Pat Cash - Nadal & Djokovic are boring

[britbox]

http://worldsport.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/11/are-rafael-nadal-and-novak-djokovic-boring/?on.cnn=3

Thoughts?

 

[Kieran]

It's a bit fogeyish, isn't it?

I'd file it alongside the old duffers who say things like, "there's no characters in the sport any more. In my day, you had Dandy Adams, used twirl the racquet around and hit dropshots like it was a pool cue. The modern players, it's all faceless power, but none of them could stand on one leg with his back to the net and curl the ball around - like Dandy Adams! He was a character! There's no characters like him any more. Or Buster Barnham-Smythe! Used tie his shoe laces together and run around the court like that - all tied up! - and still could jump the net at the end to congratulate his opponent!"

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

As far as lack of variety is concerned, I have to somewhat agree. But the rest sounds like an old cranky guy that hates everything new because he does not want to leave a word behind where everything is better and says " I am out of here but it does not matter because everything sux"

 

[brokenshoelace]

The talk about "variety" seems only to apply to baseliners. Yet serve and volley players who couldn't cut it from the baseline where somehow playing with "variety." I don't get the double standards.

 

[brokenshoelace]

"OK, this is going to be two hours of baseline rallies. The guy who outlasts the other one wins. It’s taken a lot of the skill out of tennis."

Sorry, I couldn't help but laugh at this part. Again, you could easily say it used to be "OK, this is going to be two hours of serving and volleying, the guy who serves better wins." And "taken the skill out of tennis"? Yeah, I guess painting lines for 4 hours, hitting preposterous angles from insane positions, defending like crazy, etc... That doesn't take skill.

 

[Moxie]

Pat Cash is still sore that baby Rafa beat him at 14.

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

The talk about "variety" seems only to apply to baseliners. Yet serve and volley players who couldn't cut it from the baseline where somehow playing with "variety." I don't get the double standards.

I think he was talking about a very selective group, like Sampras and Becker, who could serve and volley, and still play with anyone from the baseline...But I see your point.

 

[Kieran]

In terms of variety within the sport, he's right. It's so obvious he needn't have said it: back in Cash's days of painted-on bum-shorts, you won 90% of the points at Wimbledon at the net, and a whole nother cast of characters won 90% of the points in Paris from the baseline. Very little crossover - except when they met, baseliners versus net-hounds. There were large distinctions that are not so pronounced now. The game could do with some tweaking to provoke different accents and modes of play.

But...he's wrong when he questions the entertainment value of today's game. I think we've seen some of the greatest matches in the sport's history over the last ten years, and definitely some of the most mythic and enduring rivalries. It smacks of somebody living nostalgically in the past...

 

[brokenshoelace]

In terms of variety within the sport, he's right. It's so obvious he needn't have said it: back in Cash's days of painted-on bum-shorts, you won 90% of the points at Wimbledon at the net, and a whole nother cast of characters won 90% of the points in Paris from the baseline. Very little crossover - except when they met, baseliners versus net-hounds. There were large distinctions that are not so pronounced now. The game could do with some tweaking to provoke different accents and modes of play.

But...he's wrong when he questions the entertainment value of today's game. I think we've seen some of the greatest matches in the sport's history over the last ten years, and definitely some of the most mythic and enduring rivalries. It smacks of somebody living nostalgically in the past...

The worst part is the one implying that it's taken "the skill" out of tennis. Such a statement is absolutely ludicrous, given the way these guys hit the ball.

 

[Kieran]

In terms of variety within the sport, he's right. It's so obvious he needn't have said it: back in Cash's days of painted-on bum-shorts, you won 90% of the points at Wimbledon at the net, and a whole nother cast of characters won 90% of the points in Paris from the baseline. Very little crossover - except when they met, baseliners versus net-hounds. There were large distinctions that are not so pronounced now. The game could do with some tweaking to provoke different accents and modes of play.

But...he's wrong when he questions the entertainment value of today's game. I think we've seen some of the greatest matches in the sport's history over the last ten years, and definitely some of the most mythic and enduring rivalries. It smacks of somebody living nostalgically in the past...

The worst part is the one implying that it's taken "the skill" out of tennis. Such a statement is absolutely ludicrous, given the way these guys hit the ball.

Exactly. I watched the US Open final with a guy who hadn't watched tennis in a while, let's say. He was gobsmacked by the level, the intensity and the sheer controlled violence taking place on court. Skill or entertainment are still things not lacking in our sport...

 

[brokenshoelace]

"Nadal and Djokovic are exceptional athletes, there’s no doubt about it, but to say they are better athletes than past greats like Bjorn Borg and Stefan Edberg is just nonsense.

This is some crap drummed up by somebody and I think it’s an insult to past players. Modern players don’t dive around the net, they don’t deliver backhand smashes, they don’t have to twist and turn like past generations.

Could modern players do that? We don’t know. What we do know is that they are incredibly good at retrieving shots from the back of the court."


From now on, every time Samson, Nadal2005, or anyone else refers to the "experts" and claims we are in no position to question them, I'll refer them to the above paragraph. Seriously, that was so bad any of us could have made more intelligent points.

I hate to break it to Pat, but Nadal and Djokovic ARE more complete players than Becker. Just because Becker served and volleyed doesn't mean he's more complete. The whole article screams "I love served and volley, these guys aren't giving it to me, so I'll make stupid points."

And I love Edberg as much as the next guy, but sorry, he's not a better athlete than Nadal or Djokovic, or an equal athlete for that matter.

" Modern players don’t dive around the net."

This is some Cali-level arbitrariness as far as defining what makes a great athlete.

 

[El Dude]

Its worth refreshing our memory with some of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPsu-zL2Ah0

(Sampras v. Becker, 1996)

Now compare it to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdjNghcCNPU

(Nadal v. Djokovic, 2013)

Which do you prefer and why? To me they are just two different styles of tennis. The first is like two samurais which each point usually being two or three quick shots and then, bam, done. The second is more of a boxing match, with two heavy-weights going at each other in an endurance test.

Here's one more to look at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYr9ZCmeLP0

(Laver v. Borg, 1976)

I must say, there's a beauty in this slower, more stately style that I can't help but feel nostalgic for. With today's modern rackets it would be impossible to ever re-capture this, but its hard not to admire the grace of this lost style of tennis which, in many ways, combined the best elements of both of the above styles.

 

[Kieran]

I like them both, to be honest. Death by a Thousand Cuts, or two guys swinging broadswords.

The Becker-Sampras match shows how thin the margins were back then, and how little opportunity you had to break. I'm fond of that high-wire truncated game, with improvised strokes and dispatched rapid-fire volleys and macho-man passes. You didn't get much time to make up your mind!

But you picked an exceptional rally for the Nole-Rafa match. They're not all like that - thank God! We might be prone to falling asleep midway, only to wake up for the UFE at the end of it.

They're both great - different - styles of tennis. Both have different obstacles, goals, abilities and high levels of speciality. By the way, Pete was cold, right? I mean, looking at the vid, in those days a tiebreak could zoom by in a blur, but he was cold.

I like the Borg-Laver clip the most, because it's shrewd and tactical, different skills again. No power to blow through the opponent (compared to what was to follow), so craftiness and strategy were important. Not that they're unimportant now, but that's more or less what they had back then, in the slo-mo days of Polaroid instant-camera tennis...

 

[brokenshoelace]

Sampras vs. Becker from 1996 is one of the most incredible displays of attacking tennis ever.

 

[El Dude]

I agree on all accounts, Kieran. Viva la difference, I say. I just hope that some young stud finds a way to compete with a serve-and-volley, or even a Laver-esque finesse game; I don't know if its possible in the days of power rackets, though. But the game is always changing, so who knows.

As for Boris and Pete, all I know is that Pete was in his prime (it was 1996, his 4th year in a row of being #1) and Boris in his last year of elite tennis. Becker won the match, I believe, finishing the year #6, but fell all the way to #62 the next year.

There's a Gonzales-Rosewall highlight reel from 1958 on Youtube which I wanted to post, but the quality is so poor that you can't even see the ball. It isn't that far from the Laver-Borg game, though. It makes me wonder if the major changes in the game came much later. But for those that think newer is always superior to older, its important to point out that previous generations usually hold their own against newer generations. Ken Rosewall won four Grandslams in the Open Era in his mid-to-late 30s. Rod Laver remained competitive with the much younger Connors and Borg. Even Pancho Gonzales, who Huntingyou completely disrespects, held his own in the early Open Era years when he was in his 40s - beating Laver in 1968 when Gonzales was 40 and Laver was still in his prime, winning all four Grand Slams that year. Gonzales also beat Laver and Ashe a couple years later, and a teenage Jimmy Connors twice in 1971 when Gonzales turned 43. According to Wikipedia, Gonzales beat the young baseliner by playing from the baseline (Gonzales was a true serve-and-volley player).

Actually, I believe it was Connors who said that Gonzales was the best player he ever played against. While the ranking system was less exact before the ATP era, Gonzales holds the record for years as the #1 player - 8 - compared to Laver's and Tilden's 7, Rosewall's and Sampras's 6, and then Federer's 5.

Its never fair to compare a younger player to an older one. We'll never know how a 25-year old Federer would have faired against a 25-year old Nadal. Couple that with the fact that Nadal came after Federer, and thus had the benefit of watching Federer and building off him. If the two had developed alongside each other, I would imagine the matchup would be less lopsided, not only because of being the same age but because both might have been different players, developed differently. We'll never know but its fun to think about!

 

[isabelle]

For sure Ivanisevic/Krajicek was much more interesting....poor Cash, he should shut up instead of telling such stupid things

 

[huntingyou]

I can't tell a guy who prefers S&V tennis to like better baseline battles between the likes of Novak and Rafa.

This is a matter of taste, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. What I can say is the skills required to excel in today's tennis is no less than what it was during the S&V era. That's where Pat put his foot in the mouth............painting lines and creating mind boggling angles while getting to impossible balls take mad talent.....tennis skills. No need to downplay it because your taste prefers something else.

 

[shawnbm]

All things being equal, I much prefer watching the tennis of Laver-Borg and Sampras-Becker (even though it is clay and then indoor hard) over Nole-Rafa's outdoor hard bash. To me, the play from the 1970s and 1990s is "full tennis".

 

[huntingyou]

All things being equal, I much prefer watching the tennis of Laver-Borg and Sampras-Becker (even though it is clay and then indoor hard) over Nole-Rafa's outdoor hard bash. To me, the play from the 1970s and 1990s is "full tennis".

interesting take.......I feel like Laver-Borg was sissy tennis and Sampras-Becker was no guts tennis. I see Rafa-Nole as grown men tennis. Perception it's such an unique thing ah?

 

[shawnbm]

yes, HU, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Laver being an Aussie, he probably would have been the first out of all of them to down a beer and smack the others around for mouthing off LOL. After that, though, I'd want Boris on my side out of all of them.