He really never had a bad year from almost the beginning of his career. He had a lot of years in which he won over 90% of his matches. What Connors has in his favor in this analysis I would guess was his super winning percentages. While it may not always be true you have to often assume the general level of competition is approximately the same. Some of those players may have abnormally long careers for example and that may be a problem in the systematic analysis. When I believe may be the problem in this particular statistical analysis is the assumptions they make on greatness. It's a heck of a lot of work and you try to cover all bases for possible errors. I actually enjoy this long statistical analyses probably because I've been obsessed enough to do them myself in other sports. However that is really not that bad considering Borg might be superior to many all time greats at their peaks. The Borg and Connors peaks did intersect and Borg was in my opinion superior to Connors on all surfaces. Borg however just was plain superior imo to Connors even at Jimmy's peak. Connors had a decent record against Lendl and McEnroe until he declined. Agassi was not consistent, Becker was too old, Edberg had peaked already, and those who did beat him were not all that consistent themselves (Kraijcek, Rafter, Safin, Hewitt, et al), so I can see how that result would come about.Ĭlick to expand.The bad head to head against the others was probably due to the fact Connors was born in 1952, Borg in 1956 and McEnroe in 1959. During his time, there was a lot of criticism about the lack of true competition. I can see why Sampras, despite his magnificent accomplishments did not score as well.
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Up to '84, he was still getting the better of Lendl. Plus, when you look at his competition, it was a list of all stars across generations.Laver thru Lendl.and during that time, his record was pretty strong against all of them, Borg really the only one getting the better of him in the later years he was pretty close w/Mac, despite some hard losses. He was in the top 3/4 throughout this entire time. Connors "10 year window" was roughly '74 to '84. The guy had a 20 yr career and was incredibly consistent.very high win rate, high rate of wins at the GS events, high ranking for most of his career. The concept of "dynamic comparisons" during a 10 year prime period is pretty fascinating. The method used in this "experiment" is interesting and not so far fetched. LOL.īy the way the results were of the Open Era not all time.
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I do think Connors was better than Suzanne Lenglen by just a little. Maybe someone should start a thread on that.Įxamples-Connors played Pancho Gonzalez who played Tilden who played Richard Norris Williams etc.Ĭonnors played Sampras who played Agassi who played Nadal who played Djokovic who played Murray.Ĭonnors played Pancho Gonzalez who played Budge who played Tilden who played Lenglen. There are a lot of flaws in these studies and I wonder if these people know much about tennis.Ĭonnors is a pretty good name to use for tennis for six degrees of separation.
![eddie dibbs video tennis eddie dibbs video tennis](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vQJwULaKVkg/hqdefault.jpg)
I do think Connors' overall level of player was superior to some who people rank over him. I don't agree but Connors did have imo an underrated career. It is amazing to me how many studies have Jimmy Connors at number one. It's just shows what tennis fans we both are.