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Let's have a list of your favourites since you started watching tennis. This isn't a comparison thread. It's not a thread about who's a better player. I'm just curious about who you followed throughout your tennis loving life. You can also give the names of those who aren't in your "Family" but are the Bass Turd Childs, the ones you love, but discreetly.
I'll start.
1. Borg.
Goes by a single name. Threatened to assimilate Star Trek in the eighties, but resistance was futile against best tennis in the 70's. Short, tight bum shorts, Bjorn was the ultimate tennis style warrior. Unfazeably cool, he came, he saw, he had enough. He could have played on but chose to depart the game - more or less - aged 25, with 11 slams.
And funny enough, his early leaving only adds to the myth. He never grew old. He's the star who transcended the game, and in an era of Ali, George Best and Johan Cruyff, Borg gave tennis a cool sophistication that helped to market the game better in Europe and South America.
2. Bjorn begat...Mats
I know, it's the Romantic in me. Mats winning the FO in 1982, aged 17, felt to me like Bjorn had been reincarnated. I easily switched my fervour to the cloned youth. Mats was probably even more cool than Bjorn. Players used tuck their soft drinks into his armpits to cool them down. Mats didn't mind.
He didn't dominate the game in a way Bjorn did, but you knew he didn't want to. I liked to tell my pals, if he wanted to, he would do.
The Bass Turd Childs of the 80's included Freakin' Shriekin' Lendl, who gained my sympathies for the emotional terror he endured at the hand of the thuggish southpaw outlaws, McEnroe and Connors. My romantic side resurfaced in 1985 when BB won Wimbo, aged 17, and I thought that Myriad Borg clones had been spawned in the Borg Hive, but Boris is a guy I turned against.
3. Pete
The supreme cool, I loved everything about Pete. The doggy style tongue hanging out, the five o'clock shadow, the stooped walk, the booming serve directly down the T. Pete was Top Dog in an era where fast hands sliced through thin skin. He took the power game and famously added a Pancho Gonzalez ooze to things, prowling the back court like a big jungle cat (but still with a hanging out doggy's tongue). I swooned watching Pete. My missus fainted once when he winked at his own wife after a match. We both flew to the US Open in 2002 to watch him do what came best to the man: rise to the occasion and play incredible tennis in beating Agassi.
Oh, how the ump was tempted to default me from Row W in the stand, for giggling while Pete did his Dying Man Routine in the 4th set, before - BLAM - he broke and served it out.
4. Ralph
The Name by Which He's Known. I first heard of Rafa in 2003, when a Moya interview alerted me to a kid who was gonna be great. I followed things from there, but at that stage I was waiting for Godot to return, but he didn't: Pete didn't so much as fax me it was over. I next heard of Rafa when he bumped Federer as a 17 year old, on a HC.
By the end of the following year he'd reached number 2 in the world - usurping the whole of the previous generation - and he'd won 4 MS titles and his first slam, becoming at the FO officially the Last Teenager to Ever Win a Major. He's won a major every season since then, too, which is a record.
There you go: my tennis fandom from the 70's to now. Let's have yours...
I'll start.
1. Borg.
Goes by a single name. Threatened to assimilate Star Trek in the eighties, but resistance was futile against best tennis in the 70's. Short, tight bum shorts, Bjorn was the ultimate tennis style warrior. Unfazeably cool, he came, he saw, he had enough. He could have played on but chose to depart the game - more or less - aged 25, with 11 slams.
And funny enough, his early leaving only adds to the myth. He never grew old. He's the star who transcended the game, and in an era of Ali, George Best and Johan Cruyff, Borg gave tennis a cool sophistication that helped to market the game better in Europe and South America.
2. Bjorn begat...Mats
I know, it's the Romantic in me. Mats winning the FO in 1982, aged 17, felt to me like Bjorn had been reincarnated. I easily switched my fervour to the cloned youth. Mats was probably even more cool than Bjorn. Players used tuck their soft drinks into his armpits to cool them down. Mats didn't mind.
He didn't dominate the game in a way Bjorn did, but you knew he didn't want to. I liked to tell my pals, if he wanted to, he would do.
The Bass Turd Childs of the 80's included Freakin' Shriekin' Lendl, who gained my sympathies for the emotional terror he endured at the hand of the thuggish southpaw outlaws, McEnroe and Connors. My romantic side resurfaced in 1985 when BB won Wimbo, aged 17, and I thought that Myriad Borg clones had been spawned in the Borg Hive, but Boris is a guy I turned against.
3. Pete
The supreme cool, I loved everything about Pete. The doggy style tongue hanging out, the five o'clock shadow, the stooped walk, the booming serve directly down the T. Pete was Top Dog in an era where fast hands sliced through thin skin. He took the power game and famously added a Pancho Gonzalez ooze to things, prowling the back court like a big jungle cat (but still with a hanging out doggy's tongue). I swooned watching Pete. My missus fainted once when he winked at his own wife after a match. We both flew to the US Open in 2002 to watch him do what came best to the man: rise to the occasion and play incredible tennis in beating Agassi.
Oh, how the ump was tempted to default me from Row W in the stand, for giggling while Pete did his Dying Man Routine in the 4th set, before - BLAM - he broke and served it out.
4. Ralph
The Name by Which He's Known. I first heard of Rafa in 2003, when a Moya interview alerted me to a kid who was gonna be great. I followed things from there, but at that stage I was waiting for Godot to return, but he didn't: Pete didn't so much as fax me it was over. I next heard of Rafa when he bumped Federer as a 17 year old, on a HC.
By the end of the following year he'd reached number 2 in the world - usurping the whole of the previous generation - and he'd won 4 MS titles and his first slam, becoming at the FO officially the Last Teenager to Ever Win a Major. He's won a major every season since then, too, which is a record.
There you go: my tennis fandom from the 70's to now. Let's have yours...
When he's at his best, his tennis is mesmerizing.
