Majors in Math
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By Pete Bodo
Before we say good-bye to Melbourne and the Australian Open, let's take a look at a point Pat McEnroe made on the air a few days ago regarding the tournament (an observation I secretly had been hoping to save for the book we're producing together, Hardcourt Confidential: Tales from 25 Years in the Pro Tennis Trenches). Now that the cat's out of the bag, we may as well hash it out.
Roger Federer now has 16 majors, a mind-boggling number - and he's shown no sign of stopping yet. He shattered the former mark (14, held by Pete Sampras), which fell just a few months short of lasting a decade (remember, it was that 13th major, which Pete bagged at Wimbledon in 2000, that set the new mark - the 14th title was gravy). The previous mark of 12 was established by Roy Emerson, the Aussie star, and it stood for longer than 30 years.
And while all bets are off until we see just how badly injuries are going to impact Rafael Nadal's career, let's remember that at this time last year, people bandied about numbers like 15, 18, and 21 when they speculated on how many majors Rafa might win. He certainly got off to faster start than even Federer, despite playing in the same era.
What, did everyone suddenly get real good, real fast?
Well, that's true to some degree. The game, according to the most trustworthy sources, does get incrementally better as time goes on. I think it was Brad Gilbert who said that anyone in the Top 50 today would easily have been in The top 10 or 15 just a few tennis generations ago. The point Pat made, though, is that the Grand Slam title fell so quickly not just because Roger Federer is thought to be the greatest player of all, but also because he's had 25 percent more Grand Slam events at which to collect titles, compared to many of the icons who have been left behind in the dust. That's because until the Melbourne Park era began in 1988, pro tennis in the Open era was mostly a three-Slam game.
The title has existed since 1905, and it was accorded elite, Grand Slam status more or less from the beginning. But some of the greatest names of the Open era simply didn't care enough about that to play the event. And it had an enormous impact on their results.
Bjorn Borg won 11 majors in fewer than 10 years on the tour. He won the French Open and Wimbledon, back-to-back, a mind-blowing three times, and Wimbledon five consecutive times. His record winning percentage in majors is a no less impressive 89.8, and he remains the only man to have won six titles at Roland Garros, a record that at this time last year Nadal seemed destined to topple. Until his knee problems began, Nadal seemed a lock to win, oh, 10 titles in Paris - if not more.
But Borg played the Australian Open just once; he lost in the quarterfinals in 1976 (let's see who knows the name of the guy who beat Borg, without consulting a reference). And let's bear in mind that the tournament was held at Kooyong, on grass, until the the move to Melbourne Park.
How about John McEnroe? He did most of his serious damage at majors between 1977 and 1985, a period during which he played in Melbourne just twice (he reached a semi and a quarter, and would make the trip to Melbourne two more times late in his career, after it moved to the present venue). Jimmy Connors? The guy played Grand Slam events for 22 years, and made the trip Down Under just twice. He won in 1974 and lost the final the following year. In the first nine years of his career, Ivan Lendl took a pass on the Australian more often than he played it, although he later become a fierce champion on the blazing Rebound Ace courts.
Connors finished his career with eight Grand Slam titles, tied with Lendl; McEnroe won seven. Had those guys demonstrated the same enthusiasm for the Australian as players do today,we can speculate that each of them would have ended up in double figures in the Grand Slam title count. And that's right up there in Emerson territory, and pushing Sampras.
The big loser, if that's the right term for it, was Borg, who suffered no handicap having to play on grass. Based on his winning percentage, it's hard to imagine that he would have failed to take at least three titles in Oz, but he might have won as many as five (his output on grass at Wimbledon). Give him those five and we'd be celebrating Roger having equaled Borg's record a few days ago, rather than toasting his ability to continue putting his all into a race that's left all of his rivals back on the horizon.
Emerson, who is in good company with Rod Laver as the only two men to win each of the Grand Slam titles at least twice, and who carted off a mind-boggling 28 major titles (a record, and it includes men's and mixed doubles), may have been short-changed by his times. But Borg, and perhaps Connors, Lendl and McEnroe, too, also paid a price for the era in which they lived. You can argue that it was their own danged fault, for not holding the Australian major in sufficiently high esteem, but I think they were just reacting to the conditions on the ground at the time. It's always been a demanding trip, and at a lousy time. As a tournament, the Australian Open at Kooyong was, to borrow a phrase, the pits of the world. That makes the renaissance of the event something for which we should be extra thankful.
Here's something else that ought to be taken into account. Sampras was until recently the most prolific Grand Slam title winner who played his entire career after the tournament left Kooyong. He played his first major, the U.S. Open, just 10 months after the first ball was hit in Rod Laver Arena. No wonder he represented such an enormous leap in title production; he was the first great player whose entire career played out in the new Australian era. He had four majors to shoot for, instead of three, all the way. But he didn't pad his resume with Aussie titles; he won just twice and never did like the playing conditions Down Under.
Andre Agassi skipped the Australian Open for the first nine years of his career, but then made it the cornerstone of his resume - he was 4-0 in Australian Open finals, and Melbourne Park was the only Grand Slam venue where he managed to pull off a win over Sampras.
The smartest guy of all, though, was Mats Wilander. He won two of his seven majors at Kooyong, showing a little more respect for the event that rivals who blew off the event. Consider it a shrewd investment that began paying dividends in 1988 (but tip your hat to Wilander for winning the title in the first year at Melbourne Park, as well). Those titles look pretty good today, and who's going to bother about the asterisks, now that the Australian Open stands shoulder to shoulder with the other majors again?
Which brings up one other point that I mentioned in our podcast the other day. In some ways, the Australian Open remained a work in progress, even after it moved to Melbourne Park. It wasn't that long ago that you could reliably count on a surprise finalist to make it through the draw. Arnaud Clement, Rainer Schuettler and the rootin' tootin' Swedish Tommys - Johansson and Enqvist, all played in a Melbourne final. The top players could no longer afford to skip the event, yet they may not have always arrived wearing their game faces.
Oh, we've had a Marcos Baghdatis here, a Jo-Wilfried Tsonga there. But it's too early in either of their careers to pigeon-hole either of those guys as as players of the same class as Clement or Enqvist. The general feeling until a few years ago was that a guy who got fit in the off-season and came to Australia with the right attitude could catch some of the big dogs napping. I get the feeling that's not the case anymore. Part of the reason for that may be that today's players all feel that, in the era of Federer, you best take your titles anywhere you can get them, and everybody shows up in Oz with his A game - and attitude - in tow.
If you take all that into account, there's more of a continuum in play that meets the eye. It doesn't take away anything from Federer's record; it just suggests that a few of the other guys whose output Federer has doubled may not have been quite as second-rate as the record suggests.