Player's of the 80's - 90's
ooooweeeee! You whipped out a name I hadn't heard in a while! Jay Berger! How about thost Prince Pros strung at 90 pounds?!? To be very honest with you, the players of today are not as good as the ones of th 80's and 90s across the board. Were Federer playing in 1991, in order to win the U.S. Open, he would have had to go up against Edberg, Becker, Courier, Agassi, Chang, Wheaton, Sampras, Gomez, Muster, Ivanisevic,etc. Now, here are the names of some "spoilers" from back then.......Andrei Chesnokov, Jaime Yzaga, Magnus Larson, Brad Gilbert, Todd Martin, and numerous Australians. Todd Martin is a top 5 player all day long in today's game. He was a floater back then. Racquet technology has really killed the feel shots in the game of tennis. You may say, well look at Federer and his touch. Well, Federer is playing with a Wilson Pro Staff original that is still 17 0r 18 millimeters in the crossbeam and is the same stick it was back in 1985. They just took it to a 90 inch head size instead of 85. To be honest, of all the players I have hit with, Jimmy Arias hit a forehand that was so much more powerful than the rest, it still makes me laugh. I think the spoilers that I mentioned are top 20 players in today's game. Edberg, if he were 22 years old, would have taken three or four of the last 8 Wimbledons and the same with the U.S Open. Nobody plays his style today and noone today practices against it. He would embarrass most of today's players I truly believe. I watched him beat Tim Henman 1 and 1 just a few short years ago while Henman was tuning up for Wimbledon and was ranked 7 or 8 in the world. A true and complete whipping. Edberg had been retired for 8 or 9 years at the time. Thing is, Edberg could still beat most of the guys out there, but he can't bring that level of play together for two weeks of a Grand Slam anymore. Parents, watch some of these older players and notice the finesse and shot making ability. It still wins matches. Hey Coach, you are getting me addicted to this site! We are gonna be on here yakking at 4 a.m. if we aren't careful! Lol!
This is in Three Parts - Part One
This is in Three Parts - Part One
Quote:
Originally Posted by
tennisking1
Wow. I'm about to make you grin. Bryan Shelton went to Georgia Tech and was an intelligent guy. I think the travel and constant lack of a constant in his life made him get burnout and then add some injuries. He also would get down on himself fairly easily, but he was a great Wimbledon player. As for Ronald Agenor, man, he was great! I play exactly like the guy except I am a white guy. I was a clay court specialist. Funny thing is, when I committed to coming in, I was good at it. I enjoyed playing on grass. I knew I had to come in. But the French Open is the tournament of choice for me. I am a huge fan of Monte Carlo and the Italian Open as well. Ronald Agenor spoiled many a big name players bid for a clay court title. I watched him beat Muster once which was no easy feat on clay. He has a few titles to his name. I think his biggest problem was the he, like Lawson Duncan, could hit anyone off the court groundstroke wise, but they were not as strong when it came to the first two shots of tennis. The serve and the return. Take those two shots away and both of those guys were top 20 players. You think Michael Stich would beat todays players? OH YEAH! That guy could think his way through a match and had the power to back it up too. He just hung his head too much. God knows what would have happened had Stich and Ivanisevic played each other. They would have moaned and groaned so much that the ump would have called the match. Here's another few blasts from the past. Jason Stoltenberg, Wally Masur, and Darren Cahill! Those boys could play some tennis! Masur was one tough son of a gun. How about old Horacio de la Pena or Alberto Berasetagui(spelling?)? Great claycourters. Another great 80's player was Alberto Mancini. We didn't go into depth about him, but that guy could flat rip a groundstroke. Had one of the best looking games from behind the baseline I have ever seen. Can you believe he was favored to win the French Open in 1989 and lost to none other than Edberg? His party habits and late night dancing with the ladies is what ended his career. Of course, if you have seen the women of Italy and Argentina (he was Italian, but grew up in Argentina and was considered Argentinean) you can't blame him. I played some challengers down there in South America and I was staring into the stands all the fricking time. I fell in love at least 30 times a match down there. Alberto made that comeback in 1991, but he started partying again and then that was that. I heard he used to come in at 5 in the morning after being out all night and that was during tournaments. I have no idea how he made it to 10 in the world back in '89 and then made his comeback in '91 and reached number 14. He was just that good. He beat the pants off of Agassi at the Italian Open a couple of times. He must have hit 60 winners in each of those matches.
TK - I am amazed at how interesting it is to speak of these guys who I watched when I first became immersed in Tennis. You haven't mentioned a single name that I am not aware of and can actually see their faces in my head.
Given you are a walking encyclopedia I wish to ask you something of you. Before we relocated here to the East Coast, I had to come out and secure a house and get some basic things setup of for us. As it turned out, New Haven, CT. was just starting their Pre-USO Warmup Tourney called the Pilot Pen but when i came here, it was the week before the tournament started
and it was the last year they called it the Volvo.
Given I had time on my hands and plenty of money to get me by for several weeks before I returned to Ca. I decided to volunteer as a Driver for the Tourney. The Tennis Gods have always been extremely good to me over the years and this was no exception. I got to meet many of my Tennis Heros during those two weeks by picking them up from the airport and then subsequently driving them around the City of New Haven when needed. As t turned out, due to strange circumstances, I later became the sole driver for none other than the real Fab Four, Rod Laver, Fred Stolle, Roy Emerson and Cliff Drysdale. They referred to them as the Legends which for some unknown reason none of the other drivers wanted to be bother by them given guys like Agassi, Becker, Rafter, etc. were here and they wanted to get the opportunity to drive them instead. I think it's funny how life throws you curve balls because when the call came into the Trailer to pick up some senior members at the VIP Tent, while sitting in this trailer waiting for an assignment, I looked around at who was going to go blasting out the door to get whoever it was and nobody moved a muscle. So I raised my hand and the rest is history. And to make that even funnier, the Volvo Corp. essentially gave the afore mentioned Players, private cars they could keep until the tournament was over, so the other drivers lost out.
cont...
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Player's of the 80's - 90's
TennisKing and I were having a running discussion about Players of this era and I felt it was not appropriate for the Thread it is currently in so this now is for that.
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