PC Board OT Thread Take 4 [No Politics]

[sp6r=underrated]

Is this strictly a cost thing? It seems like with the power advantage on grass, if I'm understanding the tennis folks correctly, there'd be demand for grass courts since a lot of people would prefer a serve/volley game over long marathon volleys

It's a maintenance issue. Clay courts have to be raked and grass courts have to be cut fairly often and repaired.

That makes sense but why do the Spainards not switch off of clay?

[eminence]

Is this strictly a cost thing? It seems like with the power advantage on grass, if I'm understanding the tennis folks correctly, there'd be demand for grass courts since a lot of people would prefer a serve/volley game over long marathon volleys

It's a maintenance issue. Clay courts have to be raked and grass courts have to be cut fairly often and repaired.

That makes sense but why do the Spainards not switch off of clay?

From my understanding most sports in Spain are club level - tennis clubs can generally afford a higher standard than the cities/towns that are putting in tennis courts in their public parks around the US. I think the more public courts in Spain are more 50/50 on hardcourt/clay.

A bit of national pride in the clay probably doesn't hurt either.

[Doctor MJ]

Clay courts are certainly far more common than grass and easily the 2nd most common outdoor surface globally. But not even close to hard courts. In the US in particular I'd guess conservatively 95%+ of outdoor courts are hardcourts. Similar is true in China from what I've seen. That's over 40% of the worlds tennis population playing almost solely on hardcourts (outdoors at least, I do think indoor carpet/wood are underappreciated surfaces that deserve similar recognition to grass/clay). Even the most prolific clay court areas aren't approaching near 100% of their courts being clay, and they make up a much smaller portion of the tennis population.

Grass courts basically don't exist outside of high end clubs.

95% of the courts that regular people play on such as you find in parks and most indoor courts. That's not necessarily the same as the players who become pros though. I think many of the clubs that these kids play at and the academies do have clay courts. So even American pros are going to grow up playing on them quite often imo. Then of course once they become pros there is like a two month period where all the tournaments are on clay.

I’ll say flat out that competitive youths in California are not playing on clay regularly.

A quick search for places to go for great clay court clubs lists a bunch of stuff nowhere near the west coast and mentions one place in Texas that specifically added clay courts so they could host the lone pro clay court tournament that still exists in the country.

There’s definitely more of a history playing on clay in older parts of the country, but honestly I’d say it largely exists today supported by Southern Europe, which then dominates the tournaments and forces the rest of the world to play catch up in order to max out their full season prospects.

Honestly, I don’t want to see the clay court game go away - there is beauty to watching a clay court adept skate on it - but I find it irritating the way a faction has kept clay as a bigger part of pro tennis while grass tennis - which is also beautiful - has basically died.

There are practical reasons for why clay hasn’t died like grass, but if practicality is all that matters, then hard court is the thing.


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[Doctor MJ]

Is this strictly a cost thing? It seems like with the power advantage on grass, if I'm understanding the tennis folks correctly, there'd be demand for grass courts since a lot of people would prefer a serve/volley game over long marathon volleys

It's a maintenance issue. Clay courts have to be raked and grass courts have to be cut fairly often and repaired.

That makes sense but why do the Spainards not switch off of clay?

Why switch off of something that yields disproportional advantage over the rest of the professional world?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Cavsfansince84]

Is this strictly a cost thing? It seems like with the power advantage on grass, if I'm understanding the tennis folks correctly, there'd be demand for grass courts since a lot of people would prefer a serve/volley game over long marathon volleys

It's a maintenance issue. Clay courts have to be raked and grass courts have to be cut fairly often and repaired.

That makes sense but why do the Spainards not switch off of clay?

I think its a bit of tradition as well. The current hard courts weren't fully in existence before the 80's. Before then most outdoor courts here in the us were more like concrete I believe(I've played on those as well). Chances are on top of them being more at clubs that they simply opted to make clay courts over concrete because they're better and probably had a lot of clay in that region. Clay courts also can absorb water without becoming slippery.

[sp6r=underrated]

It's a maintenance issue. Clay courts have to be raked and grass courts have to be cut fairly often and repaired.

That makes sense but why do the Spainards not switch off of clay?

Why switch off of something that yields disproportional advantage over the rest of the professional world?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If this was about Spainards making a conscious decision to use clay to give themselves a professional advantage even if it requires more cost mainteance wouldn't we similar behavior in other countries? As example, the Japanese only play on grass so they can win Wimbeldon all the time.

[HeartBreakKid]

Ah, Bonds wasn't that popular or famous in the late '90s when McGwire & Sosa became the biggest names in baseball, but I think Bonds has been the bigger name ever since.

Looking up history on Google Trends, I'd say what I see fits with that, but I'd also note that Griffey is bigger search target than Bonds, and Jeter bigger than Griffey. I think the tarnish of the cheating has effectively relegated Bonds down so that he's not the guy people from the era seem to want to remember.

But the real problem for baseball is that none of these guys aren't WAY bigger than Bonds the way an athlete from the time - like Jordan - could be. It's possible Bonds never had that potential simply because a baseball icon couldn't be THAT big globally, but back before the '90s, if you asked who had more star potential between a new GOAT baseball player and a new GOAT basketball player, I think most in the US would have said the baseball player without hesitation.

Bonds is bigger now because he has some relevance (is Bonds the goat? Should he be in the HOF?) and of course fantastic longevity as an elite player.

McGuire and Sosa were relative flashes in the pan due to the home run race.

I used them intentionally for that reason - because even those guys were bigger. There were other players during Bond's time who were bigger names than him. Roger Clemens, Jose Canseco, Darryl Strawberry, Derek Jeter, Cal Ripken Jr, Ken Griffy Jr, Alex Rodriguez in addition to Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire - maybe even someone like Mike Piazza may have been more well known than Bonds for a brief time. Some of those guys were more infamous than famous, but then again - so is Bonds today. Bonds is known more for controversy than being the GOAT.

I think falcolombardi shouldn't have mentioned Bonds for the reason you stated - Bonds is more well known now (kind of) than he was during his heyday. Or at the very least he is not famous for the same reason that he was famous back then.

"even those guys"? When Mark McGwire broke the HR record he was a much bigger deal than any of the other guys you mentioned ever were before or after.

I think you're underestimating how big of a deal the HR record was in making mainstream culture care about baseball. Nothing mattered anywhere near as much except the steroid scandal...which was specifically motivated - congressional hearings & such - by the breaking of the HR record.

Right, but he wasn't necessarily a better player than them. His time in fame was also much shorter. Not a lot of people cared about McGuire a few years after the record was broken, he's a relative footnote in pop culture compared to Derek Jeter.

[HeartBreakKid]

I've barely seen clay court when I lived in New York, usually at some really expensive private place.

Never seen a clay court in my entire life while in Asia.

For modern players I lean heavily towards hard court play for my tennis evaluation, it's just the most common surface by far and has been for decades. There's probably a similar amount of tennis played on indoor basketball courts (wood) as there is grass or clay (or carpet/tile/etc).

I'm not sure what your definition of modern is but hard has been the standard for a very long time, and I certainly agree.

I don't think it makes sense to look at clay, grass and hard as equal. Hard is the one everyone plays on all levels, and most tournaments are on hard.


Clay and grass are great for tradition and a switch up in the action the action but they are heavily regional (especially the latter).

[Cavsfansince84]

I've barely seen clay court when I lived in New York, usually at some really expensive private place.

Never seen a clay court in my entire life while in Asia.

Everything is really expensive in ny though if its near nyc. I saw or played at various clubs around Akron(which is obviously not a capital of wealth) and many of them had clay courts. So that's my experience. Like I said above, I think when you limit this down to tennis players who actually become pros out of the us that many of them spend entire summers on clay courts or at least play on them to varying degrees. It makes sense to put more emphasis on hard courts to evaluate players in an all time sense imo but only from about 1990 forward because before that it was 3 slams on grass until like 1980 then 1 on clay, 2 on grass, 1 hard and 1 clay. AO was still on grass up until 1988(had to look that up).

[eminence]

I've barely seen clay court when I lived in New York, usually at some really expensive private place.

Never seen a clay court in my entire life while in Asia.

For modern players I lean heavily towards hard court play for my tennis evaluation, it's just the most common surface by far and has been for decades. There's probably a similar amount of tennis played on indoor basketball courts (wood) as there is grass or clay (or carpet/tile/etc).

I'm not sure what your definition of modern is but hard has been the standard for a very long time, and I certainly agree.

I don't think it makes sense to look at clay, grass and hard as equal. Hard is the one everyone plays on all levels, and most tournaments are on hard.


Clay and grass are great for tradition and a switch up in the action the action but they are heavily regional (especially the latter).

Saying the Open Era is probably the easiest.

[Doctor MJ]

Bonds is bigger now because he has some relevance (is Bonds the goat? Should he be in the HOF?) and of course fantastic longevity as an elite player.

McGuire and Sosa were relative flashes in the pan due to the home run race.

I used them intentionally for that reason - because even those guys were bigger. There were other players during Bond's time who were bigger names than him. Roger Clemens, Jose Canseco, Darryl Strawberry, Derek Jeter, Cal Ripken Jr, Ken Griffy Jr, Alex Rodriguez in addition to Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire - maybe even someone like Mike Piazza may have been more well known than Bonds for a brief time. Some of those guys were more infamous than famous, but then again - so is Bonds today. Bonds is known more for controversy than being the GOAT.

I think falcolombardi shouldn't have mentioned Bonds for the reason you stated - Bonds is more well known now (kind of) than he was during his heyday. Or at the very least he is not famous for the same reason that he was famous back then.

"even those guys"? When Mark McGwire broke the HR record he was a much bigger deal than any of the other guys you mentioned ever were before or after.

I think you're underestimating how big of a deal the HR record was in making mainstream culture care about baseball. Nothing mattered anywhere near as much except the steroid scandal...which was specifically motivated - congressional hearings & such - by the breaking of the HR record.

Right, but he wasn't necessarily a better player than them. His time in fame was also much shorter. Not a lot of people cared about McGuire a few years after the record was broken, he's a relative footnote in pop culture compared to Derek Jeter.

Well, we're talking about popularity, so how good McGwire was is another matter.

I'll say flat out:

If no one had ever broken McGwire's HR record, and there had been no subsequent steroid scandal, McGwire would be a much, much bigger deal to this day than any other field players we're discussing. (And probably bigger than Clemens too, though Clemens would surely be seen as the pitching GOAT if he did what he did without a steroid scandal. He and McGwire would define modern baseball had that occurred.)

Only reasons why McGwire's popularity was a flash in the pan is that a) Bonds surpassed his HR total while also obviously being a much better player, and b) steroids.

[Doctor MJ]

I've barely seen clay court when I lived in New York, usually at some really expensive private place.

Never seen a clay court in my entire life while in Asia.

Everything is really expensive in ny though if its near nyc. I saw or played at various clubs around Akron(which is obviously not a capital of wealth) and many of them had clay courts. So that's my experience. Like I said above, I think when you limit this down to tennis players who actually become pros out of the us that many of them spend entire summers on clay courts or at least play on them to varying degrees. It makes sense to put more emphasis on hard courts to evaluate players in an all time sense imo but only from about 1990 forward because before that it was 3 slams on grass until like 1980 then 1 on clay, 2 on grass, 1 hard and 1 clay. AO was still on grass up until 1988(had to look that up).

Wait, what great American pro is it that you're thinking of spent their entire summers growing up playing on clay courts?

Further, if you go look at a place like the IMG Academy (that hatched Courier & Agassi), you'll notice that only are the clay courts the minority, they aren't red clay like they play in Europe, but green clay.

Quotes from an article on tennis.com in 2017:

AMERICANS CONTINUE TO FIGHT A LOSING BATTLE ON CLAY

The USTA built six red clay courts at the National Campus in Lake Nona, Fla., with imported dirt from Italy. There are 32 green clay courts, as well, but that’s not what players like Madison Keys, CiCi Bellis and Frances Tiafoe are going to be training on.

A green clay (or Har-Tru) court actually plays more like a hard court than a red clay court. It’s composed of crushed basalt, a natural green stone from Virginia, instead of red clay’s brick, limestone and gravel. It’s faster, harder and often far more predictable and lenient with its bounces than red clay.

I grew up training on hard courts, and occasional green clay courts, in South Florida. On the rare occasions that I got a chance to play on red clay—which was less than a handful of times, and never in the U.S.—it felt as rare as a meeting with Bono. I was honored to be on a surface that I had only seen on TV, and overjoyed to earn that red-dust badge of honor on my shoes and socks. That shouldn’t be how young juniors feel when it comes to a surface that one-fourth of the majors are played on.

Unless Americans can rewind to their early junior days and start training on real crushed-brick clay, there’s not much to be done.

[Doctor MJ]

That makes sense but why do the Spainards not switch off of clay?

Why switch off of something that yields disproportional advantage over the rest of the professional world?


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If this was about Spainards making a conscious decision to use clay to give themselves a professional advantage even if it requires more cost mainteance wouldn't we similar behavior in other countries? As example, the Japanese only play on grass so they can win Wimbeldon all the time.

Ah, let me elaborate.

If in a certain geographic location you have access to a certain material native to where you are that everyone grows up playing, and you manage to landgrab a significant portion of the professional tennis circuit to force players to play on that material, this gives people from your neck of the woods an advantage competing in the pros, which then provides a sense of national pride, which encourages more kids to play and play on that surface.

The advantage for doing this when you don't have a clear cut geographic edge is much less.
The advantage of doing this when you're current players don't focus on this surface, is much less.
And the goal of trying to dominate on a power-dominated surface when you're a nation that has smaller people than those you'll be competing with just doesn't make a lot of sense.

[Cavsfansince84]

Wait, what great American pro is it that you're thinking of spent their entire summers growing up playing on clay courts?

Further, if you go look at a place like the IMG Academy (that hatched Courier & Agassi), you'll notice that only are the clay courts the minority, they aren't red clay like they play in Europe, but green clay.

I'm aware of that the clay courts here aren't exactly the same as the red clay usually seen in Europe and idk what surfaces they have at these different academies but there's still no denying that Americans were doing quite well on it for a number of years from when Chang won until about 2000. Since then the bigger issue isn't winning on clay so much as no American has won any slam at all since 2003 I think.

[Doctor MJ]

Wait, what great American pro is it that you're thinking of spent their entire summers growing up playing on clay courts?

Further, if you go look at a place like the IMG Academy (that hatched Courier & Agassi), you'll notice that only are the clay courts the minority, they aren't red clay like they play in Europe, but green clay.

I'm aware of that the clay courts here aren't exactly the same as the red clay usually seen in Europe and idk what surfaces they have at these different academies but there's still no denying that Americans were doing quite well on it for a number of years from when Chang won until about 2000. Since then the bigger issue isn't winning on clay so much as no American has won any slam at all since 2003 I think.

That is indeed the bigger issue now.

[sp6r=underrated]

Why switch off of something that yields disproportional advantage over the rest of the professional world?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If this was about Spainards making a conscious decision to use clay to give themselves a professional advantage even if it requires more cost mainteance wouldn't we similar behavior in other countries? As example, the Japanese only play on grass so they can win Wimbeldon all the time.

Ah, let me elaborate.

If in a certain geographic location you have access to a certain material native to where you are that everyone grows up playing, and you manage to landgrab a significant portion of the professional tennis circuit to force players to play on that material, this gives people from your neck of the woods an advantage competing in the pros, which then provides a sense of national pride, which encourages more kids to play and play on that surface.

The advantage for doing this when you don't have a clear cut geographic edge is much less.
The advantage of doing this when you're current players don't focus on this surface, is much less.
And the goal of trying to dominate on a power-dominated surface when you're a nation that has smaller people than those you'll be competing with just doesn't make a lot of sense.

Path dependence is an underrated factor in outcomes.

[falcolombardi]

There is somethingh to be said about how basketball fans have historically been privated from the coolest thingh in the world of sports, competitive international tournaments. National team ones specially

Because for most of its history basketball has been so thoroughly american dominated the sport has missed in the one thingh that imo drives soccer popularity (and to a lesser degree more regional sports like rugby and cricket) the most

The non americam players have missed on winning international tournaments and The american players have missed getting any merit from winning them (with all the risk of criticism flr losing)

After 2002- 2004-2006 this fortunately changed and now powerhouse countries now they can aim to more than a silver medal or a world cup 2nd place which makes it all the more exciting

And american players can actually get merit for winning them rather than it being just all risk/no glory.

kobe got a ton of credit for the redeem team in 2008 and durant for holding the fort in tokio, gobert almost got to taste the glory of leading france to a gold medal over usa

Ginobili and argentina players became legends and pau gasol and spain generation too, ricky rubio in 2019 to a lesser extent

and now players like jokic, giannis (and embiid?) See the possibilty of winming a gold medal over usa and how huge it would be for their legacies (and just plain awrsome overall) and we are gonna get a eurobasket with giannis and jokic

Honestly, the best thingh that can happen to basketball, including usa, is that the united states loses this tournaments once in a while so the tournaments become even more of a big event for american public

Gridiron football doesnt have competition for usa, they are not good enough at soccer to win thinghs and baseball national competitions are a joke not taken seriously

Basketball could become to usa what soccer is to most countries and it would be awesome for the sport popularity if basketball became the team sport to hold national pride for

[Doctor MJ]

If this was about Spainards making a conscious decision to use clay to give themselves a professional advantage even if it requires more cost mainteance wouldn't we similar behavior in other countries? As example, the Japanese only play on grass so they can win Wimbeldon all the time.

Ah, let me elaborate.

If in a certain geographic location you have access to a certain material native to where you are that everyone grows up playing, and you manage to landgrab a significant portion of the professional tennis circuit to force players to play on that material, this gives people from your neck of the woods an advantage competing in the pros, which then provides a sense of national pride, which encourages more kids to play and play on that surface.

The advantage for doing this when you don't have a clear cut geographic edge is much less.
The advantage of doing this when you're current players don't focus on this surface, is much less.
And the goal of trying to dominate on a power-dominated surface when you're a nation that has smaller people than those you'll be competing with just doesn't make a lot of sense.

Path dependence is an underrated factor in outcomes.

Very true.

[Doctor MJ]

There is somethingh to be said about how basketball fans have historically been privated from the coolest thingh in the world of sports, competitive international tournaments. National team ones specially

Because for most of its history basketball has been so thoroughly american dominated the sport has missed in the one thingh that imo drives soccer popularity (and to a lesser degree more regional sports like rugby and cricket) the most

The non americam players have missed on winning international tournaments and The american players have missed getting any merit from winning them (with all the risk of criticism flr losing)

After 2002- 2004-2006 this fortunately changed and now powerhouse countries now they can aim to more than a silver medal or a world cup 2nd place which makes it all the more exciting

And american players can actually get merit for winning them rather than it being just all risk/no glory.

kobe got a ton of credit for the redeem team in 2008 and durant for holding the fort in tokio, gobert almost got to taste the glory of leading france to a gold medal over usa

Ginobili and argentina players became legends and pau gasol and spain generation too, ricky rubio in 2019 to a lesser extent

and now players like jokic, giannis (and embiid?) See the possibilty of winming a gold medal over usa and how huge it would be for their legacies (and just plain awrsome overall) and we are gonna get a eurobasket with giannis and jokic

Honestly, the best thingh that can happen to basketball, including usa, is that the united states loses this tournaments once in a while so the tournaments become even more of a big event for american public

Gridiron football doesnt have competition for usa, they are not good enough at soccer to win thinghs and baseball national competitions are a joke not taken seriously

Basketball could become to usa what soccer is to most countries and it would be awesome for the sport popularity if basketball became the team sport to hold national pride for

I love your post and agree with much of what you're saying.

I will say, I think the US has a lot of pride about basketball, and you see it with the some of the nativist streaks that are showing themselves particularly amongst the players right now.

But to me that only makes more important for the US to realize that they can't just dominate the world by deciding to finally show up any more. It's time for us Basketball-Americans to grow up.

[sp6r=underrated]

There is somethingh to be said about how basketball fans have historically been privated from the coolest thingh in the world of sports, competitive international tournaments. National team ones specially

Because for most of its history basketball has been so thoroughly american dominated the sport has missed in the one thingh that imo drives soccer popularity (and to a lesser degree more regional sports like rugby and cricket) the most

The non americam players have missed on winning international tournaments and The american players have missed getting any merit from winning them (with all the risk of criticism flr losing)

After 2002- 2004-2006 this fortunately changed and now powerhouse countries now they can aim to more than a silver medal or a world cup 2nd place which makes it all the more exciting

And american players can actually get merit for winning them rather than it being just all risk/no glory.

kobe got a ton of credit for the redeem team in 2008 and durant for holding the fort in tokio, gobert almost got to taste the glory of leading france to a gold medal over usa

Ginobili and argentina players became legends and pau gasol and spain generation too, ricky rubio in 2019 to a lesser extent

and now players like jokic, giannis (and embiid?) See the possibilty of winming a gold medal over usa and how huge it would be for their legacies (and just plain awrsome overall) and we are gonna get a eurobasket with giannis and jokic

Honestly, the best thingh that can happen to basketball, including usa, is that the united states loses this tournaments once in a while so the tournaments become even more of a big event for american public

Gridiron football doesnt have competition for usa, they are not good enough at soccer to win thinghs and baseball national competitions are a joke not taken seriously

Basketball could become to usa what soccer is to most countries and it would be awesome for the sport popularity if basketball became the team sport to hold national pride for

I love your post and agree with much of what you're saying.

I will say, I think the US has a lot of pride about basketball, and you see it with the some of the nativist streaks that are showing themselves particularly amongst the players right now.

But to me that only makes more important for the US to realize that they can't just dominate the world by deciding to finally show up any more. It's time for us Basketball-Americans to grow up.

One of my strongest beliefs is that the internationalization of basketball would increase rapidly if you

1. Eliminated the draft
2. Eliminated rookie scale contracts.
3. Kept the soft cap

You'd see a lot of teams shut off of signing the top American prospects set up basketball camps all over the world to identify potential players. And I do believe there is a ton of talent out there