Comments on: Let’s test today’s champions using yesterday’s equipment

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:28:11 +0000

I saw Sampras, Courier, Agassi and John McEnroe play a charity match at Madison Square Gardens in New York City in the late nineties. They all switched to old wooden rackets halfway through the night for a few games, and guess what? Sampras was still able to hit 200+km/hr serves with an old wooden racket!

There was no doubt that the newer rackets were better performers than the old wooden ones, but it was amazing to see what those players could do with the wooden ones.

By: Nick J

Nick J — Sat, 23 May 2009 01:33:34 +0000

Some good points Conks,

It definately would be interesting to see and test how good players and athletes would really stack up. I think you need to extend the concept beyond tennis, golf and cricket and include the world of motor sport. How much would we love to see today’s F1 champions in 1960′s cars, without the driving aids and computer support.

By: Brett McKay

Brett McKay — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:38:33 +0000

Interesting Conks, interesting. You could of course widen it more, and run Le Tour on old Malvern Stars, stick Lewis Hamilton in a late ’60′s Merc, and even play the next Bledisloe with a mud-soaked leather Ballymore.

As far as cricket bats go, you wouldn’t need to go back that far. The bats from five years ago look like toothpicks compared to those of today, and even if you took the likes of Ponting and Hayden back to the bats they used as 18 year-olds, you’d see a difference. Bats didn’t really change much over the course of decades probably, up until the mid-late seventies. It was about then that the experiements really started, and you saw Gray-Nicolls’ first Scoop, and the shoulderless numbers for Newberry, and of course Lillee’s aluminium plank. The last five, maybe ten years, has been where all the major improvements have come.