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De-lurk: Observations on era strength
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From: josephmrami...@netzero.com
Newsgroups: rec.sport.tennis
Subject: De-lurk: Observations on era strength
Date: 30 Mar 2006 19:04:24 -0800
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This is my first post since early November of 2004, but I've remained a
regular reader of rst, and have been vastly entertained by the subtle
and not-at-all-repetitious discussions of Federer, Sampras, Nadal,
Borg, Graf, Seles, chips, chimps, goats, knives, clowns, etc. The
reason for my de-lurk is to offer some observations on the relative
strength of the current and recent past tennis eras.
I. The Missing Champions
I define the top champions of men's tennis in the open era as those who
have won six or more slam titles. There seems to me to be a clear
difference -- in terms of career achievements, short-term dominance,
reputation, and lasting impact on the game -- between the players in
the 6+ group and those below. For example, many more people are likely
to consider Becker a true all-time great than, say, Vilas.
For the purpose of this analysis, a champion's career is "launched"
when the player reaches his first slam final (doesn't have to win it,
although most of them do). That's the point at which he truly announces
himself as a force to be reckoned with in the game.
Below is the list of 6+ slam champions in the open era, listed by year
of launch. I have grandfathered in Laver and Newcombe because they each
won five slams in the open era, plus more as amateurs, making their
inclusion reasonable. Leaving them out would have given a distorted
perspective of the dawn of the slam era, suggesting that there were no
greats active. I also have listed the blank years to make it easy to
visualize the length of the gaps.
1968 Laver
1969 Newcombe
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974 Connors, Borg
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979 McEnroe
1980
1981 Lendl
1982 Wilander
1983
1984
1985 Edberg, Becker
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990 Agassi, Sampras
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003 Federer
2004
2005 [Nadal?]
Note that the gap between 2003 (Fed) and 1990 (Agassi/Sampras) is more
than twice as long as the typical five-year gap that recurs throughout
the rest of the era. Also note that champions tend to launch in pairs,
either in the same year or in adjacent years. Thus, if the years since
1990 had followed the pattern of the rest of the era, we would have
expected that an additional *four* 6+ slam champions would have
launched after Andre and Pete but before Fed. Where are they?
These are the missing champions.
It is now pretty obvious that Safin, Hewitt, and Roddick are not going
to become 6+ champions. Nadal perhaps has a chance. In any event, none
of these players can cure the deficiency identified here. Nor does the
explanation lie in the fact that Sampras, with his long career and
heavy bag of slams, somehow "suppressed" the emergence of other
champions. In the 1990s there were about 33% *more* slams available to
be won than previously, because most of the top players entered the
Australian Open routinely, instead of skipping it routinely as they had
in the 70s and 80s. Also, even if Sampras were counted as two players
to reflect his outsized slam total, we would still be short three 6+
players. Pete is not the cause of the missing champions.
II. What Happened? Equilibrium
It's simplistic and misleading to define the 1990s and beyond as an era
(or eras) of "clown." In fact, it has been an era of equilibrium.
Equilibrium in a system tends to reduce the extremes -- in the case of
tennis, the number of very high (and very low) achievers. We have fewer
6+ champions now because the relative equilibrium of the current era
has produced a type of parity that makes it less likely that any given
player will greatly exceed the performance of his peers.
For a detailed explanation of this phenomenon, I refer you to the book
"Full House" by Stephen Jay Gould, which uses the theory of system
equilibrium to explain why there were lots of .400 hitters in the
early, immature days of major league baseball, but fewer, and then none
at all, in the league's mature era. Hitters didn't become "worse";
rather, as the system matured it achieved a greater equilibrium among
all its elements (hitting, pitching, defense, strategy, etc.), making
it more difficult for one element to dominate another.
I am arguing that a sports system also can move from equilibrium to
disequilibrium. A single dramatic change can be sufficient. Baseball's
steroid craze in the 90s produced hitting and slugging statistics that
were markedly discontinuous with those of the previous decades. The
National Hockey League's expansion at the beginning of the 980s,
through the absorption of entire teams from the defunct World Hockey
Association, created the conditions for the explosive scoring and
incredible stats of the Gretzky/Lemieux era.
Grand slam tournament tennis in 1968 was pretty similar to grand slam
tournament tennis in 1948. The system had reached equilibrium. But over
the next 20 to 25 years, the sport underwent a series of drastic
changes that destabilized it and paved the way for the emergence of
large numbers of high achievers -- our 6+ champions. Here are some
examples:
Players
* Influx of pros
* Globalization of the sport
Rackets
* Disappearance of wood
* Rise and fall of metal
* Rise of composites
* Rise of large-head models
* Rise of wide-body frames
Surfaces
* Decline of grass
* Rise and fall of Har-Tru/green clay
* Rise and fall of carpet
* Rise of hard courts
Techniques
* Rise of two-handed backhand
* Rise and fall of heavy topspin
* Decline of serve-and-volley
* Rise of power hitting
Tournaments
* Rise and fall of WCT
* Decline and resurrection of Australian Open
* Venue and surface changes at U.S. Open
Preparation
* Spread of rigorous training
* Rise of coaches
As these changes rippled through the game in the open era, they were
assimilated at different rates and to different degrees by different
players. As a result, the game viewed as a system was very unstable.
The disequilibrium yielded more standout champs (and chumps too,
according to Gould's theory, though we often tend not to notice them
down there at the bottom of the ladder). When the major developments
had been incorporated into the game for a while, and the rate of change
diminished, tennis entered a period of relative equilibrium, making it
harder to excel. This was in the mid-1990s and beyond -- the era of the
missing champions.
III. Counterintuitive Conclusion
Most people in rst seem to hold the view that a relative dearth of top
champions makes it easier for a good player to become dominant and pad
his slam totals. Borg, Connors, and Mac had to contend with each other,
goes this line of reasoning -- who is Federer's challenger? However,
viewing tennis as a complex system rather than as a series of
disconnected battles between pairs of players yields the opposite
conclusion: it is *more difficult*, not less difficult, for a standout
champion to emerge in an era of equilibrium. Parity tends to suppress
extremes in performance, so Fed's success actually defies the odds. He
has become a 6+ champion in an era in which we might reasonably have
expected the 6+ champ to be extinct.
Joe Ramirez
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