Gonzalez and Laver

[gzhpcu]

I imagine it's a staged sequence of stills for a tennis book or something....looks like it.

Interesting about the open-faced racket just prior to contact. Actually Rosewall did exactly the same thing on his backhand. Leads me to wonder if Lew is hitting a sliced backhand or topspin in that sequence ...or a flat drive maybe. What he's doing would be a weakness for a topspin backhand, under pressure at least.

In the archive there is lovely clip of Don Budge hitting a backhand with an open-faced racket...exactly the same...open right to the last split second...seemed to work back then...nowadays probably not.

Guess we are really comparing apples with oranges: in the old days, everything was biased to favor serve and volley. The champs of the distant past, if they played as they did then, would not be able to dominate since the emphasis is on prolonged rallies,ie quality of groundstrokes. Same as the champs of today, playing as they do today, would not be able to dominate since the quality of the volleys today has deteriorated.
And, of course, add the related bias to a certain style of play caused by courts/balls/rackets/strings...
The unanswered question is how would the champs of yesteryear, growing up in this era, have evolved and would they still dominate? And viceversa.