Tennis Van Debates: Greatest Champion of All-Time.

One of my favorite college activities was riding in the tennis van to and from away tennis matches.  Now, it should be noted, that the van was cramped, uncomfortable, and smelled like half a dozen 20 year old boys whose mothers weren't around to make sure they showered and did their laundry--but for all its physical shortcomings, that tennis van cultivated the life of the mind like no other space on campus.

Over the next few weeks, this blog will be remembering some of the greatest debates that were waged on the benches of the tennis van.  Today, we remember the 'Greatest Champion' debate of 2007.  (If you have no interest in tennis, you may want to skip the next paragraph, with the assumption that tennis folks can't agree on who is the best for a plethora of reasons)

A bit of background for those who are not familiar with tennis: If you ask 5 tennis players who the greatest tennis champion is of all time, you will get 5 different answers, with 5 different rubrics for assigning greatness. Every sport has a debate of this kind, but no other sport has this complex a debate when it comes to greatest champion, because while in golf one could point to Jack Nicklaus' 18 majors or Sam Snead's 82 professional wins or Bobby Jones' double grand-slam, tennis record keeping is more nuanced because it is played on three dramatically different surfaces that historically have produced three different sets of champions.  So much so, that in the last 40 years, there have only been three men to win a major championship on all three surfaces (Agassi, Federer, Nadal).  For some, this limits the discussion to these three players and since Federer has 4 more than Nadal and 7 more than Agassi, that makes him the GOAT, but, he has a losing record to Nadal, can he be better than the player who has owned him for the last decade?  And where does Sampras fall on the list?  He has the second most slam wins, but never won at Rolland Garros.  And while Agassi has less than these four, he is the only won with an Olympic Gold Medal... And this is just the Open Era.  What do we do with the great champions of the past like Rod Laver and Roy Emerson.  Yes, the Greatest Champion discussion is more murky in tennis than in any other professional sport, and this is the debate we had over the course of three or four trips my freshman year.

I have just explained why this debate is murky, now let me tell you why the clear choice for greatest tennis champion of all time is Andre Agassi.

I have been re-reading Gordon McDonald's 'Ordering Your Private World.'  And in this text, McDonald describes the danger of premature success.  He writes, "Premature success is often more of an obstacle than a help.  The premature succeeder is usually a fast learner, able to aquire expertise with minimal effort...And he may conclude that he can do anything he sets his mind to, because things come easily to him."  

Andre Agassi is quite possibly the most gifted tennis player to ever live.  I recently came across a youtube channel that has 500 recorded matches from the late 90s and early 2000s, and I am amazed even now at just how good Andre Agassi was at returning serve and the ease by which he moved from defense to offense.  In the early 90s, he was ranked in the top-10, won Wimbledon, the US Openn, and dozens of ATP tour events all while addicted to cocaine and "hating" to play tennis.  His ranking dropped during the mid-90s as his personal life spiraled out of control, but he still managed to sneak out an Aussie Open championship in 95 and a Gold Medal in 96.  After winning Gold, living out of control caught up with him and he fell out of the top 150 in the world (164 at his lowest).  

At this point, the assumption was that Andre Agassi, much like Marcello Rios, Marat Safin, and Guillermo Corea, was a fast starter with premature success and wouldn't be heard from again.

But in 1999, he came back, won two slams and reestablished himself as the #1 player in the world.  The premature succeeder became a champion whose victories were the result of endurance and discipline, not talent.  He finished his career the only player to have won the career grand slam and an Olympic Gold Medal, but more important than his raw statistics is the narrative of how an undisciplined fast starter, who was accidentally one of the best players in the world became a bum on the circuit, but found new life and a second career after disciplining himself.

That being said, Federer and Nadal would also be accepted as correct answers.