Is Pro Tennis Actually Getting Better? | Monday Match Analysis

Gill Gross (0:00)

Is professional tennis right now the best it's ever been? This episode will feature four of my very smart, very talented friends from other sports.

Most questions in tennis can be answered with a level of objectivity. Results tell us the answer, but results don't help us here with this one. We cannot have 2007 Roger Federer play against 2025 Carlos Alcaraz. We can have 2026 Novak Djokovic play against 2026 Jannik Sinner, but we can't have 2011 Djokovic play against Sinner. That makes this question frustrating.

Tennis is the ultimate meritocracy. The effect of luck is minimal. Teammates are non-existent. Your results are a pretty perfect reflection of who you are, but once again, they're not going to help us here. That's why when Djokovic broke the record for most major titles and most weeks at number one, the GOAT debate, which once filled internet comment sections everywhere, became so simple that nobody was interested in talking about it anymore. A D3 college coach needs not to travel Europe in order to scout talent. The results are sometimes all the evidence that they need. Sports like swimming and track are similar. You are what your finishing time says you are. No such clarity exists in many of the team sports. There are different positions, different teammates, different coaches, so many circumstances that cloud the overall picture and keep debate raging on. And they are different from tennis in that way. And yet, I don't want to have this conversation in a vacuum of tennis because it's so obvious to me that in order to actually investigate this, we have to broaden the scope and learn from how other sports grapple with the same exact question. Plus there's this, and this is important, a big reason why I decided to structure this episode the way I did. If every other sport is definitively getting better, then what are the chances tennis is the lone exception? And on the contrary, if there are other sports that aren't getting better, maybe tennis is one of them.

I'm Gill Gross. This is Monday Match Analysis, brought to you by Fitnexa.

James Colgan of golf.com, thank you for coming on Monday Match Analysis.

James Colgan (2:38)

This is an honor and a privilege, Gill. I've dreamed about this day for years.

Gill Gross (2:43)

Stop it, stop it.

I want to start with you, because golf has incredibly interesting parallels, some differences, but a lot of similarities with tennis. I also think, and I could be totally wrong about this, I think it's going to be the most straightforward sport to interrogate this question on. Am I incorrect in saying a lot of these courses that are being played on, on the professional golf tour, have been around for over a century?

James Colgan (3:14)

Yes, that is 100% correct.

Gill Gross (3:16)

And they haven't been significantly changed?

James Colgan (3:20)

It depends on what your definition of significant is, but no, they haven't been changed in their entirety.

Gill Gross (3:27)

So I would imagine that if you have players over the course of 100 years playing the same course over and over again, we can kind of track, and I do want to focus specifically more so on the last like 20-ish years, 15, 20-ish years, we can kind of track the progress. Are players now scoring better than they used to?

James Colgan (3:47)

Yes, they are scoring better than they used to, but are they better than they used to be? That's the real question. And I don't know that the answer to that is as clear cut as you think it would be.

Obviously, the Tiger era in golf was this massive ground swell moment for the sport. Everything that we knew about golf, everything that we thought we knew about golf, really changed in the 10-year period that started his career. And I think that if you look back to the time before Tiger and the time after Tiger, there is a real clear shift in the way that professional golf has been played. And I think it's inarguable that golfers in the post Tiger era are better than golfers in the pre Tiger era. And really, the reasons for that are not all that exciting or interesting, right? You've got Tiger was the first guy really to bring weight lifting and nutrition into golf. Guys were going to the halfway house in the middle of their round and eating a hot dog while they were playing on the PGA Tour in the 80s. That's not happening anymore. And in the 2020s, guys have nutritionists who are walking them through their macros and talking about their calorie counts and whatever.

But I think really the bigger change has happened outside of that. I think on the margins of the sport, there's been a shift that has gone on far beyond just nutrition or performance. And that change really has nothing to do with player performance actually, and it has everything to do with equipment. And I feel like that is probably where the most similar point to tennis comes in the golf world.