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Why Should Tennis Players Respect All Past Champions?

To understand tennis players greatness one has to know and understand that any champion at any given era could be a threat to any other champion in any other era.

This brings me back to some conversations I had with young Pete Sampras and Jim Courier when I coached Jim back in 1988, 89 and 90 and we traveled and trained together many times. Those two young bucks then, were pretty cocky and in some ways they respected history and the old guard, but they thought they knew better and tennis had become much better then in the past, which is natural in a young person. Once in a while I bored them to death with one of my stories on how many of the old champions could have beaten anyone in any given era. And also told them why they, as young players, should respect that and keep those players in high esteem.

Of course they both scoffed at that then, but now I am sure a wry smile of nostalgia and regret crosses Pete’s face as he reads this article, because now he is in the very same position of the great champion’s he once somewhat derided and I defended.

Yes Pete, now it is your turn and as you can see even though you did not play for almost five years in the ATP circuit, in 2008 you were capable of showing the world and the present Nr. 1 Roger Federer, that breaking your serve on hard-courts is not an easy task. Remember though, there were others in past eras that served as well as you did.

Why is that so?

And why do I think that any great champion could be a real threat in any era?
There are several reasons and I am going to mention just a few:

- All champions in any given era were top athletes with a special inherited set of qualities that only very few in millions of people possess at any given period of sports history. In tennis, this happens every 15 to 20 years.

- They have a set of abilities (in this case tennis specific) that are bound to make them excel in that sport.

- Tennis players are egocentric, selfish (it is a major factor in tennis), driven, love an audience and have an un-indomitable desire to win.

- Unlike what many phsychologists (who probably have never competed seriously) try to portray, the “having fun factor”, as something champions are looking for or should be looking for. No! Champions are not playing to “have fun” they do it to win and only winning satisfies them.

- They have an almost “masochist” capacity to suffer at all levels.

- They are incredibly fast and well coordinated.

- They have a game specific intelligence.

And many other qualities, along with an extraordinary MEMORY! Some champions will remember full details of matches they played years past, to specifics such as given points and situations, when most of us cannot even bother to retain what we eat for breakfast on the same day.

How important is this?

Crucial! With such a capacity of retention, they have a database of information, of routine plays, weaknesses, strengths, likes and dislikes, weather conditions, sun position, a blind spot indoors, the role the wind plays outdoors, how the racket strings react to weather and the best tensions, even a spot where the ball skids faster on a given court in any one country!

Armed with extensive, ever growing databases of information that they can recall at will, in time tennis players become awesome foes!

How do they use this to their advantage?

- They use it all the time, starting with the very first ball they hit either in competition, practice or even watching you play!

- When playing someone they never played. They can determine by experience and association to other players they confronted previously and use the patterns that have won against that type of player.

- Often in severely challenging situations players resort to automatic plays (stored in memory) which often will surprise the opponent!

- With a standard play like the serve down the middle on key points. Skilled players tend to have a 80 percent chance of winning such points.

- When tired, they use the one-two combinations of a series of them stored in their memory book.

Do they do this at a cognitive level?

Both cognitive and subliminal. Even though they workout solutions at a technical level in action, their brain is constantly offering them subliminal answers from an inner dialog that are acted upon in fractions of a second.

Therefore, as the years go by, champions become extremely efficient. There are no unnecessary movements, not an ounce of energy is spent without a prize, all risks are calculated, all actions measured, accessed, stacked up and ranked in order of the highest possible success in their favor.

Champions of all eras had all of these capacities and more. Some were more exceptional then others and here I come to a short story, that gave me insight into this.

In 1976 I was playing the Indian Circuit for the second year in a row and was in a city called Allahabad. As I routinely did at the end of the day, winning or losing, it did not matter, I ran a hard 5 kilometer (17 to 20 minute pace) followed by some short sprints with a very short jog to return to calm and ending with a stretching session. All of this, I preferred to do on grass at a football or cricket field.

This time Ramanathan Krishnan and his young son Ramesh were also on the football field exercising. Accidentally we ended up stretching at the same area and a conversation ensued.

As usual my curious mind made me ask Mr. Krishnan; “who was the toughest player you ever played?”

The answer was immediate and almost with a tad of resentment:

- “Lew Hoad”!

Of course I was not going to stop there and… “Why?”

- “You know, when I played the other players I always had a chance. With Lew Hoad, he just hit winners from every corner to every corner and he beat me, 6/0 6/0 or 6/1 6/1! (It was almost as if Krishnan was complaining).

Wait a minute I said to myself, this is Ramanathan Krishnan talking, a player that was two-time Wimbledon semi-finalist, who beat arguably the best player of all time Rod Laver at the U.S. International hard-court Championships!

Not caring about Krishnan’s pain, I decided to dig deeper. “So in your opinion he was the best of all time?”

- “Yes, There is only one player that I think played as well, Pancho Gonzales!”

Boy I was getting confused, those two were the best? So I had to ask, “What about Rod Laver?”

- “Oh, yes! He was very, very good!…but, his serve and ground strokes were not as powerful as Lew Hoad or Pancho Gonzales!”

Considering that I just had seen Krishnan (at 39 years old) take Vijay Armitraj (Nr. 7 ATP then) to a five setter and quit in the middle of it at 3 all telling Vijay; “I better stop now because I do not want them to invite me into the Davis Cup team”. What he just had told me was pretty interesting.

What I did not tell Krishnan was that in 1972 I had been at Lew Hoad’s tennis camp in Mijas, Spain training and that Mr. Hoad at 38, in spite of the back problems that had made him stop professional tennis prematurely, he played the cleanest tennis I had ever seen and his volleys and overhead smash were the very best one can execute. And…Yes! I can also say that Lew Hoad in is older age with a Dunlop maxplay wooden racket, could hit the tennis ball as hard as anyone today! Scary stuff, because he played with a 410gr racket vs today’s 315gr rackets. Can you imagine that our rackets today would feel like ping-pong bats in comparison. How would he bludgeon the ball with our rackets of today? How much better would everything have been? Much better indeed!

In my mind, if someone asked me, do you think Lew Hoad at his best and trained with today’s equipment would beat Pete Sampras or Roger Federer? Without a moment of hesitation, I would say; Yes! For several reasons:

- Given that all things were equal in the service and ground stroke department.

- In the fitness department Lew Hoad was far better than both Pete and Roger. Why? Simple there is not one player in the ATP or WTA today that was personally trained by Mr. Harry Hopman (that would be another article to explain, what it meant training with Mr. Hopman!).

- In the attack department, volley, serve and volley and second serve attack, movement in general and in particular at the net, Lew Hoad was far better then Pete and Roger. Since all other things are equal in other departments, this would tilt the winning balance greatly in favor of Lew Hoad.

- Even though a natural grass court player, which is not the case of Pete Sampras or Roger Federer, Lew Hoad won on the Australian, French, and Wimbledon Grand Slams and was denied the US Open title by Ken Rosewall in consecutive years. The French Open the hardest of them all neither Pete nor Roger have won.

- Unlike Lew Hoad, Pete and Roger just so happen to play in an era where 95% of the ATP players just do not know how to play on a grass court!

Many of you will scoff and say, but the power! Lew Hoad was more powerful then anyone I have seen playing tennis and struck the ball earlier than anyone I know. On a good day he would trash Pete or Roger hands down, on a bad day things would be even.

Do not feel like I am bashing your heroes, just go to another sport and take Michael Jordan in basketball and no matter how hard you will try there is not one player today that can scratch his heels. Yep, some champions are just too darn exceptional! Lew Hoad was one of them. And so was Pancho Gonzales, Roy Emerson, Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Bjorn Borg and few others.

All the best to you, improve your database, play many matches, tournaments or practice, against as many opponents as you can!

When I was young sometimes I could not find strong opposition, but that never discouraged me. I gave much weaker opponents 30 love or 40 love at the start of every game and it was a battle! Try that yourself and you will grow humble and a stronger player.

Sergio Cruz

Guess who this is?

Let me know your guess in the comments box. This will be part of a series of articles about 2 great champions with exclusive footage of how champions train, travel and have fun!

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