JoAnne Russell

I grew up watching tennis in the 1980s. It was an era of transition. The 70s was a time of clay court players, the rise of Borg and Vilas. It was the time of Connors and Nastase and the start of new bad boy to succeed those two, John McEnroe. The way to win during this era was to get into rallies of 20, 30, 40 shots. It was amazing that tennis was at the height of its popularity with such a style of play.

The 80s was a transition to bigger racquets, to power forehands. Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker, Steffi Graf, and Agassi to close the era.

Although Martina was a sign of new power, she herself would be exposed for her groundstrokes, which was good enough for Chris Evert, but not good enough for Graf.

During these days, NBC covered tennis. Bud Collins had yet to be relegated to the sideline, was still co-hosting with Dick Enberg. And JoAnne Russell was commenting on her childhood rival, Chris Evert.

JoAnne who? Yeah, I know. She played on the pro tour, I guess. But she would never hesitate to tell you that she played (and lost) to Chrissie long before anyone else was losing to her.

They were showing the 1984 French Open with Chris and Martina. They showed a brief recap of McEnroe-Connors (yes, Connors made the semis 5 times at the French) and Lendl-Wilander. As powerful as these groundstrokes were at the time, they are positively slow motion compared to today's tennis.

Either Nadal or Federer would be able to bully any of these players who in those days were mostly concerned with keeping the ball in play. Lendl may have ushered in the era of power tennis, at least, after Connors did, but they don't play at the kind of pace of today's players.

Still, players of this era would still easily beat anyone playing tennis now, perhaps even now, at age 40 and 50. Even slow and hobbled over the years, they can still hit a ball.

It's fun to watch these players from the past, even if everything feels like it's in slow motion. It was still an effective style for its time, and many a weekend player could only hope to be a fraction as good as these players were.