NEWS AND COMMENTARY ON WOMEN'S PROFESSIONAL TENNIS
Friday, July 9, 2010
Friday cat blogging--morning nap edition
3 comments:
bill
said...
Diane,
What do you think of SI (Wertheim) picking Serena as the greatest woman player of all time?
I suppose it's all in how you define "greatest." Serena is one of my favorite players of all time, but Graf is my #1, for now. A few more years of Serena cleaning everyone's clocks and it will be an easy call.
It's strange -- I can easily think of Laver as the most prominent challenger to Federer for male GOAT, but I just don't have a strong impression of Margaret Court, who was playing at about the same time as Laver. I barely remember Court losing Wimbledon to a young Goolagong (my candidate for #1 most fun to watch).
I'm going to be doing a post on this topic some time--I keep putting it off--but I do not think there is such a thing as the greatest player of all time, so I think Wertheim's pick (no matter who it had been) only furthers an argument that, to me, has no point.
There can never be a GOAT because time keeps marching on, so who is the best keeps changing. Also technology, different eras, all sorts of things have changed over the years. I think the best you can do is assemble a group that seem to the best at the present time. Some of those will leave the group as new ones come along and some of them will stay for a very long time. I do not believe in alternate histories to try to sell a person as a GOAT. Many people have said that the AO was not that popular so many players didn't go down there and if they did those players would have won a lot more majors. But the fact is that they didn't. Can't change the timeline. Plus I don't believe in majors as the only thing that counts. The tour would not be the tour without participation. Majors, other titles, weeks at number one, years finishing number one, etc I think makes for a well rounded GOAT. No I won't take into account injury that may have taken a person off track for awhile. Injury is part of the game and many injured players could have been top players if for some luck and genetics. AGAIN, no alternate universes, say where Serena was not injured or Rafa was not injured. What happened, happened. One more thing. I believe in equal pay for equal work. I do not believe the women perform equal work at the majors. They play one more round than at Miami(the seeds that is-the others play seven rounds) but get more off days at majors. AND they do not have to step it up physically or mentally. They play the same 2 out of 3 matches as the rest of the year.
3 comments:
Diane,
What do you think of SI (Wertheim) picking Serena as the greatest woman player of all time?
I suppose it's all in how you define "greatest." Serena is one of my favorite players of all time, but Graf is my #1, for now. A few more years of Serena cleaning everyone's clocks and it will be an easy call.
It's strange -- I can easily think of Laver as the most prominent challenger to Federer for male GOAT, but I just don't have a strong impression of Margaret Court, who was playing at about the same time as Laver. I barely remember Court losing Wimbledon to a young Goolagong (my candidate for #1 most fun to watch).
I'm going to be doing a post on this topic some time--I keep putting it off--but I do not think there is such a thing as the greatest player of all time, so I think Wertheim's pick (no matter who it had been) only furthers an argument that, to me, has no point.
And Margaret Court was an amazing player.
There can never be a GOAT because time keeps marching on, so who is the best keeps changing. Also technology, different eras, all sorts of things have changed over the years. I think the best you can do is assemble a group that seem to the best at the present time. Some of those will leave the group as new ones come along and some of them will stay for a very long time. I do not believe in alternate histories to try to sell a person as a GOAT. Many people have said that the AO was not that popular so many players didn't go down there and if they did those players would have won a lot more majors. But the fact is that they didn't. Can't change the timeline. Plus I don't believe in majors as the only thing that counts. The tour would not be the tour without participation. Majors, other titles, weeks at number one, years finishing number one, etc I think makes for a well rounded GOAT. No I won't take into account injury that may have taken a person off track for awhile. Injury is part of the game and many injured players could have been top players if for some luck and genetics. AGAIN, no alternate universes, say where Serena was not injured or Rafa was not injured. What happened, happened. One more thing. I believe in equal pay for equal work. I do not believe the women perform equal work at the majors. They play one more round than at Miami(the seeds that is-the others play seven rounds) but get more off days at majors. AND they do not have to step it up physically or mentally. They play the same 2 out of 3 matches as the rest of the year.
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