Are today’s top players the best ever?

Mark Holtschneider opined.

At this year’s National 45s/55s/65s Championship, a tape of the 1976 Men’s Nationals was playing in the paddle hut. The play was dominated by lobs and soft overheads to the corners. There was an occasional flat forehand drive. There were no Mansager-like crushing forehands, no Goodspeed-like two-handed backhand drives, and no Uihlein super cut overheads. Contemporary players look much quicker and more athletic. A few players in the hut said that today’s top players are definitely better than the best players of the ’70s. Others agreed that athletes in all sports are better today than they were 30 years ago – track times are faster, pole vaults are higher, basketball players are taller, and football players are bigger.

I disagree. I think the late 1970s champs could compete with the best of today’s players.

First, the rackets and balls in the ’70s were very different from today. The rackets were wooden and much heavier. The balls were denser and much less bouncy. As a result, many of today’s shots could not be hit with the old equipment. Just because today’s players hit harder and with more spin does not mean that the former champs could not have done the same things with today’s paddles and balls.

Second, the “Tennis Boom” was in full swing in the 1970s. More Americans played tennis in that decade than today. Nearly every top platform tennis player was first an accomplished tennis player. If there were more tennis players in the ’70s, then it stands to reason that there would be more good platform tennis players.

Finally, there was the money. In the 1978-79 platform tennis season, Passport Scotch offered over $100,000 in prize money. The year-end tournament alone was $50,000. In inflation adjusted dollars, that’s $160,000 for just the last tournament! Not surprisingly, that kind of money attracts top players. For example, the 1977 and 1978 Men’s Nationals were won by Herb Fitzgibbon and Hank Irvine. Fitzgibbon played on the U.S. Davis Cup team and won a gold medal in tennis at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games. Irvine played Davis Cup for Rhodesia and was a semi-finalist at Wimbledon in Mixed Doubles. In 1979, Clark Graebner and Doug Russell won the Men’s Nationals.

Graebner was a member of a winning U.S. Davis Cup team, a Wimbledon singles semifinalist, a U.S. Open finalist, and a French Open doubles champion. These players competed at the highest international level and had incredible racket skills. Those skills easily transfer to platform tennis. And, these players were only in their mid-thirties when they won their platform tennis National Championships. (As a point of comparison, if three similarly accomplished tennis players, ten years off their prime, entered platform tennis today, we’d see the likes of 1998 Davis Cuppers Todd Martin, Justin Gimelstob and Jan-Michael Gambril.) Could the late ’70s champs compete well today? I sure think so.