Sheer athleticism and she has the best serve ever.
Don’t forget that we are talking about using wooden racquets. Also, don’t forget in that era Court and others competed in the mixed doubles as well so they were use to dealing with men’s serves. For the record Court won 4 Australian, 4 French, 5 Wimbledon and 8 US Mixed Doubles titles. Court’s athleticism would have matched Williams’s athleticism if they had competed in Court’s era.
One other stat to mull over that Court’s overall singles’ Grand Slam (all 4 grand slams) win-loss record is 210-23 (about 90%) and 51-6 (about 90%) for the US.
By the way thanks for the discussion.
Sure thing. I tried to overlook the fact that Court is now a religious whack job and bigot.
I am specifically talking about her tennis playing record ONLY. You will need to find someone else to defend her comments and behaviour that you are referring to.
Yeah, I feel bad for Australians that their greatest female tennis player is now such a pariah.
There has been a discussion whether at Melbourne Park that the Margaret Court Arena should be changed.Personally I think over time the name might evolve into MCA rather than the Margaret Court Arena. A reasonable analogy would be Richard Wagner music compared to his personal life.
If some want to divert the attention they can always mention Nick Kyrgios.
He and Bernard Tomic might be the two biggest clowns in tennis today.
I won’t try to explain Tomic’s behaviour but I will comment on Kyrgios. Whilst personally I don’t condone his underarm serving, and when I was involved in junior pennant tennis coordination in the wake of M Chang’s serving underarm I said I did not want to see any of the juniors serving underarm as I did not consider it to be in the spirit of the game, it should be noted that it is a legitimate serve under the rules of tennis.
Kyrgios is right that there are different applications of the rules depending on who the player is. Quite clearly the 25 second rule is not applied equally for Nadal and other players. Similarly some players are given far more tolerance than others. For example, how many audible obscenities violation has Andy Murray received?
Kyrgios answered with an honesty that displays a degree of naivety that is used against him. An example of this was when he answered honestly that he aimed a ball at Nadal during his match at Wimbledon. Ivan Lendl certainly had a reputation for aiming balls at the player at the net.
And before I am accused of white washing Kyrgios’s behaviour I don’t condone some of his actions. He is not the first player to break a racquet and he won’t be the last. He is a very easy target to cherry pick one incident in a 2-3 hour match.
One last point that confirms Kyrgios view that some players are given preferential treatment one only has to go back to the 2018 Australian Open. During that tournament there were a number of days where there was extreme heat and some players complained that during the period of extreme temperatures play should have been suspended. The officials’ response was that it was an outdoor tournament played during summer and the players need to be able to cope with the conditions. This was the same tournament where Federer was scheduled to play all seven matches of his matches during the evening sessions.
Amazon has it if they don’t.
Pancho Gonzales holds the men’s all-time record of being ranked world No. 1 for eight years.
Bobby Riggs 
This arrived in my mailbox when I was a wee boy of 12.
https://www.si.com/vault/1969/09/15/612745/you-can-play-laver-but-you-cant-beat-him
Laver was indeed great by anyone’s criteria.
A mere 50 years ago.
Seems like yesterday.
Allan
Thanks for posting the article BigAl it was most interesting.
Just another comparison between Rod Laver’s and Roger Federer’s Davis Cup record: it is five to one in Laver’s favour.
