We're coming to the end of our excursion into the game's greatest shots. The final two entries aren't strokes, but attributes: mental game (which will be revealed Monday) and movement. The latter award went to Roger Federer, which I'm not going to contest: No one has ever moved with such lethal elegance on a tennis court. He edges out Bjorn Borg on the men's side, in my mind, though I may have taken Steffi Graf over both of them. I remember her footwork—those Adidases bouncing like they were on hot coals—more vividly than any other player's.
Here's the roster of greats that Joel Drucker selected over the last two weeks; in parentheses, I've noted where I disagreed and made my own selection (I'm seriously hampered by having never seen the Aussie legends. As Joel has made clear, those guys were hard to beat when it came to the quality of their individual shots.)
Serve: Pete Sampras
Return: Jimmy Connors
Forehand: Roger Federer (I would have picked Steffi Graf's; her forehand wasn't nearly as smooth as Federer's, but she won 22 Grand Slams virtually with this shot alone)
Backhand: Ken Rosewall (Chris Evert—she changed the sport with hers, and made it her dominant side; Justine Henin needs an honorable mention as well)
Forehand volley: John Newcombe (I'm taking Joel's word; in my lifetime, I would choose Pat Rafter's)
Backhand volley: Martina Navratilova (might have taken Tony Roche here, on the evidence of the backhand volleys he hit in the Aussie Open match against Rod Laver that I linked to in the my last post—it was a bomb)
Overhead: Pete Sampras (original pick: Chuck McKinley; Joel changed his mind on this one. I never saw McKinley, though now I'd like to. I can't argue with Sampras.)
Lob: Ken Rosewall (in my time, I think I would go with Lleyton Hewitt)
Dropper: Manuel Santana (my favorite was his countryman, Manolo Orantes; might also pick Chris Evert)
Movement: Roger Federer (as I said, I might go with Graf here, but Federer is an equally good choice)
What have we learned from this exercise? A few things stand out to me.
—You don't have to own one of the greatest shots to have been one of the greatest players: Rod Laver is conspicuously absent from this list. He just did everything well. (Watching that clip of him against Roche, I'm starting to think Laver might have been the real Goat of all Goats, but that's a discussion for another day, or many other days.) At the same time, having a huge weapon doesn't hurt: Pete Sampras and Roger Federer own four of the 11 greatest shots between them.
—If you take the men and women together, the two keys to all-out dominance in the modern era are the forehand and a player's movement. Federer and Graf are superior in both of these areas, and they own 34 majors between them.
—Comparing the men and women in one list is a thorny issue. It's more fun to make a definitive "best ever" choice rather than picking two people for each stroke. But of the great shots, just one was awarded to a woman (Navratilova's backhand volley). I have to think that a bias toward the men's superior athleticism came into play here.
—Chris Evert has a reputation as a tennis metronome, but judging by this she had a more well-rounded game than she gets credit for. Her backhand was a standout, no one used the drop shot more expertly, and she had an excellent lob.
—Spaniards Manuel Santana and Manolo Orantes were cited for their drop shots, but their countryman and modern-day equivalent, Rafael Nadal, was left off that list entirely. Now it's true that Jurgen Melzer, who did make the cut, uses the dropper a lot, and he does it with two hands, which is something different. But we're not looking for quantity or novelty here. Nadal uses his drop more judiciously and successfully, and as far as I can tell, he employs it just the way Orantes did, often following it to net to knock off a floating reply. Is Nadal's absence a symptom of an aesthetic bias—typical among tennis purists—against his physical, rather than elegant, playing style?
—The Aussies. They own three of the 11, and could have been cited for more. This makes me wonder: Were they really a superior breed of tennis player, or do we just believe that because, well, we think everything was better in the past? There's a sense that they played tennis the way it was "supposed" to be played, using the whole court, and that today's baseline slugging is a soulless and twisted abberation.
Whether the subject is sports, movies, music, books, or anything else, I try to fight the "past was better" argument at every turn. But when I watch Laver and Roche from 1969, I can see the appeal. Lots of court coverage and movement; beautifully clipped strokes; an overall sense of logic, order, and civilized sportsmanship.
Or do I enjoy this simply because it's a novelty to see guys serving and volleying with wood racquets? If that became the dominant style again, would I quickly get sick of it and seek out clips of Nadal vs. Ferrer, to see the game played the way it was meant to be played, by baseline warriors? For now, I'll just say that the Aussies earned their selections. They set a standard, just as Federer, Nadal, and Henin are setting standards today—different times, different on-court needs, different standards. Comparing them isn't perfectly fair to anyone, but so what? Being a tennis fan would be so much less fun if we didn't.
There's one more great shot to go, and I've got one more post for the year, whch I'll try to get up this weekend. Thanks for all the discussion these last two weeks.