Power Baseliners and the Wave of the Future

m/3/en/players/headtohead/?player1=Gilbert%2C+Brad&player2=jimmy+connors">Connors, Boris Becker, Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, lost all 16 of his matches with Lendl. In his book, Winning Ugly, Gilbert referred the Czech as “The Terminator.” He was considered less talented than John McEnroe and Boris Becker, and designation he doesn’t mind, especially since he won more major singles titles than either of them. As he once told Tennis magazine, “I had a talent for hard work.”

Jim Courier – Courier is the least distinguished name on this list, with “only” four Grand Slam wins and a career that began its descent only two years after his first major title. Even so, there’s no disputing Courier’s evolutionary role in the sport. He won the 1991 Roland Garros title by taking Lendl’s fitness and forehand-centered approach to the game to the nth degree. In Winning Ugly, Gilbert referred to Courier as “Terminator II.” After bulldozing his way to two Roland Garros wins, two Australian Open titles and the No. 1 ranking, his approach caught on.

By the mid-1990s, Courier’s more talented peers like Sampras and Agassi began incorporating his fitness and determination into their games. Then, dirt-baller's like Sergi Bruguera and Thomas Muster, who were power baseliners with games custom-built for clay, made Courier obsolete in Paris, the scene of his greatest triumphs. By the mid-90s, the huge hitters like Thomas Enqvist and Tommy Haas may not have had Courier’s winning instincts, but their game plans made his untenable.

Courier’s legacy, however, would live on.

Andre Agassi – Had Agassi not enjoyed his late-‘90s resurgence, his return of serve and ability to strike the ball earlier than anyone else might still have revolutionized the game. His eventual success at winning all four majors, however, showed that it was the power baseliner approach that would allow players to contend on all surfaces, rather than specializing in just one or two (a point later proved by Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic).

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