OT: Is Serena the greatest female athlete ever?
Serena Williams won her 22nd Grand Slam today, straight sets over some other tennis player.
I've heard it debated before so I'll toss it out here. Is she she greatest female athlete ever (any sport)? She first attained the wold #1 ranking in 2002; and it's 14 years later and she's #1 again. Hasn't been there consistently, but over and over.
Is she the greatest woman tennis player ever? Given the longevity of her career--probably. I guess you can quesiton if she's had the rivals that prior players have had; or, you could say, she's been so dominant no one could match her. As the money in tennis keeps going up over time, and training and medicine improve, I find it hard to believe that the overall quality of tennis players has dropped. So I'd say, it's hard to argue she's the best female tennis player ever.
Is she the best woman athlete ever? Tennis players will tell you, their sports is the most gruelling and requires the most athleticism. It's hard to think of someone who's dominated her sport for as long as she has. But then again, most womens' sports haven't had the level of professional ranks like tennis, so it's hard to be a woman athlete and "dominant" into your 30s if yo'ure not a golfer or tennis player.
But I guess to me this is the proof: Who else would you say instead of Serena? I can't think of anyone, other than maybe tennis players, but since I think she's the greatest of all tennis players that means she has no other rivals from other sports.
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nah, Ronda Rousey.
jk lol.
...After our very own Sierra Romero.
Kidding, of course. Romo is #2. Serena is just amazing and #1 on my list.
I replied to this earlier and said "Romo isn't even top 5. Always chokes in the playoffs"
I was alluding to Clarences reference to "Romo" which I thought was a typo (maybe actually a nickname to Sierra Romero??). I was lightheartedly calling Tony Romo a female athlete. Apologies to anyone who was offended and thought I was talking about Sierra Romero.
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Go watch some of those old matches, they're unwatchable they're so painfully slow, The williams sisters and Jennifer Capriati brought power to the women's game and changed it forever.
Mmmmmmm Jennifer Capriati.
...the equipment did. Ever play with a wooden racket? Or even one of the early, smaller metal rackets, and with the old-style strings? The sweet spot was really small, and you couldn't generate anywhere near the same power or spin. (Power changed first and was mostly the frame; the spin came with the new strings.)
gone towards the end of Graf's career. The serve and volley badminton of Graf's prime days is completely different from the game now.
Strings have completely changed in just the last 15 years. If you think the only significant change was from wood to metal, you're mistaken.
You can't possibly have played on an 80s racket and think it's the same. It's like picking up a 40-year-old set of golf clubs.
This. It's the strings more than anything else. Well, to be more accurate, the strings and the level of fitness tennis players have these days. I actually remember a Tennis Magazine article from back in the 90s where they did a study comparing wood racquets, graphite racquets and extra long racquets (racquets with an inch longer frame were all the craze at that point in time). They used Mark Philippoussis who could really bomb serves as the test subject. The difference in power really only amounted to a +/- 2 or 3 mph's.
Strings today hold the ball on the string bed for a longer period of time, which allows for more power/spin. It's the reason you see so few players coming in to the net unless they're in an extremely offensive position during the point or if they could pulled in. In most cases, you're at a severe disadvantage.
There's a limit to how hard you can hit a shot flat and still keep it in court. Topspin gives you net clearance.
...but I think he's made a perceptive point. Tennis is largely about power now (although there are still some good players hitting slices, and a few that can volley) but not so much in Graf's day, and certainly not before. 70s/80s players used the whole court; Graf stood out, at the time, for how little she strayed from the baseline. In a way I guess she was the first of the modern power players, which makes sense because she was the best at the time of the initial transition to modern equipment.
That a lot of people seem to think that establishes modern players as "greater athletes," or that badminton is used as the prototype of an unathletic sport, is a sign of a peculiar American bias towards mass and power.
The greatest athlete has to have some combination of the following traits:
Speed/quickness
Strength/power
Stamina/endurance
Hand-eye coordination
Jumping ability
I'd say that Serena has displayed good quickness on the court, but we have no idea how she'd do in a 40 yard dash, a 100 meter sprint, 1500 meter run, or a marathon. But I'll give her points in this category.
Almost no female (maybe none) serves as fast as she does, so she has arm strength, and I'm not doubting her leg strength, because have you looked at her?
I think she does well in 3 set matches, but it should be pointed out that the women play best of three sets in majors while the men play best of 5. The men and women play the same best of 3 in badminton.
Hand-eye coordination: she's pretty good at the net, but she's no Navritalova. Unfortunately, that serve-and-volley style of tennis has disappeared.
Jumping ability: I have no idea.
So she scores well or very well or better than anyone else in 2 1/2 out of 5 categories. Is that enough to proclaim her as the greatest female athlete ever? I don't know. The argument can be made, but I don't think it's a slam dunk that she is.
In other words, Serena will beat Cheryl Miller in tennis and Cheryl will beat Serena in basketball. Who would win if they competed in the decathalon? (My bias is that I think basketball is the game requiring the greatest amount of athletic ability, so I'm going to favor the basketball player in any of these debates. I think Michael Jordan is the greatest "athlete" I've ever seen.)
I think there's some recency bias here--if there's one thing the records are clear on, it's that nobody in the past couple of decades has been nearly as dominant as was typical in earlier eras.
In 1987 Graf made the final of every tournament she entered (not just slams, every tournament), winning all but two (both losses to Navratilova).
In 1988 she lost in semis twice, won 11 of 12 finals, won all four slams, won gold in the Olympics.
In 1989 she again made the final of every tournament she entered, again winning all but two.
She made 13 consecutive slam finals. Chris Evert had separate streaks of 8 and 10, Navratilova had a streak of 14 (for these latter two I'm only including tournaments they appeared in--they often skipped the Australian because it wasn't really a major yet, and Martina didn't always play in the French). Serena's longest streak has been four.
At one point Graf had won more than 200 consecutive matches against players ranked outside the top four.
There's nothing like that in Serena's career--it's peppered with early-round losses. The same's true for every other top player in the last 20 years. Federer and Djokovic have dominated the lower-level players like this, but no woman has.
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Babe Zaharias by a landslide.
Babe Ruth was not the "Greatest Athlete Ever" because he was great at ONE.....
obviously don't know shit about babe ruth. likely just used to watching those few clips when he was in his late 30s.
was that nearly all of the film footage of him was when he was past the age of 30. If you see film and photos from his two greatest seasons-arguably 1920 or 1921, he was not fat at all. He also could run- look at his triples totals from his early years. True- he only did it in one sport but he was a great, great left-handed pitcher and that shows versatility at least within his sport.
Other candidates for greatest male athlete would be Jim Brown and Jim Thorpe.
no way, you can't include female athletes of previous generations in best ever arguments because there were just waaaaaay fewer female athletes in Babe Zaharias era, there just wasn't enough competition. now days every female can become an athlete if they want to so the talent pool is so much bigger and better, that wasn't the case back then
Based on what you're arguing, prior generations could not be considered in the discussion of greatest female athlete...so what's the cut line then? 70's, 80's? As well, if this is the case, then do Billie Jean King's wins get more weight as she pioneered the business of women's sports on tv, competed against males (though maybe staged a bit vs. Riggs), dealt with significantly more opposition to her athletic achievements (and sexuality).
Bottom line, of course you can include previous generations in any discussion of greatness. Much like baseball, football etc. you can only compete against your era and then discuss/debate that dominance as fans. People still talk about Koufax, Seaver, Rose etc. in baseball because they were so great in their time. Similarly, Jim Brown and Barry Sanders vs. their era similarly great. Gretzky in hockey dominated his era (essentially reshaped the game and how it was defended) in a way that had not been seen before or since.
Babe Zaharias, against her era was ridiculously dominant in a way that had not really been seen in women's sports. Where it becomes more interesting is that she was great in a wide array of different disciplines and competed at the highest levels in all of them. Williams is great at tennis in her era but not close to the kind of dominance era vs. era that Zaharias had across disciplines.
Greatness isn't only about the now.
the name that came to mind when this was posed. I do have a bias for someone who was superior in multiple sports. Serena has been amazing though.
but obligatory
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checks out!
Nope, Caitlin didn't win anything. Bruce did. In as much as they are the same person, they are not the same person... Bruce wasn't taking hormones when he won those Gold Medals. I don't care either way that he wanted to become a woman - that's his (her?) choice of which I just don't care. But Caitlin doesn't get the credit for Bruce's athletic achievments. IMO, anyway...
But I did laugh at the comment!
Mommy!
I'd without a doubt say it's Serena among modern athletes. Part of the dominance of the Williams sisters has been the willingness of both of them to walk away from the game and take a break once in a while. Seems to have prevented them from ending up as 21-year-old burnouts, which seems so common in the tennis world. It's an unbelievable and quintessentially American story that two black girls from a poor background in a rough neighborhood , coached by their dad, could have reached these heights. I certainly never thought I'd live to see Graf's number equaled, or even surpassed.
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olympic medals, world records in hurdles and high jump. then several years later became the best female golfer on the planet.
she's the best female athlete ever. serena is likely the most dominant in a sport for the longest period of time.