Forget About Roy Emerson as an All Time Great Tennis Player

As Rafa Nadal wins his eleventh grand slam, how does he rank against the other all time greats that have won as many or more Grand Slams. Those would be Roger Federer (16), Pete Sampras (14), Bjorn Borg (11) and Roy Emerson (12).

But wait a second, who is Roy Emerson?!? Roy Emerson, Emmo, was an Australian amateur tennis player who is renowned for winning many of the amateur Grand Slam championships in the era just preceding the Open Grand Slams.

From 1920 to 1950 the United States won the Amateur Only Davis Cup 13 times and finished second 9 times. In that same period, Australia won 2 Davis Cup titles and finished second 10 times. (Davis Cup Titlists – http://bit.ly/OuRtOL ). In the late 1940s, Jack Kramer joined and developed the men’s professional tennis circuit.

Quickly the greatest players of the game joined the tour. Any players who had amateur grand slam success went to the next level of play, the pro circuit and Kramer’s championship tour. The US Pro Championships were considered to be the “Pro Grand Slam”

From 1948 through 1954 more than 95% of the quarterfinalists at the US Pro Championships were Americans. The Australians won the Davis Cup from 1950-1953 as the top 8 Americans were playing pro tennis. Frank Sedgman was the first Australian to have an impact on the pro circuit reaching the finals of the US Pro in 1954. He was quickly joined by Ken Rosewall and Lew Hoad, but Pancho Gonzalez dominated the championships, winning from 1952 to 1959. Americans still comprised more than 75% of semifinalists at the US Pros from 1955-1962 but Australia won the amateur Davis Cup until Rod Laver turned pro. (US Pro Draws for the 1960’s http://bit.ly/NbbQ6K ). The next year, despite Emmo’s wins in Australia and Roland Garros, the Australians lost the Davis Cup to the United States with Marty Riessen, Dennis Ralston and Arthur Ashe winning the amateur team championship.

Australia adopted a hard line. The Lawn Tennis Association of Australia (LTAA) provided a rich “stipend” for their “amateur” players to keep them amateur. From 1963 to 1966 no new Australians turned pro and qualified into the US Pro Championships and finally in 1967, Fred Stolle turned pro after winning the 1966 US Amateurs despite having a worse Slam record than Emmo.

In the period from 1963 to 1966, Emmo won 10 of his 12 slams. From 1963 – 1965, American amateurs had no budget to travel. More than 80% of top 8 Australian Amateur championship seeds were Australians while at the same time, more than 50% of US Pro quarterfinalists were American. (1963 Australian Open Seeds – http://bit.ly/MBwKGo)

Finally, in 1969, all the amateur championships converted to professional and Rod Laver, the professional champion 3 of the prior 4 years won the Grand Slam again. Emerson never got beyond a quarterfinal of any slams in the pro era, losing in the quarterfinals as defending champion of Roland Garros to the 40 year old Pancho Gonzalez. Jack Kramer in 1979 did not rank Emerson in his list of the top 21 players of all time (http://bit.ly/L3AmUG)

Philosophically we like to consider Emmo’s position in the tennis pantheon. As an amateur during a settled pro era, we have never seen a period where amateurs in any sports are better than the pros. Think about the difference between the US Amateur Olympic basketball team and the Dream Team.

As you know, this blog looks at the hard data and real history of tennis and fixes the data so people can do apples to apples comparisons of tennis quality. When head to head data is not available, we substitute other data such as common opponents or competition during different eras.

For the decade of the 1960s there is no way to rank Emmo against his peer group during that period since he did not play any of them for long periods. However, we can rank him post amateur as a professional against the same players who are about the same age. In the pro era, Emmo had a Won/Loss record of 5-34 against the top pros from 1963-1967 including Arthur Ashe who turned pro in 1969 and was 11-1 against Emmo as a pro though he lost two Amateur Australian finals to Emmo.

Roy Emerson record vs. the top pros of 1963-1967, post 1967

W/L
Rod Laver 1-14
Ken Rosewall 1-5
Pancho Gonzalez 0-1
Andres Gimeno 2-3
Arthur Ashe 1-11

Overall Record 5-34

Given this record, we would put Emerson’s highest rank among amateur / pros of the 60’s who were his age outside of the top 5.

Yet Emerson remains in the top 10 players of many “experts” who don’t know the data or the circumstance of the time or willfully choose to ignore the data. If you google Roy Emerson and top 10 players of all time, more than 240,000 results occur. Yet, Pancho Gonzalez, who won a record 8 US Pro championships in a row, is not ranked as high by many experts as Emerson.

How do you reply to someone over beers who says Roy Emerson is a top 10 player of all time? You smile, you say,

* “He was a great amateur champion”,
* “He never got past a professional grand slam quarterfinal”,
* “He was 5-34 against the best pro players of his era”,
* “If he wasn’t the best of any of his years, how could he be one of the best of all time?”

And then you drink your beer very slowly.

How Much Longer For Federer and Nadal – Tennis Champion Lifecycles

After a magnificent victory against Novak Djokovic, ending the match in the 4^th set when the tennis-viewing audience would bet against him in a 5 setter, Roger Federer was the story of this year’s Roland Garros despite losing in the final to Rafael Nadal.  Federer ended Djokovic’s 43 match winning streak.  Though we stuck a fork in Federer’s future slam chances last year when he lost in the US Open semifinals in a grinding 5-setter to Djokovic ( a match as pivotal to Djokovic as Lendl’s French Open victory against McEnroe was) we aren’t surprised to see Federer reach another slam final.  Federer beat a competitive field and had the most difficult draw in the tourney.

Not to be undone, the 25 year old Rafael Nadal won his 6^th French Open championship equaling the iconic Bjorn Borg.  Nadal and Borg are European twins with equally haughty won-loss records against the field of 82.6%.   Much of their damage was done on clay.  Nadal has eclipsed Borg with a career grand slam.  He is one of only 5 modern era champs to win slams on 3 surfaces including Jimmy Connors, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer and Mats Wilander.  What makes Nadal’s record more impressive than Federer’s is that he beat Federer on all surfaces in the finals of the slams they played.

Last year we gave our reasons for Federer’s fade:  (1) He needs too many winners against a player like Nadal to be competitive, (2) He can be outlasted in a tourney and by the semi-finals or finals is out of gas i.e French Open final set, (3) He doesn’t have a major-league fastball serve like Sampras that gets him many easy points, important as you get older.  LZ  Granderson from ESPN gave all the reasons Federer is not the greatest in agreement with our prior arguments but also described why Federer would lose to Nadal in Paris.  Greg Garber from ESPN has jumped on the bandwagon as well with Tim Joyce of Realclear Sports.  Is it much longer for Peter Bodo to acquiesce?

When we look at historical tennis data, we begin to conclude that Nadal is near the end of a remarkable story arc as well.

What has been Nadal’s story arc?  Like fellow all-time greats: Borg, Becker, Sampras and Wilander, his championship play manifested itself as a teen winning his first French Open at 19 after thoroughly dominating the South American clay tour.   Later he moved onto the finals of Wimbledon at 21 years of age.   Like every other left hander to reach the finals at a young age(McEnroe, Ivanisevic), he went on to win the championships and a total of 10 grand slams with this year’s French Open compiling an astounding 47-17 won-loss record in pro finals again rivaling Borg’s final percentage.

So the question remains how much gas do either have in the tank?  Is there data in tennis history that is relevant to answering the question?  If Federer is going strong near 30 years old, why shouldn’t Nadal?

Grand Slam Championships by Age – One Handed Backhand strokers.

So what does tennis look like for All Time Great (ATG) Slam champions after 25.  First let’s talk about the data.  We have compiled data since the Open era began for all tennis champions.   Eliminating the Rosewall and Laver data due to the “Dream Team” affect i.e. pros playing against amateurs we come up with a data set that shows a typical age range for people to win Grand Slams is from age 17 to 32 or about 15 years.  More dramatically we see that with the exception of Connors and Agassi, most two handed all time greats end their championship runs around 25 years of age.   We see the limit on one handed backhand hitters winning slams as 31 years of age.

Ultimately, the test of aging in the grand slams is whether you can win 7 matches and up to 35 sets in 14 days in terrible heat and other conditions against opponents 5-10 years younger than you.   Sampras had the benefit of easy points from one of the best first serves tennis has seen and certainly the best second serve far  faster than Federer’s with as much disguise.  Its not about the aces as much as the unreturnable serves or easy setups for putaway volleys.

Grand Slam Championships by Age – Two Handed Backhand strokers.

Data on Connors and Agassi winning post 25 should be taken with a grain of salt.  Connor’s 2 of 3 slams post 26 years of age benefitted from draws where Ivan Lendl eliminated McEnroe prior to a finals match with Connors as well as Borg’s sudden early retirement i.e would Connors win a tourney with semifinalists Borg, Lendl and McEnroe, instead of Bill Scanlon?  All of Connors victories over Lendl were before Lendl’s career-defining victory over McEnroe at the French Open.

Whose Head is Bigger?

  

Agassi’s admission of Performance Enhancing Drug(PED) usage in his autobiography casts a huge red flag over Agassi‘s  THREE slams at the age of 29. At 28 and 29 Lendl, Sampras and Federer, perhaps the fittest players ever to play tennis limped into the final years of their careers having problems lasting through the later rounds. With a career decline far worse than Roger Clemens as a Red Sox, Agassi  emerged with 10 pounds of additional muscle and endurance better than the fittest players in tennis history.  Things that make you go hmmm.

Regardless, Nadal is a different style player than Connors and Agassi as he has relied on defense far more in his career whereas Connors and Agassi dictated the pace of their play throughout their careers.   We have concluded that this is the last year or two of Nadal’s challenging for slam championships.   This is based on a few changes in the tennis environment and Nadal’s aging.

1.  Nadal is losing to Djokovic on all surfaces and Del Potro has returned to tennis which will threaten Nadal on harder / faster surfaces.
2. Nadal has shown that he is vulnerable on clay to flat ball hitters like Djokovic.  And now Tsonga on grass.
3. Nadal’s game more resembles Borg where he is opportunistic rather than Connors or Agassi where they forced play.  That is a harder game to maintain as you age per Borg and Wilander (Chang, Hewitt, etc).

Though Nadal is a different type of physical specimen than tennis has seen with Popeye musculature, a boxer’s gait and a peculiar penchant to adjust his shorts on every serve, we think this may only buy him an additional year of challenging for slams.  Do we favor Rafa to win Wimbledon this year?  Yes, but we won’t be surprised if he loses either.   The US Open will depend on the draw, where DelPo and Andy Murray land and if Djokovic can find his form again by the US Open.