The Truth About The Weak Era

About a year ago I was on a men's tennis forum reading a discussion about the

weak

era, as you can imagine, it was not what you would call a productive debate until a gentleman called the

weak

era Prophet came forward and made a bold statement, said. I will prove that the weak era is true. I can explain why it happened, how it happened, and when it happened. He told me that if you want information about the weak era, you can ask me. I can help you answer. Do we care about the detractors? In short, he. he shared his fascinating research with me and then we wrote this script together.

One of the most frequently and most controversial topics in the debate about tennis gold is that of the weak era. Djokovic and Adal fans often say that Feather is a weak era champion and incredibly fans of Feather. Do the same about Djokovic and then there are many people who say there was never a weak era. In today's video, we'll show you definitive proof that the weak era really happened and answer two questions: why did the weak era happen? When did it happen? Before we begin, we need to define two terms that we will use throughout this video.

Those terms are mistakes and they are always great. An era in tennis is a period of 5 to 10 consecutive years that is dominated by one or more great players. Time The open era in tennis began in 1968 when Grand Slam tournaments allowed professional players to compete with amateurs. Since then it has There have been several eras marked by dominant champions of their time starting with the Emerson era of the 1960s and ending with the current Big Three ERA which is an all-time great for the purposes of this video an all-time great the times is a player who won at least 4 grand slams in his career and we already have to pause here because we all know that some people are already objecting why four Grand Slams are chosen as the criterion for an all-time great player for what not three Slams why not five don't worry we'll talk about it later in the video now that we defined the terms let's answer the first question why Did the weak era find the answer?

Let's look at the players who won at least 4 Grand Slams in their careers from 1974 to today. We will not consider players before 1974 because until then tennis was divided between two rival professional circuits that restricted players. participate in some Grand Slams now, the next part is the most important part of this entire video and contains the key to understanding why we care in tennis. Take a closer look at the birth years of these players. Notice how close they are in age to achieve this. this is easier to visualize we will add another column the age difference from one player to the next Villas and Connors are the same age so the difference is zero Borg is four years younger than Villas Mcenroe is three years younger than Borg and so on and so on and When we complete this column, there is only one number that stands out and gives us the answer to why the weak era occurred.

The number 10 next to Feather Feather is a full 10 years younger than Sampras. This is by far the biggest age difference of all of them. great time and his predecessor, in fact, the biggest age difference up to that point was only four years, but wait, there's more. The next largest age difference is that between Pluma and Nadal, a five-year age difference, not only is Pluma 10 years younger than him. closest predecessor, but he is also five years older than the next all-time great on the list and that is why the weak era occurred: there is a 15-year age difference between Sampras and Nadal, a 15-year gap in the one that only one The great of the era was born Roger Feather and because he was the only all-time great born in that 15-year Gap, he had no other all-time greats to compete against in his prime for years, people have argued about the existence of the weak era and the answer was always in front of us now, when we say that Feather had no other grades to compete against in his prime, we know his fans will object, so let's go back to the list and let's see the facts how many times.

Did each of the players face all-time greats who were older than them? In other words, how many times did each of them play against his predecessors? Villas played against Connors nine times. Bork faced Connors 23 times and Villas 22 times for a total of 45 matches. against all-time grades who are older than him Mcenroe played against Borg Villas and Connors a total of 60 times, the owner played 94 games against older players on this list and so on, the two players who played the most games against great greats of all time are Sampras. with 103 and Djokovic with 109 matches and how many times Federer played against older champions in this list 12.

Agassi played 11 times and Sampras, the dominant champion of the previous Sarah, once is not only 12, a minuscule number compared to the number of matches. that others on this list played against his predecessors, but even more importantly, Feather had no rivalry with either Sampras or Agassi. You can't call it a rivalry with Sampras when they only played once and you can't call it a rivalry with. Agassi when they are 11 years apart and the pen did not defeat him until Agassi turned 33 years old and do not forget that Agassi comes from an era in which players retired much earlier than today Sampras played his last Slam at the age of 31 Jim Courier s-29 and Patrick Crafter, two-time US Open winner, played his last Slam at just 28 years old.

Only Agassi, who suffered from back injuries, continued playing into his 30s. Feather is the only all-time great in the last 50 years who he had never done so. Rivalry against a major champion, each of Feather's predecessors had rivalries with all-time greats who were still in their prime and had at least one all-time great rival who was only a few years younger than Feather I didn't have either. This confirms what we have suspected for years. Feather had no real competition until Nadal and Djokovic matured enough to challenge him. Why did the weak era occur? Because Feather was the only all-time great born in the 15 years between Sampras and Adolf. 1971 and 1986.

Now that we know why the weak era occurred, let's move on to the second question, when did it happen? Until now, weak era advocates generally claimed that the feather era from 2004 to 2007 was the weak era, but they are only partially right. The weak era began in 2001 and ended in 2007. There is abundant evidence to show that this is the correct time period. In fact, there is so much evidence that we decided to make part 2 of this video to cover that, for now here's the short answer. The weak era began in 2001 with the conclusion of the Samprasera and ended in 2007 when Nadal entered his prime.

Now, as mentioned above, some people will certainly question our definition of an all-time great, some will argue that our criteria are not strict enough and that we should only consider players with 5 or more slams as all-time greats. and others will say that we should make the criteria less strict and include players with only 3 slams. Let's see what happens in both cases. First, no one on this list won exactly five Slams, so if we wanted to make our criteria more strict we would have to limit the list to players who won six or more Slams, this means we would eliminate two players from the list, Villas and Courier;

However, Villas is the same age as Connors and Courier is the same age as Agassi, meaning removing these two players doesn't create any gap in the timeline. 2001 to 2007 would still be the only weak era in the last 50 years and what happens if we add players who won only three Slams? three players won exactly three Slams in the open era Andy Murray Stan Wawrinka and Gustavo cuarte let's see if adding them makes any difference Murray was born in 1987. adding him does not reduce the 15 year gap with Sampras, while vawrinka was born in 1985... one year before Nadal, reducing the gap to Sampras by just one year, but Murray's and Wawrinka's birthdays are irrelevant because neither entered their prime until many years later.

Murray did not even reach the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam until 2008 and Wawrinka until 2010. Even more important, between 2001 and 2007, the featherweight did not meet either Murray or Vawrinka in the grand slam. The point is that Murray and Wawrinka were not featherweight rivals in the was weak and finally the last player with three slams is Gustavo Cuerten Huertan was born in 1976. Five years after Sampras and five years before Feather, it seems that adding the quartet to the list gives Feather an all-time great that would be his rival until the next Generation emerges, but this is not the case.

The first garden was clay. A court specialist, his three Grand Slam titles came at Roland Garros and he never made it past the quarterfinals in any of the other three Majors. In addition, Huertan won his last French Open in 2001. After 2001 he never won another title. and, finally, Huerten and Feather each faced each other. only three other times his only Grand Slam match was in the third round of the 2004 French Open after that tournament, Cuerten won only one more Grand Slam match in the rest of his career, what all this means is that Gustavo Cuerten and Roger Federer were never rivals even close despite only a five-year age difference, their careers did not overlap in any significant way.

Feather never had to dethrone Cuerten to become what Sampras calls the man, in fact, Feather never had to dethrone anyone to become the dominant champion. of his era he only filled the void left by the zebras when he retired before finishing we mentioned earlier that we will make at least one more video on this topic in this video we show you why the weak era happened and when it happened In the next videos we will provide plenty of evidence which shows that this was indeed a weak error and we will also address some of the most common counterarguments against the weak era theory.

We will talk about this and much more in the next videos until then, thank you. You for watching and I'll talk to you soon.