Who Is the Greatest Male Tennis Player of All-Time?

Yeah, that's because you have one great player at the top and not much else. So a mediocre 2-25 can beat each other. Whoopie! Mac was competing against other champions, Federer is not. Borg, Connors, Lendl, Ashe, Nastase, Wilander, Vilas...who stacks up to that today?

 

Andre (and Conners before him) changed tennis with their approach to hitting the ball on the rise. No one did that. Conners really only did that on returns. But Andre did that on every shot. Hitting the ball on the rise is the most difficult thing to do in tennis. So difficult, they used to teach you not to attempt it.

Andre turned tennis around with his insistence to stand at the baseline...if not within it...to hit the ball as soon as possible. His ability to do that has not been matched, and might never be matched. But I can tell you, they teach you to do that now....if you can.

The whole game is hitting the ball as soon as you can...not standing back like Borg did...which was the way it was taught for a long time.

Agassi changed tennis.
Sampras did not.

 

bullsh!t!

Do you know that Borg's heart rate was 27 beats per minute! better than Frank Shorter.

Borg was easily the most fit player of all time. This game is not about strength. It is about whipping your arm and running...running...running...sometimes for 5 hours.

No one...NO ONE...could match Borg's stamina. Not even close!

 

as an aside...one of my claims to fame was being a at-the-net ballboy for a Borg/Laver match. The sound Borg's topspin made coming over your head was simply amazing. It whistled. I've never heard such a thing on the court.

 

Lendl?

 

Wow. It would have been cool to SEE a Borg/Laver match, but that's awesome.

And I agree with you on the fitness thing. Borg was a total fitness freak, as were Connors and Lendl.

 

it's hard to question the stamina of a guy who won 6 French Open's in a row. Borg was a freak. He was my favorite player growing up, and I hated Conners and McEnroe. I learned to love McEnroe...because serve n volley was my game. I don't like Conners though.

another story....my coach when I was 13-14 grew up playing against Conners as juniors in Illinois. As a junior my coach was as good if not better than Connors. They both had sponsors who just give you free ****. Not like money or anything, but they outfitted the best players so lessors would buy the same thing. When Connors was considering going to the T-2000 from a Spalding Slazenger (I think Slazenger?), Spalding approached my coach to try to talk it out of it. So he went to Connors and said..."I don't think you should switch to the T-2000, you'll never win with that."

haha

 

Federer is the best all-time.

Michael Chang is my favorite.

 

Sharapova could beat most of the old guys on that list.

 

Sampras is the best of all time. Agassi is my favorite of all time.

 

(by "interesting" I mean I'd like to see some Sharapova pics)
__________________

 

Well as this is the only tennis thread on the front page i'll just throw this in here -- Serena is

Spoiler

destroying

Sharapova.

First set

Spoiler

6-1

...

 

Serena just smoked Maria.

 

LOL ... Sista is not shy about her booty and boobies in a post-game interview after she pwned Pova in the ladies' finals:

"I have a large arse and it always just looks like I'm bigger than the rest of the girls, but I have been the same weight for I don't know how long," she said.

"If I lost 20 pounds, I'm still going to have these knockers, forgive me, and I'm still going to have this arse. It's just the way it is."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/tennis/c...nd-her-knockers/2007/01/27/1169788746442.html

(sorry couldn't resist since the thread was derailed by cheetah.)

 

I don't think woman's tennis deserves the same pay as men's tennis. It is an inferior product and they have to play less sets.

 

Women shouldn't even be playing tennis ~ they should be in the kitchen fixing me a grilled cheese sandwich.

 

Now, P-Samp.

Later, R-Fed.