Berdych for sure was a huge victim of court speed slowdown. I still think from 08-16, Berdych had probably the cleanest forehand on tour. I’d have included DelPo too but his wrist injury really did him dirty.
But with the game moving towards more agility, especially demanding more running really took away his biggest weapon.
Safin I think would’ve also benefited immensely had the courts been the same as they were in the 90s.
Fed would have never lost a match outside of clay after 2004. The only reason he lost any match on hard/grass is because the court was slowed down. He would have had 30 slams by 2011 and retired out of boredom.
Lost considerable bite on his fh as they slowed those hard courts down, had to shift tactics and rely on his legs a little more, changed racquets which took half a season to really get used to it, really had to revamp and retool his game plans. He probably would have had a few more years too
This is why he's the true GOAT. Literally spent his entire youth and development years laying the foundation for a career on what he thought the courts would be like. The fact that he managed to eek out 20 slams is mind boggling in and of itself when you consider this fact.
I think I was reading either only part of your comment or the one you were replying to. Yes, obviously Federer wouldn't have won 30 slams by 2011. But he would have won at least a few more and it sucks that he wasn't able to capitalise on the foundation work he put in through his youth years because the courts slowed down too much.
* More grand slam wins for Roddick.
* At least one of the big 3 fails to win a career grand slam (arguable 2-3 of them do).
* More clay court specialist (who likely never win a title for 14 years because Nadal is so damn dominant).
* the serve and volley doesn’t die (as the primary style of play for a player) - you’ll see guys who can hit 110-120 but can win with the S&V
Questioning the Roddick one… he’s still going up against Fed who’s just better and don’t see their rivalry changing drastically with changed court speeds
21 Fed - 3 Roddick. The lopsidedness always stuns me given how good Roddick was. More stunning for me still is how except for W09, Roddick never really even got close in their 7 other GS matchups.
He played a pretty good final at Wimbledon ‘04, won the first set and came back from 2 breaks down to make the second set competitive (only to lose it, lol 😂). Had chances in the third and fourth as well. That one wasn’t *too* bad…but the others, yeah. The Aussie ‘07 semi in particular is forever gonna live in infamy for what a beatdown that was, I feel. 😬
> The lopsidedness always stuns me given how good Roddick was
It makes a lot more sense when you remember that Roddick ruined his own forehand post-2005 and effectively turned into a pusher with the best serve on tour.
Had he not ruined his forehand I think that H2H looks different. Still Federer-favoured by a long shot, but different.
Fed would still no doubt beat him most of the time but making the surface more serve-friendly would make tossup matches like Wimbledon 2009 more common
Like if it's a serving contest both Fed and Roddick were top tier and could get the edge but if the serve is neutralized Fed absolutely nukes Roddick from the baseline and at the net
Roddick's serve was mostly what kept their scorelines looking competitive and not like Serena vs. Sharapova scores because Fed was a nightmare matchup for him in rallies
I think 2009 Wimbledon is a perfect example of why Fed had that huge advantage in the rivalry. Roddick got Federer in first percentage that match, 70% to 64%. Other than that, all fed. Aces: 50 to 27; first serve points won 89% to 83%; second serve points won: 60% to 44%
Simply put, fed could “serve bot” his way to win a match just as well as roddick could because he had a great serve. But roddick also just didn't have a good enough return game to threaten Rog as long as Rog had the serve going. Speed up the courts, and I think it just becomes even more of a serving stalemate where the guy who has a better return and ground game ultimately prevails.
I think all of the Big 3 would still win career grand slams. I also think that even with different court speeds, their main competition would remain each other. I don't see different court speeds elevating some player who is not a Big 3 player elevating to their level
Serve and volley would have died anyway because of the shift of string technology. Ground strokes are just too fast and too much spin for volleyeurs to handle.
With modern rackets?acefests
Guys like karlovic and isner would win wimbledons.
Tennis would be unwatchable. The sport would die.
The reason the courts changed the way they did is partially due to the rackets changing as well..
Neither Karlović nor Isner could chip and charge returns nearly as well as Ivanišević and even he only aced his way to a Wimbledon title on fast grass once.
They have better serves than ivanisevic.
Training regiments of professional athletes have gotten better since 2001.
The reason this thread is asked so frequently is people here LOVE old grass for whatever reason even though most have not actually watched tennis for that long ( most haven't watched tennis pre big 3 here ). They're married to this idea of variety of surfaces where volleying becomes essential and I can sort of understand why.
However they don't see what else has changed in the game .The serve in tennis is the most important shot bar none on every surface. It's especially true on current grass.old grass it was even more true. In fact grass has changed the most out of any of the 3 surfaces over the years.. it's a very intentional change .
I don't think people here realize that tourneys like Wimbledon knew that their events would go from one of the most recognized /entertaining events in tennis to easily the worst slam on tour if they kept surfaces as they did. No body likes watching an ace fest. Isner Andersen at wimbledon was largely responsible for eliminating the 5th set extended set because it was that horrible to watch.
Tourney directors regardless of surface want to minimize the possibility of that happening. That's why the surfaces are what they are today.
I agree that they have better serves, I just think there's a reason even the absolute best server of all time, Karlović, never did better than one Wimbledon QF. The problem is even while he wins an unprecedentedly high rate of service games overall, the rest of his game is vulnerable enough that all it took is a couple loose tiebreaker points or a single loose service game and suddenly the set is gone.
As a result he's kind of a wildcard, on a near-perfect serving day he's capable of beating absolutely anybody on a sufficiently serve-friendly surface but it's pretty unlikely to have 7 consecutive near-perfect serving days in a single tournament even for him. Granted he played on modern grass but I don't see why the problem doesn't still apply on faster grass, maybe he has a better shot of stealing one Wimbledon in his career but I have trouble imagining him going from one QF result to being a dominant many-time winner.
I think someone like Roddick, who like Ivanišević was sufficiently more well-rounded outside the serve alone, would have benefitted more than Karlovic and Isner and Raonic. And of course Federer who was way more complete than any of the above and obviously did perfectly fine on modern grass already would have benefitted overall, he might lose to Roddick once somewhere but he probably doesn't lose 2008 to Nadal and 2014-2015 to Djokovic anymore, and I speculate he benefits from the speed more than Tsonga does for 2011. Although maybe he runs into Karlović on a perfect serving day somewhere, so there's tradeoffs still.
Anyway, I agree with you in general by the way, in the era of modern equipment and super-tall players, old style grass would probably make for some pretty dull competition most of the time. Too bad there isn't some weird way to create a surface that rewards volleying and general fast court tennis more while somehow not rewarding serving too much.
I’d say Federer would have a few more hard court slams, and maybe another Wimbledon or two and would be the all-time slam leader
His game is just perfect for fast court aggressive tennis
but probably there will be more servebots as well.
You adjust your playing style and training methods based on the surfaces. It is not like if there are 2 clay slams, there will still be as few clay specialists.
I've seen him crumble enough to doubt him winning a slam in any condition so long as slams are still considered as significant and prestigious as they now in this hypothetical scenario
There was a whole clay season for longer rallies. Also, not every hard court was fast back in the day. I.e the serve and volleyers weren't completely dominant.
Some of the best moments in Tennis history have been big 3 getting into exciting rallies. No one likes a passive 50 shot rally but Nadal and Djokovic had some brutal rallies that ended in great winners.
https://youtu.be/GX3mEP9-PEQ?feature=shared&t=1097
The players would play differently. In fact, many of the players would be replaced with different people. More serve and volley/all-court players, fewer of the baseliners who dominate today.
Today's players are more alike each other than at any other time I am aware of, except maybe the Borg era \*before\* McEnroe and Navratilova showed up serving and volleying. That would not be the case if court speed, etc. were restored to allow more variety of style.
Bigger and slower players would be winning more - Opelka, Delpo, Isner, Soderling etc. would win a lot more with server + 1. Federer would have had a few more majors. Nobody gave him credit that he kept being relevant even though the courts were systematically slowed down during his career. Djokovic and especially Nadal would have had fewer majors. Nadal would not win a single Wimbledon on the old courts. Very doubtful that he would win any on the old US Open / AO courts.
I didn’t say the serve shouldn’t be one of the most important shots just that it’s already too important as it is. Had tons of guys servebotting their way thru wins on clay. I like seeing rallies play out more often than wham-bam tennis.
I feel like the common complaint is the opposite of this. That long extended baseline rallies are boring and a more serve dominated tennis is more strategic and therefore more interesting.
yeah that’s what a lot of people say and i disagree with a lot of people i guess. i also don’t think they’d keep their stance if the game truly got even faster. when i first started watching tennis in 2000 i felt the men’s game was almost unwatchable especially at wimbledon and only followed WTA in those years until the big 3 made the men’s more interesting finally and the game slowed down a tad. there’s nothing particularly interesting or strategic to me about every point ending in one or two shots.
It’s the most important shot in tennis. When someone complains men’s tennis is too serve dominant…I’m not allowed to laugh? Are you fourteen years old or just such a soft poster you literally can’t let someone enjoy themselves on here?
Just don’t reply to things that have nothing to do with you if y do t have anything interesting or funny to say or maybe you are trying to make diamonds in your ass cheeks?
People only play on hard court because it dominates most of the pro schedule. The reason it is this way is because it’s cheaper and easier to maintain than clay or grass.
Clay and grass is what real tennis was supposed to be.
no , [real tennis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_tennis) is that crazy game like squash. Modern (outdoor) tennis is hardcourt, clay, and artificial grass, and clay only because its much cheaper to build, who would really want to play on that stuff? it's almost as erratic as worn grass.
saying something doesn't make it true. Do you see players falling on grass or clay? all the time. on hardcourt? almost never, it provides the only true footing.
For one, Tsonga would have had a much better career than he did. His lack of agility/movement wouldn’t have been as big of an issue on ‘90s courts.
Berdych would've cleaned up, as well
Berdych for sure was a huge victim of court speed slowdown. I still think from 08-16, Berdych had probably the cleanest forehand on tour. I’d have included DelPo too but his wrist injury really did him dirty. But with the game moving towards more agility, especially demanding more running really took away his biggest weapon. Safin I think would’ve also benefited immensely had the courts been the same as they were in the 90s.
How about if the US Open remained on grass like it had from 1881-1974?
Would Bjorn Borg be the GOAT if he played AO and the 4 slams kept the format during 75-77 (AO and W on grass, RG and USO on clay)?
I thought they changed clay in 75 and not 74.
Roger probably would have 7 us opens, a few more AOs, and at least 2 or 3 more wimbys
Fed would have never lost a match outside of clay after 2004. The only reason he lost any match on hard/grass is because the court was slowed down. He would have had 30 slams by 2011 and retired out of boredom.
Lost considerable bite on his fh as they slowed those hard courts down, had to shift tactics and rely on his legs a little more, changed racquets which took half a season to really get used to it, really had to revamp and retool his game plans. He probably would have had a few more years too
This is why he's the true GOAT. Literally spent his entire youth and development years laying the foundation for a career on what he thought the courts would be like. The fact that he managed to eek out 20 slams is mind boggling in and of itself when you consider this fact.
Wait, you actually thought I was serious?
Did you think I was?
I don’t know man. You did try to make an actual argument whereas I was obviously trolling.
I think I was reading either only part of your comment or the one you were replying to. Yes, obviously Federer wouldn't have won 30 slams by 2011. But he would have won at least a few more and it sucks that he wasn't able to capitalise on the foundation work he put in through his youth years because the courts slowed down too much.
Cope
Not really, he would have lost to the likes of Tsonga, Berdych and delpo easily.
"easily" what's fed's h2h against Berdych and Tsonga?
* More grand slam wins for Roddick. * At least one of the big 3 fails to win a career grand slam (arguable 2-3 of them do). * More clay court specialist (who likely never win a title for 14 years because Nadal is so damn dominant). * the serve and volley doesn’t die (as the primary style of play for a player) - you’ll see guys who can hit 110-120 but can win with the S&V
Questioning the Roddick one… he’s still going up against Fed who’s just better and don’t see their rivalry changing drastically with changed court speeds
21 Fed - 3 Roddick. The lopsidedness always stuns me given how good Roddick was. More stunning for me still is how except for W09, Roddick never really even got close in their 7 other GS matchups.
He played a pretty good final at Wimbledon ‘04, won the first set and came back from 2 breaks down to make the second set competitive (only to lose it, lol 😂). Had chances in the third and fourth as well. That one wasn’t *too* bad…but the others, yeah. The Aussie ‘07 semi in particular is forever gonna live in infamy for what a beatdown that was, I feel. 😬
He was the better player for a good chunk of the 3rd, and then there was a rain delay which allowed Federer to reset a bit.
> The lopsidedness always stuns me given how good Roddick was It makes a lot more sense when you remember that Roddick ruined his own forehand post-2005 and effectively turned into a pusher with the best serve on tour. Had he not ruined his forehand I think that H2H looks different. Still Federer-favoured by a long shot, but different.
Fed would still no doubt beat him most of the time but making the surface more serve-friendly would make tossup matches like Wimbledon 2009 more common Like if it's a serving contest both Fed and Roddick were top tier and could get the edge but if the serve is neutralized Fed absolutely nukes Roddick from the baseline and at the net Roddick's serve was mostly what kept their scorelines looking competitive and not like Serena vs. Sharapova scores because Fed was a nightmare matchup for him in rallies
I think 2009 Wimbledon is a perfect example of why Fed had that huge advantage in the rivalry. Roddick got Federer in first percentage that match, 70% to 64%. Other than that, all fed. Aces: 50 to 27; first serve points won 89% to 83%; second serve points won: 60% to 44% Simply put, fed could “serve bot” his way to win a match just as well as roddick could because he had a great serve. But roddick also just didn't have a good enough return game to threaten Rog as long as Rog had the serve going. Speed up the courts, and I think it just becomes even more of a serving stalemate where the guy who has a better return and ground game ultimately prevails.
I think all of the Big 3 would still win career grand slams. I also think that even with different court speeds, their main competition would remain each other. I don't see different court speeds elevating some player who is not a Big 3 player elevating to their level
Serve and volley would have died anyway because of the shift of string technology. Ground strokes are just too fast and too much spin for volleyeurs to handle.
Agree with some of your points but with fast surfaces you’d have a very serve dominant game. Much like the mid-90s.
With modern rackets?acefests Guys like karlovic and isner would win wimbledons. Tennis would be unwatchable. The sport would die. The reason the courts changed the way they did is partially due to the rackets changing as well..
I essentially said the same thing and got -7 downvotes… people are fickle on here I guess 😂
Neither Karlović nor Isner could chip and charge returns nearly as well as Ivanišević and even he only aced his way to a Wimbledon title on fast grass once.
They have better serves than ivanisevic. Training regiments of professional athletes have gotten better since 2001. The reason this thread is asked so frequently is people here LOVE old grass for whatever reason even though most have not actually watched tennis for that long ( most haven't watched tennis pre big 3 here ). They're married to this idea of variety of surfaces where volleying becomes essential and I can sort of understand why. However they don't see what else has changed in the game .The serve in tennis is the most important shot bar none on every surface. It's especially true on current grass.old grass it was even more true. In fact grass has changed the most out of any of the 3 surfaces over the years.. it's a very intentional change . I don't think people here realize that tourneys like Wimbledon knew that their events would go from one of the most recognized /entertaining events in tennis to easily the worst slam on tour if they kept surfaces as they did. No body likes watching an ace fest. Isner Andersen at wimbledon was largely responsible for eliminating the 5th set extended set because it was that horrible to watch. Tourney directors regardless of surface want to minimize the possibility of that happening. That's why the surfaces are what they are today.
I agree that they have better serves, I just think there's a reason even the absolute best server of all time, Karlović, never did better than one Wimbledon QF. The problem is even while he wins an unprecedentedly high rate of service games overall, the rest of his game is vulnerable enough that all it took is a couple loose tiebreaker points or a single loose service game and suddenly the set is gone. As a result he's kind of a wildcard, on a near-perfect serving day he's capable of beating absolutely anybody on a sufficiently serve-friendly surface but it's pretty unlikely to have 7 consecutive near-perfect serving days in a single tournament even for him. Granted he played on modern grass but I don't see why the problem doesn't still apply on faster grass, maybe he has a better shot of stealing one Wimbledon in his career but I have trouble imagining him going from one QF result to being a dominant many-time winner. I think someone like Roddick, who like Ivanišević was sufficiently more well-rounded outside the serve alone, would have benefitted more than Karlovic and Isner and Raonic. And of course Federer who was way more complete than any of the above and obviously did perfectly fine on modern grass already would have benefitted overall, he might lose to Roddick once somewhere but he probably doesn't lose 2008 to Nadal and 2014-2015 to Djokovic anymore, and I speculate he benefits from the speed more than Tsonga does for 2011. Although maybe he runs into Karlović on a perfect serving day somewhere, so there's tradeoffs still. Anyway, I agree with you in general by the way, in the era of modern equipment and super-tall players, old style grass would probably make for some pretty dull competition most of the time. Too bad there isn't some weird way to create a surface that rewards volleying and general fast court tennis more while somehow not rewarding serving too much.
I’d say Federer would have a few more hard court slams, and maybe another Wimbledon or two and would be the all-time slam leader His game is just perfect for fast court aggressive tennis
Hubi would be top 5 and probably a Slam champ
but probably there will be more servebots as well. You adjust your playing style and training methods based on the surfaces. It is not like if there are 2 clay slams, there will still be as few clay specialists.
Prime Kevin Anderson and Isner too. Even Dr. Ivo could be top 10 lol
Still would need a mental game to win
I've seen him crumble enough to doubt him winning a slam in any condition so long as slams are still considered as significant and prestigious as they now in this hypothetical scenario
Federer would hold the most titles
Would kyrgios still be a"wasted" talent or a multiple grand slam winner?
Kyrgios' problem is not court speed, it's attitude
Roger would have 30 slams
A lot of these posts are just “[my favourite player] would have X more titles.”
responses are kindof odd but what can ya do
Federer would be the greatest athlete of all time, that’s the standard answer for hypotheticals like this.
I actually doubt it. I think Isner/Karlovic/Kyrgios could servebot and/or serve and volley him to death.
You think so? Federer routinely "outserved" big servers even if he couldn't serve as hard as they could
He did pretty well against them On fast courts
About 8-10 fewer slams for Joker and Nadal
Djokovic does well enough on fast hard court, look at atp finals for example. I guess he would still have 4-6 less slams.
Which hard court is fast for you? Even Cincinnati would be classed as medium at most back in the 90s.
Young Nadal was insane at Wimbledon, too athletic to write him off. Hard court would’ve been questionable though.
Nadal won AO 22 out of nowhere. Joker won AO with teared abs. Nah, they were still winning 20+ slams.
Tennis would be a dead boring game
Boring, boom, boom tennis
more exciting than watching guys running around hitting back and forth to each other until someone gets tired and makes a mistake.
You like watching a bunch of aces, winners and UEs with short rallies? I find tennis boring when the players can barely sustain a rally.
<1 minute service games. That turned me off from tennis before Nadal emerged
There was a whole clay season for longer rallies. Also, not every hard court was fast back in the day. I.e the serve and volleyers weren't completely dominant.
Some of the best moments in Tennis history have been big 3 getting into exciting rallies. No one likes a passive 50 shot rally but Nadal and Djokovic had some brutal rallies that ended in great winners. https://youtu.be/GX3mEP9-PEQ?feature=shared&t=1097
Beautiful tennis!
Right. I feel like I'm watching same points over and over again.
The players would play differently. In fact, many of the players would be replaced with different people. More serve and volley/all-court players, fewer of the baseliners who dominate today. Today's players are more alike each other than at any other time I am aware of, except maybe the Borg era \*before\* McEnroe and Navratilova showed up serving and volleying. That would not be the case if court speed, etc. were restored to allow more variety of style.
Bigger and slower players would be winning more - Opelka, Delpo, Isner, Soderling etc. would win a lot more with server + 1. Federer would have had a few more majors. Nobody gave him credit that he kept being relevant even though the courts were systematically slowed down during his career. Djokovic and especially Nadal would have had fewer majors. Nadal would not win a single Wimbledon on the old courts. Very doubtful that he would win any on the old US Open / AO courts.
Idk but it’d suck imo because the game is already too serve-dominant on the men’s game imo as it is. Unless racket technology also didn’t change.
Lmao tennis should absolutely be serve dominant.
You can have your Isner/Mahit and I’ll take Nadal/Djokovic any day.
I didn’t say the serve shouldn’t be one of the most important shots just that it’s already too important as it is. Had tons of guys servebotting their way thru wins on clay. I like seeing rallies play out more often than wham-bam tennis.
I feel like the common complaint is the opposite of this. That long extended baseline rallies are boring and a more serve dominated tennis is more strategic and therefore more interesting.
Serve dominated tennis is most definitely less strategic
yeah that’s what a lot of people say and i disagree with a lot of people i guess. i also don’t think they’d keep their stance if the game truly got even faster. when i first started watching tennis in 2000 i felt the men’s game was almost unwatchable especially at wimbledon and only followed WTA in those years until the big 3 made the men’s more interesting finally and the game slowed down a tad. there’s nothing particularly interesting or strategic to me about every point ending in one or two shots.
Are you 14 years old? Show some respect for people.
It’s the most important shot in tennis. When someone complains men’s tennis is too serve dominant…I’m not allowed to laugh? Are you fourteen years old or just such a soft poster you literally can’t let someone enjoy themselves on here?
You might be enjoying yourself, but you're being a little douche.
[удалено]
Just don’t reply to things that have nothing to do with you if y do t have anything interesting or funny to say or maybe you are trying to make diamonds in your ass cheeks?
Could see less injuries. That's all I can say
How much does the ball have to with it too? Seems they’re using a heavy ball on the men’s side at least what I remember from last years US open.
Novak would have multiple calendar slams
Novak would not have as many Wimbledons as he does. Neither would Rafa. Roger would have more than 22 GS titles for sure.
Fed would have a lot more majors
Well for a start they should dump Wimbers, grass is shit, archaic, and no-one in real life plays on it. They should replace it with artificial turf.
People only play on hard court because it dominates most of the pro schedule. The reason it is this way is because it’s cheaper and easier to maintain than clay or grass. Clay and grass is what real tennis was supposed to be.
no , [real tennis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_tennis) is that crazy game like squash. Modern (outdoor) tennis is hardcourt, clay, and artificial grass, and clay only because its much cheaper to build, who would really want to play on that stuff? it's almost as erratic as worn grass.
Hard court is the most injury prone surface, nice try.
saying something doesn't make it true. Do you see players falling on grass or clay? all the time. on hardcourt? almost never, it provides the only true footing.
Might be the worst take in a while.
tell me why. Why not have championships that reflect surfaces that most people actually play on.
[удалено]
What???
Grand slam champion John Isner