This took place in 1987. There was no better tennis match in the 80s than the one between the best attacker and the best counterpuncher in the history of the sport. Tennis is nothing close to the level of McEnroe and Lendl (and others), these days.
So much hate and irritation between these two, it's incredibly beautiful hahahaha. One of my favorite things to do in the 80s' was watch Ivan grind talented players to dust, especially McEnroe, who had galactic levels of touch and skill, but relatively poor conditioning. Eventually all those guys had losing records against Lendl. It was wonderful.
ultimately, in my opinion, the thing that annoyed Mac the most about Lendl...was that Ivan was not intimidated by John, period. Becker was the same way w/ Mac...as well, as Connors. None of them were phased or "shook" by John. And he didnt like that...he was a genius witht hat racket in his hand, but he also thrived and got strength from how uncomfortable he made his opponents..and there were many of them, except for the guys I mention, here. There were a number of other guys as well, but I cant grab any of their names at the moment.
Amazing comment because he just said this word for word about his new documentary and why he had to intimidate most of his opponents to get an edge because he knew he wasn't the toughest or fastest .
This is the styles contrast (volley players - baseliners) that made this sport really attractive. Apart from the personality that some players had. Much imagination and creativity has been lost. Today they all play the same thing (baseliners covering the backhand, eternal topspin, two-handed backhand), all wrapped up in a media product ready to sell and be consumed (like all media sports today). Tennis today bores me a lot, although many records are broken.
Records are being broken, but it's a different sport than the one Mac and Lendl played, or the great Aussies, or Pancho Gonzalez. The foot fault rule was changed in the early 1960s. Every serve by today's top players would have been a foot-fault before the change. The racquets are much bigger, made of high-tech materials and they are strung with materials that make spin-rates possible that were unheard of when this video was made.Also the surfaces have been homogenized. Where 40 years ago, the French was a ground-stroking/endurance contest and then Wimbledon was bam-bam serve-volley (which made the ability of people like Laver and Borg, who won both, so remarkable). Today, after the change in the grass at the All England Club in 2002, we have clay-court tennis being played in the Wimbledon championships. The result is exactly as you said -- boring tennis, the same whack-away-from-the-baseline tennis being played on all surfaces. It's really a ahame that a beautiful game has been destroyed in this way. It also makes the talk of Djokovic as the Greatest Of All Time absolutely ridiculous. Put Djokovic in his prime on Centre Court at Wimbledon against Pete Sampras in his prime both using mid-1990s racquets and Sampras would have destroyed him. Flip it over and put them both on Centre Court with today's grass and today's racquets and I think Djokovic would win. The eras are not comparable because the game has changed so much, and not for the better in my opinion.
@@donaldallen1771 lnteresting analysis from you here. I think that at any time on any surface Sampras would have had a hard time with Djokovic. Why because Djokovic like Lleyton Hewitt and Marat Saffin would figured out a way to get Pete's serve back. When Sampras was still only 29, 30, and 31 if that Saffin and Hewitt were squaring up really well on many of Pete's serves. And Djokovic is the generation after Hewitt and Saffin which means all of talk involving physical evolution etc. has to play in. If Sampras wasn't serving lights out Djokovic who is considered the best returner ever would have had a field day. After Pete's serve keeps coming back is ha going to out rally Novak, no way, no how. Or l can put it like this. Djokovic at 34 playing in an era where men's tennis is deeper than ever was one match away from winning a grand slam. Sampras by 34 had been long retired.
@@donaldallen1771 Totally agree with you. For me, the GOAT debate seems absolutely sterile, not only in tennis, in any sport, the context, the materials, the physical and technical preparation of the players have nothing to do from one era to another, they have no comparison . Everything advances or rather evolves, it is like comparing a car of today with one of 40 years ago, however, there are very old emblematic cars that are much more iconic than any of those of today, no matter how effective they are. I would like to add to your appreciations that the ball has changed radically since approximately 2002 (more or less since Sampras retired). Today there is a bigger, harder ball that bounces much more. The second bounce hits him much further back and gives more options to the defensive backcourt player, to the great clay court topspin players, clearly damaging the great volley players, in the style of Edberg or Mcenroe.
Another Great Video. My guess is this match probably came on soon after USA Cartoon Express completed and Kung Fu Theater was cancelled for the day. Was hoping to see this classic play: McEnroe serves wide to Lendl's backhand in the Ad side. Lendl chips the slice backhand to McEnroe's forehand volley. McEnroe's forehand half volley pops up short to Lendl's forehand. Lendl does the running forehand and drills McEnroe in the chest. McEnroe falls to the ground. I think the exact same sequence happened twice during the WCT Dallas tournament during different years.
I always thought those Lendl adidas shirts with the face were interesting and I always wished I had them. One year the face looked to be snoozing. Another year it had different colors and looked to be wide awake.
In this AT&T Challenge exhibition (euphemistically referred to as a "special event") match, McEnroe was really nailing his serve with good velocity, yet starting in 1986 his opponents including Lendl stated that his serve had lost some of its' " bite"! This match appears, by the design of Lendl's shirt, to have been in 1987 because that was the first year (of two years) that Lendl wore that particular design Adidas tennis shirt. One of the best Lendl tennis shirts ever manufactured by Adidas!
I watched this match live. It was definitely 1987. I even remember that interview with Lendl talking about McEnroe having lost the bite on his serve. Maybe he had a few streaks in 87. I remember feeling a lot of hope for him in 89. But watch footage of him from 84. He was different then.
@@michaelgarza8271 . In 1984 McEnroe displayed a level of tennis play not seen before or since in my opinion. His diversity of shotmaking skills throughout his pro tennis career (but especially in that year) was amazing to behold!
@@michaelbarlow6610 Yes, he was an artist playing a sport. No competent teaching pro could (or would) ever instruct a student to hit the ball like McEnroe did. I like the phrase Mary used "at the height of his powers."
@@gretchenlittle6817. Most modern tennis fans (who, truth be told, as the late Vincent T. Bugliosi used to say about the mainstream news media, " do only a modicum of analytical thinking") would disagree with me, but I really believe that the level of play that McEnroe displayed during his absolutely brilliant 1984 season, was the highest level of tennis play ever seen! That's not to say that McEnroe did not have weaknesses in his game - his down-the-line forehand was always problematic as he had a tendency to hit it a fraction of a second too late and his lack of offcourt physical fitness training cost him a lot of matches (e.g., the 1984 French Open final against Lendl). He also, even at his peak, had a tendency to miss ridiculously easy volleys. But the feel he had in his hands for the tennis ball on his racket strings was absolutely uncanny! I realize, of course, that Sampras had a much more powerful and more freakishly accurate serve and an outstanding running crosscourt forehand - the greatest running crosscourt forehand seen in the graphite era in tennis thus far - and that Federer has much more consistent and beautifully fluid groundstrokes, but as brilliant in their play as those two players were at the peak of their respective primes, McEnroe at his absolute peak demonstrated a much greater diversity of shotmaking skills than either Federer or Sampras! Even Djokovic as great as he is, does not display the brilliant variety of shots in his game that McEnroe possessed in his game! I remember at the time of that 1984 French Open final, I was rooting for Lendl to win that match because I didn't like McEnroe's deplorable treatment of tennis officials during his matches, but some years later when I looked back at that match, I decided that I now wish that McEnroe had won that match and gone down to Australia in December of that year to attempt to complete the Grand Slam by winning the Australian Open and thereby become the first player since Laver in 1969 to achieve that exceedingly difficult achievement. Had McEnroe won the Grand Slam in 1984, there's no doubt in my mind that he would rightfully be widely and appropriately regarded as the greatest male tennis player of all-time because he would have achieved that on three different surfaces, whereas Budge and Laver "only" achieved it on two different surfaces!
I remember reading in one of the autobiographies on Mac that at the end of the majestical 1984 season as he was preparing for the Australian Open he tore his hamstring pretty bad and most people mention that was the biggest factor in his serve losing it's "bite." He had to change up his service motion to compensate and it was never the same again.
I wonder what's next? 4 minutes of Mac eating a sandwich. 1 minute of Lendl patting his German shepards. Maybe 4 hours of Pistol Pete firing down aces. Cheers
Which is why neither Roger Federer nor Rafael Nadal nor Novak Djokovic is the greatest playe ever. They may be great athletes. But they don't have the creativity of McEnroe.
If i can armchair qtr back centurys later, that LOOOPY forehand of Lendls did NOT serve him well against the MAC Attack, just SITTERS easy for the pickin......If he coulda flattened out a tad it might have been a diff story, maybe he had injury who knows..
If you look carefully at the replay of that Lendl first serve that the center lineswoman called wide and that he and the TV broadcasters thought hit the center line, it was just a touch wide! It barely missed being in.
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Mac took the ball so early and came up with such incredible angles. To me, he was the best volleyer in the history of the sport.
This took place in 1987. There was no better tennis match in the 80s than the one between the best attacker and the best counterpuncher in the history of the sport. Tennis is nothing close to the level of McEnroe and Lendl (and others), these days.
So much hate and irritation between these two, it's incredibly beautiful hahahaha. One of my favorite things to do in the 80s' was watch Ivan grind talented players to dust, especially McEnroe, who had galactic levels of touch and skill, but relatively poor conditioning. Eventually all those guys had losing records against Lendl. It was wonderful.
Thanks for your feedback! Much appreciated! More matches coming every day! Cheers! 😎👍
ultimately, in my opinion, the thing that annoyed Mac the most about Lendl...was that Ivan was not intimidated by John, period. Becker was the same way w/ Mac...as well, as Connors. None of them were phased or "shook" by John. And he didnt like that...he was a genius witht hat racket in his hand, but he also thrived and got strength from how uncomfortable he made his opponents..and there were many of them, except for the guys I mention, here. There were a number of other guys as well, but I cant grab any of their names at the moment.
Amazing comment because he just said this word for word about his new documentary and why he had to intimidate most of his opponents to get an edge because he knew he wasn't the toughest or fastest .
This is the styles contrast (volley players - baseliners) that made this sport really attractive. Apart from the personality that some players had. Much imagination and creativity has been lost.
Today they all play the same thing (baseliners covering the backhand, eternal topspin, two-handed backhand), all wrapped up in a media product ready to sell and be consumed (like all media sports today). Tennis today bores me a lot, although many records are broken.
Records are being broken, but it's a different sport than the one Mac and Lendl played, or the great Aussies, or Pancho Gonzalez. The foot fault rule was changed in the early 1960s. Every serve by today's top players would have been a foot-fault before the change. The racquets are much bigger, made of high-tech materials and they are strung with materials that make spin-rates possible that were unheard of when this video was made.Also the surfaces have been homogenized. Where 40 years ago, the French was a ground-stroking/endurance contest and then Wimbledon was bam-bam serve-volley (which made the ability of people like Laver and Borg, who won both, so remarkable). Today, after the change in the grass at the All England Club in 2002, we have clay-court tennis being played in the Wimbledon championships.
The result is exactly as you said -- boring tennis, the same whack-away-from-the-baseline tennis being played on all surfaces. It's really a ahame that a beautiful game has been destroyed in this way. It also makes the talk of Djokovic as the Greatest Of All Time absolutely ridiculous. Put Djokovic in his prime on Centre Court at Wimbledon against Pete Sampras in his prime both using mid-1990s racquets and Sampras would have destroyed him. Flip it over and put them both on Centre Court with today's grass and today's racquets and I think Djokovic would win. The eras are not comparable because the game has changed so much, and not for the better in my opinion.
@@donaldallen1771 lnteresting analysis from you here. I think that at any time on any surface Sampras would have had a hard time with Djokovic. Why because Djokovic like Lleyton Hewitt and Marat Saffin would figured out a way to get Pete's serve back. When Sampras was still only 29, 30, and 31 if that Saffin and Hewitt were squaring up really well on many of Pete's serves. And Djokovic is the generation after Hewitt and Saffin which means all of talk involving physical evolution etc. has to play in. If Sampras wasn't serving lights out Djokovic who is considered the best returner ever would have had a field day. After Pete's serve keeps coming back is ha going to out rally Novak, no way, no how.
Or l can put it like this. Djokovic at 34 playing in an era where men's tennis is deeper than ever was one match away from winning a grand slam. Sampras by 34 had been long retired.
@@donaldallen1771 Totally agree with you.
For me, the GOAT debate seems absolutely sterile, not only in tennis, in any sport, the context, the materials, the physical and technical preparation of the players have nothing to do from one era to another, they have no comparison . Everything advances or rather evolves, it is like comparing a car of today with one of 40 years ago, however, there are very old emblematic cars that are much more iconic than any of those of today, no matter how effective they are.
I would like to add to your appreciations that the ball has changed radically since approximately 2002 (more or less since Sampras retired). Today there is a bigger, harder ball that bounces much more. The second bounce hits him much further back and gives more options to the defensive backcourt player, to the great clay court topspin players, clearly damaging the great volley players, in the style of Edberg or Mcenroe.
te felicito por compartir estas joyas. y mostrar a los mas nuevos quien fue Ivan Lendl. la Revolucion del Tenis
muchas gracias alejandro! tengo mas para ti! 🤣🤣👍👍👍😎😎
Another Great Video. My guess is this match probably came on soon after USA Cartoon Express completed and Kung Fu Theater was cancelled for the day. Was hoping to see this classic play: McEnroe serves wide to Lendl's backhand in the Ad side. Lendl chips the slice backhand to McEnroe's forehand volley. McEnroe's forehand half volley pops up short to Lendl's forehand. Lendl does the running forehand and drills McEnroe in the chest. McEnroe falls to the ground. I think the exact same sequence happened twice during the WCT Dallas tournament during different years.
so very true! great memory! I loved how much tennis was on tv back in the 80's! All the time it seemed.
I was at this match in the old Omni arena in Atlanta. I was 15 years old.
Thanks for your feedback! Much appreciated! More matches coming every day! Cheers! 😎👍
I always thought those Lendl adidas shirts with the face were interesting and I always wished I had them. One year the face looked to be snoozing. Another year it had different colors and looked to be wide awake.
Thank you for your comments!
Today is nothing allowed: No bad words or temper reactions.....u get code validation for everthing.
Thanks for your feedback! Much appreciated! More matches coming every day! Cheers! 😎👍
In this AT&T Challenge exhibition (euphemistically referred to as a "special event") match, McEnroe was really nailing his serve with good velocity, yet starting in 1986 his opponents including Lendl stated that his serve had lost some of its' " bite"! This match appears, by the design of Lendl's shirt, to have been in 1987 because that was the first year (of two years) that Lendl wore that particular design Adidas tennis shirt. One of the best Lendl tennis shirts ever manufactured by Adidas!
I watched this match live. It was definitely 1987. I even remember that interview with Lendl talking about McEnroe having lost the bite on his serve. Maybe he had a few streaks in 87. I remember feeling a lot of hope for him in 89. But watch footage of him from 84. He was different then.
@@michaelgarza8271 . In 1984 McEnroe displayed a level of tennis play not seen before or since in my opinion. His diversity of shotmaking skills throughout his pro tennis career (but especially in that year) was amazing to behold!
@@michaelbarlow6610 Yes, he was an artist playing a sport. No competent teaching pro could (or would) ever instruct a student to hit the ball like McEnroe did. I like the phrase Mary used "at the height of his powers."
@@gretchenlittle6817. Most modern tennis fans (who, truth be told, as the late Vincent T. Bugliosi used to say about the mainstream news media, " do only a modicum of analytical thinking") would disagree with me, but I really believe that the level of play that McEnroe displayed during his absolutely brilliant 1984 season, was the highest level of tennis play ever seen! That's not to say that McEnroe did not have weaknesses in his game - his down-the-line forehand was always problematic as he had a tendency to hit it a fraction of a second too late and his lack of offcourt physical fitness training cost him a lot of matches (e.g., the 1984 French Open final against Lendl). He also, even at his peak, had a tendency to miss ridiculously easy volleys. But the feel he had in his hands for the tennis ball on his racket strings was absolutely uncanny! I realize, of course, that Sampras had a much more powerful and more freakishly accurate serve and an outstanding running crosscourt forehand - the greatest running crosscourt forehand seen in the graphite era in tennis thus far - and that Federer has much more consistent and beautifully fluid groundstrokes, but as brilliant in their play as those two players were at the peak of their respective primes, McEnroe at his absolute peak demonstrated a much greater diversity of shotmaking skills than either Federer or Sampras! Even Djokovic as great as he is, does not display the brilliant variety of shots in his game that McEnroe possessed in his game! I remember at the time of that 1984 French Open final, I was rooting for Lendl to win that match because I didn't like McEnroe's deplorable treatment of tennis officials during his matches, but some years later when I looked back at that match, I decided that I now wish that McEnroe had won that match and gone down to Australia in December of that year to attempt to complete the Grand Slam by winning the Australian Open and thereby become the first player since Laver in 1969 to achieve that exceedingly difficult achievement. Had McEnroe won the Grand Slam in 1984, there's no doubt in my mind that he would rightfully be widely and appropriately regarded as the greatest male tennis player of all-time because he would have achieved that on three different surfaces, whereas Budge and Laver "only" achieved it on two different surfaces!
I remember reading in one of the autobiographies on Mac that at the end of the majestical 1984 season as he was preparing for the Australian Open he tore his hamstring pretty bad and most people mention that was the biggest factor in his serve losing it's "bite." He had to change up his service motion to compensate and it was never the same again.
I wonder what's next? 4 minutes of Mac eating a sandwich. 1 minute of Lendl patting his German shepards. Maybe 4 hours of Pistol Pete firing down aces.
Cheers
Great comments! Thank you for sharing! 👍😎👍
Magic Mcenroe
Which is why neither Roger Federer nor Rafael Nadal nor Novak Djokovic is the greatest playe ever. They may be great athletes. But they don't have the creativity of McEnroe.
Thanks for your feedback! Much appreciated! More matches coming every day! Cheers! 😎👍
Oh boy you said it!
How come McEnroe didn't concede the points. He also saw the serves in.
Thanks for your feedback! Much appreciated! More matches coming every day! Cheers! 😎👍
If i can armchair qtr back centurys later, that LOOOPY forehand of Lendls did NOT serve him well against the MAC Attack, just SITTERS easy for the pickin......If he coulda flattened out a tad it might have been a diff story, maybe he had injury who knows..
can't see shit with the video quality. Too bad.
Like totally! That was the original video quality back in the 80’s so sad. 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘
That pathetic call by the lines woman on Lendel's perfect first serve...
I know! Tennis was fun back then
Lendel was partly to blame for serving so fast and perfectly. The balls have gotten so fast that the human eye just cannot always see them.
If you look carefully at the replay of that Lendl first serve that the center lineswoman called wide and that he and the TV broadcasters thought hit the center line, it was just a touch wide! It barely missed being in.