re: Is Novak Djokovic's 2015 the Best Season Ever?

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Vitas was not around in 74. Laver was and so was Newcombe. I think they meant Vilas but he was really a top player at the time. Keep in mind Connors won one of those on clay. Connors was kept out of the French.

As for Laver, go watch his matches with Connors on youtube. He would've been a force today.

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He was obviously a talented player. He has great touch and appears to be a really good athlete, but he was also small. I just don't see a 5-8 serve and volleyer being successful in the game of today, or even the game of the Sampras Agassi era.

Hell, I think Marcelo Rios is the most fluid shotmaker I've ever seen. He makes Roger Federer look like Brad Gilbert in that regard. (LINK ). Just effortless. So why didn't Marcelo Rios win multiple majors? It's because he's a little guy. In the one major final he got to, he got overpowered by an admittedly roided up Petro Korda, and then he never ended up getting back to another because his body kept breaking down on him.*

Now admittedly his body kept breaking down on him in part because he paid zero mind to physical fitness or weightlifting or the like, but the fact that he was a little guy didn't help. Chang got the one major and then didn't get another. height isn't the end all be all in tennis, but all things being equal you'd rather be 6-1 than 5-8.


*I admit that this is a ridiculous oversimplifiation. Forgive me.

He also ran through Fed in the final in a rather routine manner.

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17 titles and 16 losses meant Laver played in 33 tournaments in 1969. That is impressive in its own right given he won all 4 majors, which represented at least 2 weeks each.

Other things to consider are that Laver also played men's doubles that year, and the tie-breaker was not adopted until 1970. The man played a lot of tennis in 1969.

Laver did not get to play in the majors from 1963-1967 because he was a professional, and the majors were amateur tournaments. That means Laver did not get to play any majors from age 23 to 28.

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The flipside of that argument is that there were only 8 "open" tournaments that year, which can lead one to reasonably speculate about the level of competition in the rest of the events. They may have been more akin to what we would refer to today as an 'exhibition'. That's basically what pro tennis was (a series of traveling exhibitions ) before the Open Era, and really a few years into the open era. Before even 1974, tennis was still kind of a wild west free for all.*

None of the above is meant to disparage Laver. I think it's safe to say that he was the best player in the world for at least the period between between 1964 and 1969, which is nothing to sniff at. He's clearly an all-time great, but it's just difficult to make apples to apples comparisons between him and guys in the Open era.


*This book here probably has excellent info on all that stuff, but I'm not sure if I'll ever get around to reading that monstrosity: LINK

threads like these always make me sad because it makes me think how good Any Roddick would have been if he missed the best years of Fed and Rafa. dude would probably have 4+ more majors if he had been born about 2 years earlier and Fed had peaked about 2 years later.

You can apply this logic to almost anyone though.

Imagine how outrageous Fed and Joker's careers would look if Nadal took up soccer or something. Or how many golfers missed out on extra fame and fortune when Tiger dominated for like a decade.

It's still amazing how 1 or 2 people out of roughly 6 billion people can affect your legacy so much.

ETA: make that 7.3 billion humans