1976 Rod Laver vs Bjorn Borg

[gzhpcu]

Beautiful footage... A different world then, yet look how they move...

[stotty]

I love this clip. One player is on the way up and the other on the way down. Borg was remarkable at 18. His temperament remains the best ever. Pancho recognised it and must have seen himself in Borg...for certain one feels. Wooden racket tennis is a different game altogether and this clip shows it at its best. There was no 100mph tennis with wood. You had to come up with something other than power.

[doctorhl]

The wood racket game was much more vertical than today. Drops, lobs, ability to move forward and backward. Racket control was sacrificed for athleticism as racket technology changed. With athleticism came boorishness. I long for the pre- McEnroe/Nastase/ Conners gentleman days of tennis when the audience could appreciate the intricacies of the incredible battle of skill and wit on the court without the chest thumping of players and baiting by the crowd usually associated with team sports. I suspect money drove the change in tennis culture. Any fellow “dinosaurs” out there?

[gzhpcu]

Here is a another fellow dinosaur...

[don_budge]

The wood racket game was much more vertical than today. Drops, lobs, ability to move forward and backward. Racket control was sacrificed for athleticism as racket technology changed. With athleticism came boorishness. I long for the pre- McEnroe/Nastase/ Conners gentleman days of tennis when the audience could appreciate the intricacies of the incredible battle of skill and wit on the court without the chest thumping of players and baiting by the crowd usually associated with team sports. I suspect money drove the change in tennis culture. Any fellow “dinosaurs” out there?

I prefer the term "TRADITIONALIST". Not convinced about the athleticism though. The large racquets create an obvious illusion. That is all that it is. Illusion. One can delude oneself into thinking otherwise. Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic would not be in the top one hundred in 1981 playing with traditional equipment under traditional conditions. Remember at one point in time and space that three of the four majors were played on slick and somewhat erratic bouncing grass surfaces. If you couldn't play the ball on the volley ASAP you need not apply. Rod Laver and Björn Borg are playing tennis. What is being played today is not tennis by definition. It is call "Modern Tennis" more accurately. It is not a normal progression or a factor of evolution as it was up until the great end of Classic Tennis with the rivalry between Björn Borg and John McEnroe. It is a contrived engineered hybrid that is far inferior to the original. Modern tennis is watered down. Dumbed down. Tennis metaphoring life...as usual. Roger Federer is acclaimed to be "The Living Proof" in educated circles. He is the last remaining link. Once he is gone the game is officially declared extinct. Just like the dinosaurs.

[doctorhl]

Alas, poor Yorick(Roger?).

[don_budge]

Alas, poor Yorick(Roger?).

Yorick? But alas...it is an old wound and doctorhi is old enough to understand. In 1980 I had my highest ranking in my district. My section. A pretty good ranking. I was starting to get competitive with the best players. I played number one singles at university in 1977 and 1978. I believe that I broke pretty even in match play for the two years. I started tennis when I was 14 and those were the days when there were no indoor courts. I played on a gym floor for a few years until the first indoor facility was built in my neck of the woods. I believe that in my last year of college I faced five players in the Wimbledon draw in either singles or doubles. Lost to all of them. Straight sets too. Didn't back down to any of them. I took my beating. But I was still a work in process. Perhaps a rather erratic work at that. Fits and starts. Lacked the consistent effort as I had to work to earn my keep. To pay for my racquets. I was sponsored by Spalding for a couple of years. In hindsight I wished I had paid for my racquets. They were pretty crummy.

But the racquets. In my final year of college you started to see the oversized racquets and they surely changed the landscape. The dimensions of the food chain. Instead of hard work and grit it was go spend a few hundred bucks on the latest and greatest. Trust me...I could not afford it. Sounds pathetic I know. But such were the way things were. Besides...I was a traditionalist. Having spent a couple of summers with the great Don Budge at his tennis camp. My traditional roots in my training as well. My great tennis coach was just a picture of the traditional tennis player. Sherm Collins.

So my love affair with the game soured. As did my view of mankind. It already wasn't that pretty but that pretty much sealed that deal. The human being...ready to sink to new depths for the slightest advantage. There is no turning back knowing what I know. How the game was sold down the river for the traditional 30 shekels of precious. My disdain for the modern game is non negotiable. Just as my attitude was back when the equipment changed. I was don_quixote defending her honour. How I battled the windmills...with my tiny little sword. One could say it was pathetic if it wasn't so Quixotic. There is romance involved. True love. Which is also a dying concept. See how tennis metaphors life. Existence. It wasn't evolution...so much as it was engineering. The modern player is a product of the engineering...and the brainwashing.

You are old enough to understand this doctorhi. I don't get tired of telling it how it was. Trust me...I know what I am talking about. Rod Laver playing Björn Borg in this video tells a story. An old and ancient story as nowadays fifty years is ancient history. For the first time in the history of mankind. But this is a beautiful video about the generations of tennis handing over to the next. Rod wasn't bitter about it. He displayed the same sort of brilliant play as well as sportsmanship that was the keystone of the game. Tennis etiquette. Thou shall not take unfair advantage of your opponent.

I would dearly love to watch the current top two to play in the old arena. Their bouncy, bouncy preserve routines would have landed them somewhere behind the locker room getting their asses kicked by someone who loved the game. Truly loved it with a passion.

[EdWeiss]

Here is the full match, great to watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoD8l0CV3Ic

[stotty]

Thanks, Ed. I shall watch it from start to finish. I much prefer the more low key and much less hyped introduction to the match than the hyperbolic nonsense we get today.

[don_budge]

Here is the full match, great to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoD8l0CV3Ic

Yes...great to watch and great to listen to. This match fits right into the wheel house of don_budge. Twenty-three years old and the game was beginning to change. But here is a prime example of a whole plethora of different aspects of the game, time and change. You look at the outfits and the behaviour of the players. The comments of the astute and cagey Richard Gonzalez and his contemporary Chris Schenkel. A whole different era emerges and if you are not so biased from the current time frame you recognise that everything that I have said in the above posts is true.

This is basically exhibition tennis and ironically a number of posters were rather pooh poohing the very idea that there is anything to be gleaned from watching exhibition. They seemed almost indignant at the very idea. But tennis is tennis and watching it can be very interesting depending upon the circumstances. These circumstances back in 1977 are very interesting indeed. We have thirty-eight year old former world beater Rod Laver (ironically again that the exhibition tennis that other forum contributors found not worthy of their attention was named after this iconic tennis player) and the twenty year old Swede Björn Borg. More irony as the one and only link to this classic game is Roger Federer who is currently thirty-eight as well. Laver in this case is holding his own on a surface that is clearly not conducive to his best tennis is pitted against the top player in the world who's favourite surface just happens to be clay.

The camera angles really give a good realistic shot as to just how Borg's topspin is taking to the gritty dirt. Rod Laver has all sorts of problems dealing with it and he is really caught between a rock and a hard place playing Borg on clay. If he stays back the topspin just eats him up as the ball plays higher and higher pushing him back farther and farther in the court. But the option is to try and move in and play the ball before it gets to high but then he doesn't have the physics in his little Dunlop Maxply to drive the ball back from shoulder high and ends up playing too defensively to be able to penetrate the court as he notes in his final words after the match. So he takes the only venue left and attacks to the net which is more effective than staying back but at thirty-eight he doesn't quite have the legs to pull it off. The agility and strength that is necessary to play this kind of tennis is lost on the modern game in the monotony of backcourt duels with the occasional drop shot.

Interesting enough the net play of Laver is more or less accepted as the norm even on the dirt surface. But in the modern game any time a player makes his way to the net and pulls off a play he is likely to be regards as walking on water. It's a warm day in the sun but you never see either player going for a towel or using the ball kids for anything other than chasing the balls. No swipes at the face to indicate that they are demanding the a towel be run over to them. Both players bounce the ball one time before their serve motions and when they miss the first the second is almost a continuation of the motion of the first as they immediately put the ball into play. The pace of play is so radically different from the current game it is almost hard to imagine. It's another world.

But the most interesting aspect of all is what these two brilliant players are doing with the ball. Again the camera angles do the trajectory of the ball great justice as you see just how high bouncing and effective the topspin of Borg's strokes are. Laver on the other hand has his hands full trying to blend defence of the high bounce and the attack of the net. Watching him cagily trying to manuevor Borg with his slice backhand without a great deal of success. He does seem to make inroads a bit in the second but it could be that Borg has just loosened his grip on the reins a bit as he has things rather under control. Fascinating to watch as the veteran relies on guile and intelligence to try and neutralise the intensity and strength of youth. It was possible in those days to play such thoughtful tennis not that the physical wasn't also required. But the absence of ridiculous racquets kept things somewhat equal. You can imagine that Rod might have given Björn more trouble on a slick grass court that was disappearing as well in 1977. That may have been the year that the grass at the Australian was dug up for the final time.

The thoughtful measured words of Richard Gonzalez bounce off of the listeners brain like the tip toe white light of a cosmic melody as well. From the astute tennis mind of the one with the Aztec Eyes the timeless and immortal nature of the game is caught in a chamber of purity. Of innocence perhaps. Even a friendly jibe by Chris Schenkel about the temper of the great Gonzalez rolls of his back like water on a duck. Gonzalez jokes that he only was hitting balls out of the stadium when they were "testing them".

It's only exhibition tennis so the forum posters will be having none of it if they are consistent in their remarks. But if they quit playing politics and try to wipe the stuff our of their eyes they have to admit...that was some tennis.

[don_budge]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H59aAm2TSk8

Somewhat interesting video. "Tennis Evolution Throughout the Years (1870's - 2017)". But you cannot escape the bias of the modern point of view. To me this is a rather half-hearted attempt. The title should be "Tennis Engineering Throughout the Years (1870's - 2019). There is nothing new under the sun...such was the word in Ecclesiastes. Nothing changes. Just more of the same nonsense.

The myth of the modern game. By definition it is not the same game. Tennis metaphoring life. They merely changed the fundamental rules and voila. Sound familiar? Look around you. Open your eyes.