Minor nitpick: I remember Roscoe Tanner hitting 130 on the gun in the early 80’s.
However some of the hardest servers today hit close to 150 I believe.
Well, yes, but Borg can’t be faulted for playing with wood racquets since that’s what was used then. [Ma Kettle] I wish they’d go back to wood racquets. The game wasn’t such a power game then.[/Ma Kettle]
Y’know, it’s funny, but other sports have technology restrictions (golf, baseball, hockey (I think)), but tennis, where I think technology has a huge impact, refuses to implement anything along those lines.
My local club sponsors a “Woodstick Classic” tournament where everyone in the tourney (which does huge registration) plays with Wilson-donated wooden racquets (pulled from a bucket at the beginning of your match, so you’re not even getting the same one each match), and has to dress Wimbledon-style (whites). You’d be surprised at the age range of the winners (older than you might expect), and equally surprised at whose skills are diminished by the lack of graphite and widebodies. Those 5.0 players aren’t so hot anymore!*
-Cem
*OK, they’re still pretty damn great, but at least they’re not blasting groundstrokes into your feet as you approach the net!
Connors has certainly does his best to get Roddick to adopt his fighting spirit. Not that it’s worked so far.
I don’t know how he doesn’t qualify as a baseliner, he used to never come to net. His forehand is good and used to be great, the backhand and volleying have improved, but neither is ever going to be great. Those were the comparisons I thought of when I thought of Courier, anyway. Whoever you’d compare him to, the counterpart isn’t close to Federer. Blake has a great inside-out forehand and great court coverage, but …
I think Connors was the best serve returner who has ever played the game. In addition, his competitiveness was legendary. As I said, would have been a great match.
I’m too young to have seen Connors in his prime, but I do think it would have been good. Connors was a real prick, as best as I can tell, and that might have helped him avoid the thinking all the other players have before a match: if Federer plays a halfway decent match, I’ll be lucky to take a set.
I agree that Connors was a great returner of serve…I might put up Agassi in his later years as a competitor to that level, though. It’s not so much that they can get the serve back, but that they can dump it on the baseline, the net-rusher’s toes, or jam it into a corner. Agassi was almost frightening in what he could do, even on a hard-serving opponent’s first serve.
Marley23…, I think I needed to qualify my Roddick statement. Roddick is a good baseliner. Courier, Lendl, Wilander, and others were capital-B Baseliners. I think Roddicks’ backhand is actually on the crappy side (yes, it’s improved, but it was truly horrible to begin with)…shallow, he tries to overspin out of a two-handed grip, and it’s just wrong. His forehand is B+, but I like Blake’s forehand better (he has a whole suite of other problems).
I feel like I need to go play tonight! Let’s start a doubles thread!
-Cem
Not to name-drop (as I proceed to do so), but I met most of the Champions guys at a Nuveen tournament in Chicago in 2002 (I think). FWIW, my impressions:
[ol]
[li]McEnroe has a reputation as a real jerk. In my opinion, this is wholly deserved. In the player’s trailer, there was a buffet. He sneered at a volunteer who verbally appreciated the sandwiches, and then told them to get lost.[/li][li]Wilander…super-nice. I was a driver (drove the players from the hotel to Grant Park), and it was a generally cloudy day. When I was picking him up, the sun came out, and I was almost blind turning east onto Randolph. he gave me his sunglasses (still have 'em!).[/li][li]Some Iranian guy (whose name escapes me)…crazy, and very, very fun. Would play with the volunteers, and was a trick-shot artist. Would insist on being called Persian.[/li][li]Chris Lloyd. Snooty.[/li][li]Connors. If you mentioned Belleville and/or Uncle Tupelo (as I did), he was your best friend. Otherwise, kind of an ass.[/li][li]Tim-something (C-level pro). nice guy…wanted a list of “good pizza places”. Remembered me the following day after I had dropped him off at Geno’s.[/li][/ol]
Must…find…court time!
-Cem
I wouldn’t argue with anything here. Roddick’s backhand has improved from a few years ago, when he seemed to hit a weak slice every time, but that doesn’t make it good. He’s a baseliner in the sense that he doesn’t come to net much, but he isn’t a guy who’ll beat the the best players in a long rally. He doesn’t construct points that well and needs to land some big forehands to win. I like Blake a lot, and he took some big steps last year - probably needs to do some mental and endurance work to have a crack at a major, though.
Speaking of all this, I should call my old tennis coach.
When I meant Connors was a prick, I was thinking on the court (although I’m not surprised if he’s an ass the rest of the time). I mean he might be headstrong enough to believe he has a chance to beat Federer, which nobody else seems to do.
The Persian guy must’ve been Mansour Bahrami, by the way. One of my favorite tennis names.
[QUOTE=Cemetery Savior]
[li]Some Iranian guy (whose name escapes me)…crazy, and very, very fun. Would play with the volunteers, and was a trick-shot artist. Would insist on being called Persian. [/li][/QUOTE]
You would undoubtedly be talking about Ilie Nastase, other than the fact that he’s Rumanian.
That’s him…what a wingnut! He had the whole “raconteur” package. Interesting stories (G and R-rated), great tennis skills (when he wasn’t playing to the crowd), and just a generally nice guy.
John DiFool…Ilie Nastase’s nutty, but not like Bharami. Haven’t met Nastase.
-Cem
My choice for best return of serve all time is Agassi- favored over Connors, again, because Connors wasn’t routinely returning 120-150 mph serves like Andre.
No but then there is no reason to suggest that he couldn’t. With new technology Connors would have been able to do it imho.
Look at it this way. At 39 he was doing it against guys serving in the 100’s. He even made the semis of the US open which is a hard court tournament meaning the serves are near grass level speed.