It’s funny how, in tennis, people like comparing pros of different eras.  Perhaps if you put a gun to McEnroe’s head, he would tell the truth, but Mac likes to say that Nadal and Borg would be about even and they would play long points.  Even Tennis Channel had a show wondering how pros of the past would fare against pros of today, and since it was meant to provoke discussion, they like to think it’s pretty even.

Now, maybe someone like Sampras might (doubt it) be competitive at the very top because he’s only about 10 years removed from the current set of pros, but given how much the game has changed since about 2000, I strongly believe Borg would not win a single game over Nadal.

In the days of Borg, few players hit winners.  Borg won by outlasting his opponents, hitting one more shot than they did, but he wasn’t trying to do anything special with his shots.  A typical rally might consist of standard crosscourt shots over and over lasting 20, 30, maybe 40 shots.  In those days, defense generally meant getting another ball back.

In today’s game, defense means being able to hit a shot when the other guy has hit an aggressive shot.  In 2010, Robin Soderling pounded the ball time and again against Nadal only to see Nadal race to the corner and retrieve a shot.  You put Nadal in the center of the court, and he can run down practically any shot hit at any angle with any amount of power.  It’s this skill to chase down hard hit shots that makes Nadal so difficult to beat.  Djokovic has similar skills.

Furthermore, with today’s racquets and strings, players can now create angles that were not widely used from the baseline.  In the 1970s, a typical shot that went cross went for the corners at the baseline.  Modern players can hit the corners of the service box.  They also hit harder with more spin, making recovery a huge deal.  Nadal is so fast that he can see a slice backhand coming crosscourt and run around it to hit a forehand.  That kind of speed was not seen in the 1970s.

I think the average fan knows Borg couldn’t beat Nadal, and that even Borg should know this too.  The athleticism came as a direct result of additional power from bigger racquets and better strings.  Once players could hit with more power, they had to learn how to cover those shots.  You see what happens in the women’s game where the women hit hard enough that any shot to a corner is pretty much a winner.  The women can’t cover the ground like the men can.

Some say, well, just give Borg the modern technology.  But he’d have to rework his strokes.  Sure, players tinker with their shots.  Federer’s forehand from 2004 doesn’t look like his motion today.  Roddick hit flatter in 2000 than in 2010.  Mardy Fish retooled his forehand.  But Borg would have to hit harder even beyond using a bigger racquet.

Had Borg trained from a kid using new racquets, would he compete?  That’s so very hard to tell.  Borg hit balls against a wall as a kid.  These days, he could get coaches to feed him balls all day long.

A better example is McEnroe.  If you taught him to hit with a semi-Western grip and a loop shot, would he even be the same player?  He hit in a style that was typical of the 1960s or early 1970s.  Borg was, at least, on the cusp of a new style that would revolutionize the game.  McEnroe was more like the last genius of a previous era.

What sense would it be to give him a bigger racquet and new technology, even if you could team him when he was very young?  Today’s players are quite a bit taller and more athletic than players from the Borg/McEnroe/Connors era.

Consider players like Ferrero, Nalbandian, Roddick, Hewitt, and Safin.  They were capable of beating a player like Sampras, to be fair, a Sampras that was not at his peak, but then they couldn’t continue to excel as injury and players like Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic prevented them from reaching lofty heights.

So while commentators on TV make their comparisons, reality is, it wouldn’t even be close (that is, if you could transport Borg of 1979 to modern times).