The Evolution of Tennis

The Tennis Channel (or now just Tennis Channel) has been showing old Australian Open matches. Right now, they are showing Chris Evert against Martina from 1982. At that point, Evert had not won the Australian (that was her first win, and she'd win it one more time, and reach the finals a few other times).

At that point, Evert was still using a wood racquet, though it appeared to be a midsize wood racquet. Martina had already started playing with her Yonex rectangular racquet, and she was probably the most prominent user of this Japanese racquet.

The change in racquets really affected women's play. Evert didn't hit particularly hard, and she wasn't fast, but she wasn't so slow either. To be fair, Martina didn't serve so hard either, though she spun the ball wide due to her left-handed serve. And let's face it, until Mauresmo won Wimbledon a few years ago, Martina was the last true serve and volleyer that was any good.

There are several changes that happen to the game, and it's a credit to Chris Evert that she stayed competitive as it was happening. In particular, with the racquet change, people started to hit a lot harder. Originally, this was Steffi, but then Monica, Jennifer, Lindsay, Mary, and the Williams sisters. The women now hit with more spin as well, though not the kind of topspin shots the men do.

Of course, even as I'm critical of their games, they were still awfully good, and far, far better than many players today. By many players, I mean the average weekend hacker, or even the above average weekend hacker. Indeed, while I feel the women have improved their games, Chris Evert and Martina would probably be in the top 30, if they played at their peaks. The power would make it tough for both women to be successful, at least, at the very top of the game. Neither were natural topspin hitters, so adapting their games would have been tough.

Last night, they showed Henri Leconte play Mansour Bahrami. Bahrami is a player from Iran and I believe never played professionally, or if he didn, he was never ranked highly. But the guy had good hands and was humorous, and certainly holds his own against seniors, so I think that's the reason you see him play seniors, which otherwise, prefers to not allow players that weren't highly ranked to play (one could imagine a college player that never made the pros who still is in great shape, being able to beat the stars of yesteryear).

Leconte looks really old, but he still has great hands. The intervening years haven't really helped his consistency though. You forget when players had such marvelous reflexes because they don't play the net anymore.

Leconte had one of those unusual builds. He was all chest, and not much legs or arms. Huge upper body. But he didn't think particularly, and he was very much a rhythm player. On a given day, more like, on a given set, he could beat anyone. But he wasn't so consistent. People forget that Lendl, as hard as he hit, could trade 20-30 shots with players. He eventually beat Connors by just being more patient, waiting for the error.

Connors wasn't even as inconsistent as Leconte. Connors would make 15 shots in a row, but push him to 20 or so, and those flat shots, with such little margin for error, were prone to break down.

The flat shot has pretty much disappeared. Almost no one hits it now. I remember loving to watch Kimiko Date play. She was one of the few players who hit flat, and she'd take the ball so quickly off the ground, and switch direction so quickly that people couldn't keep up. But she was also a head-case. She wasn't as mentally tough as Graf or Seles, otherwise I think she'd be a solid bet to be in the top 3.

Really, the flat shot disappearing, the harder hitting due to big racquets and the disappearance of good serve and volley players (or even coming into net) has been the key changes to tennis, some (especially serve and volley) are disappointing to watching the sport.