Tennisers of the World, Unite! The topspin blog

As rain delays play on some of the more uninteresting Slam quarterfinal matchups I've ever seen, let's take a stroll down memory lane by examining a case of a a great athlete's spiritual resurrection. Ivan Lendl gets little love these days, what with the Macenroe brothers dominating TV commentary, constantly exhuming the careers of Borg and Connors and, like Stalin, trying to write a nemesis from the history books.

But Lendl lives!

In one Rafael Nadal...

I'll state at the outset that Rafa is already more accomplished than Ivan, but there are some strong and varied parallels in their career. What got me started on this was wondering whether Rafa had any forebears in his situation of relative-surface dominance. This brought me to Lendl.

Each of these two players was considered, for a time at least, as the best player of his era. Each was also considered one of the greatest clay court players of all time.

Rafa fans are quite sensitive to the idea that Rafa is a great clay courter, as if saying this somehow is an insult to how great he is on all surfaces. The thing is, he's just not an all time great on hard courts and grass. His record on those surfaces is not just well below Federer and Sampras- its below Connors, Macenroe, Edberg, Becker, Agassi- and now, just about equal to the younger Djokovic.

Which is kind of an aside to help me get to differences: Lendl never got his white whale. Rafa did. The career slam, a validation that one time at least, Rafa was the greatest player in the world on each surface. Lendl's Wimbledon dream never came true- and he WAS a good grass player (2 finals and 5 semis), its not like he never had chances. (Contrast with Sampras who really really sucked at the French Open).
But Rafa's clay dominance, too is more complete and long lasting than Lendl's. Only Borg was in Rafa's class; Rafa's dominance at all tournaments is far more complete than Borg's, but I think Borg's clay competition was deeper: Gerulitis, Panneta, Connors (who won US Open on clay), Solomon... Rafa has had Fed, to be sure, but who beyond Fed has really been a clay court force during Rafa's career?

Back to Lendl. Lendl had something else in common with Rafa: they each led the wave of a new technology with new styles of play, and Rafa's really is an evolution of Lendl's.

Rafa has been called the killer of the serve and volley game. OK, that's an exaggeration, but his rise pretty much coincided with the disappearance of SandV as a competitive style at the very top levels.
Look at the grass wear patterns from Nadal's win over Berdych in 2010:

Compare to the wear in Borg and Macenroe's day:

(The change in Wimbledon grass to slow it down was a major part of it- Rafa's emergence coincided with the general trend in the game; he took advantage of it and made it the leading edge)
Lendl was in the same situation: he heralded the baseline basher era of Jimmy Arias, Becker, Agassi and Courier. Around 1990, we were hearing that the net game was doomed. Of course, that talk died down when Sampras became #1. Lendl was the first to combine the new graphite racquets, which allowed for more topspin and harder hitting without shattering the arm, with a new physicality. Lendly set a new standard for fitness on the tour at that time. As Rafa has set a new standard for physicality today with his bruising baseline game and extreme topspin (enabled by the superior strings most of today's players have adopted). How did Novak supplant Rafa at the top? By out-Rafa-ing Rafa. He runs fasters and chased down more balls. His rallies with Rafa are now out and out marathon, the ball arcing many feet above the net.

What's my point? Not much, really. Just some neat parallels. Unless... is there out there a Sampras to shortcut the Rafa era?

Here's Lendl in his prime. Note that SECOND SHOT by the returner- look familiar??