Open Era Generations, Part Three: Dominance from Down Under

[El Dude]

I don't know what happened to the original thread--it seems like a bunch of threads were lost when the site went down--but here's part three in my blog series on Open Era generations.

 

[Kirijax]

Thanks El Dude! Things happen sometimes. Funky thing, this Internet! Will post a link to Part Three on Twitter again.

 

[kskate2]

These are so good Dude. Where do you get the inspiration?

 

[El Dude]

These are so good Dude. Where do you get the inspiration?

Thanks! Most of my blogs are based upon the fact that I've only been a serious tennis fan for maybe only half a decade. I've casually followed the sport for decades, but it is only the last few years that I've followed it on a tournament-by-tournament basis, and my love of the sport grew to the point that it is now pretty much equal to my other favorite sport, baseball.

Anyhow, in a way I'm playing catch-up. I want to know about the history of the game and, perhaps through my love of baseball, I enjoy statistical analysis and looking at the game through the lens of numbers. I will never be able to talk about the play of the game itself in the way that folks like Kirijax can, but I can provide this other lens that seems relatively lacking from the tennis conversation. So what I'm doing is essentially sharing my own research - as I learn more, I share my learning through blogs.

 

[Kieran]

Great summation, buddy, you even have a photo of Hoad as your banner.

It obviously gets murky in counting slams and what they mean (amateur slams, pro-slams, a mix of both) when the priorities of players were different to those today. The idea that a bloke might be considered GOAT based on adding up his total slams was obviously not one they believed in back then, but once lads like Gonzalez and Hoad left the ranks of the amateurs - as far as they were concerned, they left forever - then the Calendar Year Slam became something of an irrelevance. What they were left with were these brawls across the ages. Laver and Rosewall faced each other 144 times? :laydownlaughing

Good stuff, and as always, an interesting read... :clap

 

[El Dude]

Great summation, buddy, you even have a photo of Hoad as your banner.

It obviously gets murky in counting slams and what they mean (amateur slams, pro-slams, a mix of both) when the priorities of players were different to those today. The idea that a bloke might be considered GOAT based on adding up his total slams was obviously not one they believed in back then, but once lads like Gonzalez and Hoad left the ranks of the amateurs - as far as they were concerned, they left forever - then the Calendar Year Slam became something of an irrelevance. What they were left with were these brawls across the ages. Laver and Rosewall faced each other 144 times? :laydownlaughing

Good stuff, and as always, an interesting read... :clap

Thanks, Kieran. s far as the GOAT goes, as I've said before I think we really have to separate eras and then compare players to their own eras. As you say, the Slam total only gets us so far.

I thought of you when I was writing about Hoad.

 

[lacatch]

As Nadal's slam # appears to be stalled, there's been a commensurate increase in postings about how murky the slam count is in assessing GOAT candidate. Coincidence?

 

[Kieran]

Has there? I take it you're referring to my post? Can you find any posts by me where I ever suggested bean-counting slam titles was sufficient for telling us who is the putative GOAT?

Do you think counting up slam titles tells us who is GOAT? If you do, why do you? Because you're a Fedfan?

And do you think Bjorn Borg, Ken Rosewall, Rod Laver or Lew Hoad believed the GOAT was the man with most slam titles, when they were playing?

If so, step forward Roy Emerson! :clap :clap

It's a recent innovative measure of things, became currency when Pete passed Emerson in 2000, but was never a measure of goatee-ness before that...