his majors on clay when Lendl was a monolithic top dog. He faced off with Mac and Connors too. When they all declined, Edberg became a bigger factor.

It will probably always come down to a matter preferences, and that kind of cool heroic player always appeals to me more than hysterical emotional sorts, or narcissists, but certainly stats don't tell the whole tale. I admire Edberg next out of the three for his great effort, the backhand and the volleys. Edberg was always a great honest competitor. There were a good few of them around in the shark infested waters of the eighties, and he started out looking like a lightweight, but built himself up to be heavyweight, not in physical sense but in how serious he had to be taken. The great bully of the age was Lendl, and Mats did well against him in majors, from memory.

By the way, the three-slam year shouldn't be underestimated. It was far tougher to do back then and this is shown by how infrequently it occurred: just once before, with Connors. Nowadays, with the tampering with the sport and the compatibility and compliance of the opponents, it's become commonplace. It's become easier. But when Mats did it, it was extraordinary, and it was a huge part of why he lost motivation afterwards. What else was there left to do? The game was tougher then, and he achieved that!

 

[El Dude]

I think you are answering the question in a different way than I, Kieran. As you said, you are answering based upon your personal preferences, who you like. But when ranking players I'm trying to do so objectively, aside from personal preference. The only player I find myself tempted to fudge the numbers for is my all-time favorite, Mr. Federer, but I think because I'm aware of this temptation I can avoid it. But I have no such temptation with these three, so the lenses I employ--the statistical systems, methods of analysis--aren't biased one way or the other. They aren't perfect--no system can be--but they aren't biased or based upon personal preference. There is some subjectivity involved in that I'm assigning values and weights based upon my best judgement, but it I don't rank the players like I would a lost of my favorite films - which would be entirely subjective, based upon my personal preferences.

There's nothing wrong with having a personal preference, of course--and I like your style, Kieran, and greatly enjoy your takes on players--but I'm trying to figure out who was the greater player, who had the best career, aside from my personal preference (if you're curious, I liked Edberg the most of the three). That has nothing to do with preferences - I'm not stacking the deck, just using different metrics to look at the three from. In the several ways that I've used to look at the three, Becker and Edberg come out above Wilander. It is close, but the gap is large enough for me to feel confident in saying that Becker and Edberg were both overall greater players than Wilander.

(By "greatness" I mean a combination of career accomplishments and peak level; if we're talking only the latter, then the three become much closer and the argument for Mats becomes stronger. But Edberg and Becker had superior career accomplishments and consistency).

 

[Kieran]

No buddy, I'm saying we all come at it from a position of personal preference. We see this every time we compare players from the past, and when we compare players of the present with the greats of the past.

Mats began his career in an era of great lions, and he won 7 slams by the age of 23. If anything can be held against him, it's his lack of longevity. This likewise, with Borg. But in their favour is the notion that they burned so brightly so young, it was impossible for them to sustain it. I can include Becker in this also, because he found fame hard to handle, but I went off him because he became so egotistical about it. He also choked away the 1991 Wimbledon final in gruesomely spectacular style.

Personally speaking, I think both Borg and Mats were so iconically cool they added to the sport by the way they burned out so young, and didn't detract from their legacy too much by it...

 

[Kieran]

By the way, brother, I enjoy these blogs and I'm not disputing your conclusions, because as you say, Edberg and Becker had longer careers and Edberg was twice year-end #1. They're three great players from maybe the toughest era imagineable: the 80's...

 

[El Dude]

Actually Kieran, I'm not coming from a position of personal preference. I don't really care who ranks higher among Edberg, Becker, and Wilander. As far as the rankings go, I'm not just eye-balling it - they are based upon a statistical formula. Occasionally I'll give a subjective adjustment, but it is rare and has nothing to do with who I prefer (usually it is giving a player with less longevity but greater peak level a boost up). An example of this is that the main system I use to rank players has Rosewall higher than Laver, because Rosewall played so many years and won 23 Slams, four more than Laver. But you won't find anyone who sees Rosewall as a greater player.

The reason I like to use statistical systems is that they give a perspective that isn't based upon subjective impressions and personal preference. Now of course you could argue that whenever you assign values to certain things there's some subjectivity involved, but the point is that the same system is applied to each player equally. In other words, applying a system to these three players allows us to see them on even ground, through an objective lens. Stats aren't everything, but they help a lot towards evaluating and comparing players.

But yeah, I agree that the 80s were a tough era. These three were caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of Connors/McEnroe/Lendl on one side, and Sampras/Agassi/Courier on the other.

One more thing. The Borg-Wilander comp only goes so far. Borg retired while in his prime, while Wilander tried to continue for a few more years, then made a comeback in 1993 and played for a few more years. He really limped to the finish line of his career. To put it another way, from 1989 to 1996 he played 95 tournaments, or 41% of his total of 233. He won only one of the 95 tournaments, a pretty low ranked one--the Citibank Open--in 1990. The point being, he doesn't quite have the mystique of Borg, the feeling of "what could have been." We see what was, and it wasn't pretty. More comparable players whose last act was so poor compared to their peak would be Lleyton Hewitt and Jim Courier.

 

[Kieran]

That's a good post, buddy. Nobody's accusing you of jury-rigging the vote, but I agree, stats only give a partial picture. Context is provided subjectively. We have to martial all the variables.

As for Mats, he played on but the fire was gone. Borg played on too, though not 45% of his career. Likewise, with Borg, the fire was gone. In 1983, he wasn't who he'd been. I'm sure you get what I mean about the Norse myth aspect, the tennis fan as romantic, the players as legends. They provide us with a picture we project our imaginings onto. Some players do, anyway. Other players are rogues, villains, we blow raspberries at them. It's all good theatre. Boris could have been a Sampras, had he a Sampras brain. Edberg was the one who stuck diligently to the task, and reaped a couple of seasons in the cusp where he was #1. I enjoy these blogs because they bring up good stats and old stars. Most tennis fans today think the game was invented around about the year 2000...

 

[El Dude]

Yeah, I hear you about the mythic aspect. I wonder what will be said about Nadal, Federer, and Djokovic in 20 years...I have a feeling that in less time than that we'll be missing them. Imagine 5 years from now when Fed and probably Rafa are gone and Novak winding down...

And yeah, I hear you about how short our memory is. The main impetus behind writing this series for me was to better educate myself, to research different eras and uncover forgotten players. Hopefully this has helped others do that as well.

 

[Kieran]

I think as well, some players and rivalries have that mythic thing more than others. Example, Borg-Mac holds the imagination better than Sampras-Agassi. In fact, Pete hasn't been more appreciated since he left, maybe because his records became instantly under threat from not one, but three great players. His time will come.

Fedal will definitely grow after they're gone. The arguments will continue and it'll probably take about twenty years when we watch both of them joshing in the commentary booth at Flushing Meadows that we fans will finally unite and properly love them both. I never thought I'd grow to like McEnroe and Connors, but through their media work, I did...

 

[El Dude]

One reason the Borg-Mac rivalry was so epic is that it was so close, and it also saw the passing of the baton of greatest player on Earth from one man to another...and perhaps the fact that second man was an American inflated the whole thing via the American media. Andre simply wasn't a match for Pete - they were two different levels of player, not quite as wide as Djokovic and Murray but not far from it.

As for Fedal, I am sometimes shocked at the ire directed towards Rafa. As you know, I have great appreciation for him and have even made arguments that he is as worthy as Roger for the GOAT (after 2013 I was thinking he'd surpass Roger, no problem, but now...). But yeah, hopefully in a few years we'll all be able to look back and appreciate them both, and of course that Serbian upstart...

 

[El Dude]

Unstickied. Last chance to get in on this blazing hot thread