Safin's take....

[stotty]

Marat Safin's recent thoughts on today's tennis...

Newspaper extract:

Federer, 36, won his 18th and 19th Grand Slams this season by taking the Australian Open and Wimbledon titles.

The French Open and US Open went to Nadal, 31, as the pair continued their dominance of the sport.

But legend Safin believes it will only get harder for them to keep bringing home the silverware.

He told the Independent: "Federer and Nadal are great players but they're getting older. No matter how much you work in the gym, it becomes harder and harder to recover match after match. Age catches up with you."

Safin was in London this week to compete at the Champions Tennis legends tournament. While there, he delivered a brutal assessment of the next generation of the sport's stars.
The Russian is a big fan of Nick Kyrgios - the pair both have fiery attitudes - but Safin is expecting to see more in terms of results.

He said: "If Federer and Nadal are still winning I think there's something wrong. I don't see any upcoming superstars today."

"I'm not saying that our times were the best, but when I was growing up, players were winning ATP tournaments at 16, 17, 18.

"Now players are only just starting to be pros at the age of 25. I don't know why that is.
Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer won all four Grand Slams between them in 2017
"Players used to retire by the time they got to 30. At 32 you were a dinosaur. Now you see players who are still running at the age of 38.

"The upcoming young guys just aren't at a high enough level. If you can still manage to run at the age of 38 and still be No 1 in the world, it means there must be something wrong with the other players.

"If you want to be a really good pro you need to be beating Nadal and Federer now"

"Look at Murray and Djokovic. They were beating the top players when they were 19 or 20, but you just don't see that from the younger players today.

[don_budge]

Safin's Sake...

I can't say that there is much to disagree with here, even if I make it a point of never agreeing or disagreeing. You make better points when you just state your case and let others bounce off of it. Or not.

don_budge has been making a case over a significant number of years now. Never deviating from the central thesis. The game is a mere shadow of it's former self. You saw how Jimmy Connors did the old soft shoe around the video interview in the "Connors-Krickstein reunion 2015" thread. The interviewer asked him what he thought about the tennis today and he just barely bit his tongue. I'm not certain why he didn't let loose and say what he really thought. He said that "he wasn't the person to ask because he wasn't in tennis"...but this is the reason that he can be asked. He doesn't have to bite the hand that feeds him...or is he just keeping his options open.

Marit Safin is doing precisely what I advise any aspiring human being to do. He is merely stating the obvious to the best of his ability. The game is in free fall and the point is that once Roger Federer leaves the stadium there are no redeeming characteristics remaining the are even remotely entertaining. The game is so dumbed down and stupid is doesn't make any sense to even try to discuss it with modern day aficionados. This is why I am bidding the game "Adios Muchacho" once more. As I did in 1994 when I turned my back on it and never touched a racquet for 13 years in order to chase the golf dream. Here we are in 2017 and I am making my exit as I type this. Goodbye Skultorp Tennis Club in Skultorp, Sweden. This little shanty of a club would barely qualify as a tennis club in any civilized part of the United States. Somehow I managed to imagine that it was somehow quaint for the past nine years. Well...in my defense I had to eat. More importantly...my wife, my three dogs, my four horses and my four half-horses had to eat. Our part time cat has to eat.

This never stopped me from expressing myself here on the forum. I spoke my mind much to the chagrin to others. Which is fine and dandy by me. I started innocently enough with a couple of opinionated posts on the lacking of the modern game and when that was met with vile resistance it only fueled me more to speak the truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. The modern day game of tennis is nothing more than a SCAM. Much like other professional sports have become. It's all about the money. "Image is everything"...how much do I despise Andre Agassi. That pretender. That obnoxious usurper.

Be that as it may, I sigh to myself. It's time to take another road. To admit to myself that this is a thing of the past. It's in the rearview mirror once more. Parting is such sweet sorrow but in this case it wouldn't make any sense to hang around any longer than the "Living Proof" of my self imposed paradigm does. Once he leaves I believe that it is the end of the line. This is the thing Safin leave out of his discussion. There is nowhere to go. He just happened to have dropped in in the middle of the fiasco. Classic tennis was already in demise and he was only cognizant of the world he was living in. The past was just that...the past. No consideration to the greats of the past. By his comments he reveals that he is not even peripherally aware of the past. It is only about his generation. Too late...Marin. Image was already everything. Virtual reality was already in vogue. Virtual morality hot on the heels.

So I very much like your post Stotty. I can't be certain but you might just be on the verge of "agreeing" with something that I have written in the past. I think that you are...it must resonate with you. But you are not yet at the point where you can afford to bite the hand that feeds you. I know how you feel. All that I can say is internally it is having quite a effect on how I feel. It's exciting once again. I am faced with the age old dilemma...go back to where it was safe or go forwards and grow. Guess which I am going to do. Love you guys...all the best to you. Whether you ever agreed with me or not...it never mattered a little bit. I just enjoyed hanging with you guys. Especially with the ones that disagreed. It made it all so personally refreshing.

You are late Marin Safin. Much, much too late.

[stotty]

Safin's Sake...

I can't say that there is much to disagree with here, even if I make it a point of never agreeing or disagreeing. You make better points when you just state your case and let others bounce off of it. Or not.

This little shanty of a club would barely qualify as a tennis club in any civilized part of the United States. Somehow I managed to imagine that it was somehow quaint for the past nine years. Well...in my defense I had to eat. More importantly...my wife, my three dogs, my four horses and my four half-horses had to eat. Our part time cat has to eat.

So I very much like your post Stotty. I can't be certain but you might just be on the verge of "agreeing" with something that I have written in the past. I think that you are...it must resonate with you. But you are not yet at the point where you can afford to bite the hand that feeds you. I know how you feel. All that I can say is internally it is having quite a effect on how I feel. It's exciting once again. I am faced with the age old dilemma...go back to where it was safe or go forwards and grow. Guess which I am going to do. Love you guys...all the best to you. Whether you ever agreed with me or not...it never mattered a little bit. I just enjoyed hanging with you guys. Especially with the ones that disagreed. It made it all so personally refreshing.

Agreeing or disagreeing is not an issue for me, but I avoid using these words with you out of politeness. There is no point using language which is going to get up someone's nose.

I am not sure what you mean by 'biting the hand' that feeds me. Only a fool directly bites the hand that feeds him. But there other ways to bite, just not so direct. Once one is married into Italian blood you realise 'revenge', 'gaining the upper hand' and 'saying one's piece' can be a process strung out over a lifetime. Once you have done something really naughty you are never off the hook. An Italian, and in particular a Sicilian, will bide his time for years to bite you back. I prefer the British way. Have it out with someone or even have fisticuffs...but then it's over...time for a pint.

My take is different from yours. The classic game ended with the end of wooden rackets but a semblance of the game did carry on right up until Roger. For me Roger wasn't the last link in the chain, he broke it. The modern game starts with Roger rather than the classic game ending with him. I don't have time to articulate this point right now but it is nowhere near as barmy as you might think. I will explain my theory at some point but it has less to do with game style and more to do with level of play and where and how things separated.

Safin is of course right. No young players have come through. The top 30 have held their positions for what seems like a decade. I cannot answer why that is but what we do know is there are far fewer players participating in the game than there were ten years ago, far fewer. This is just a fact. It stands to reason therefore that fewer great players coming through and the standard must go down. That's just the law of averages. I have said this before but if Djokovic, Roger and Rafa die in a plane crash the game is going to struggle. That said, and this is where the game is so unpredictable, Roger didn't play the French in 2017 yet the event had record-breaking attendances.

It's a shame if you are leaving your club. All clubs, even tinpot ones, are the better for having a knowledgeable coach with the game itself coursing through his veins. Me, I have been at my club 33 years. I have been head coach for 26 of those years. I recently wrote to one parent whose son is applying for Cambridge University and about to leave. I said if I had one ambition for all the children who go through my programme, it would be that they achieve a good enough standard of play to be capable of joining any club in the world and have the confidence to know they will be able to hold their own. Nothing too lofty, just an achievable goal for every child who starts young enough regardless of their natural ability....they can all make it.

There will be another Roger, there won't be another McEnroe. McEnroe was unique while Roger is just sublimely talented. Wait long enough and a Roger will come around again. In my view the game doesn't end with Roger, but it will go into a lull for a while. Roger has weaknesses. He's as dull a dishwater in terms of persona...luckily his game and achievements have compensated for that. But, yeah, he is a bit of a plank...banal. McEnroe is interesting, Roger isn't.

That's all for now...off to work. Four hours stretches ahead of me: a child beginner, a BBC backroom fact checker, a city insurance guy, and a blond. Wish me luck.

[arturohernandez]

So isn't the something wrong that they slowed the game down through a combination of surfaces and technology. The slower game benefits older more fit but slower players.

At least that is one theory I have heard.

Imagine if they eliminate the fast break and only allowed shots five feet from the net in basketball.

Teams would have one guard to feed the ball into a bunch of big players jockeying for position near the hoop.

That is what tennis has done.

And what we have left are a bunch of older, fitter wiser players who don't have to worry about someone hitting them off the court.

If they simply speeded up the surfaces, made the rackets smaller and it became a game of quickness, wouldn't the speed of the younger players prevail.

There is nothing wrong with the younger players.

The conditions no longer suit them as well as they did during Safin's time.

If only realized how fortunate he was to play when he did...