The hair! The shorts! Wood rackets! Gerulaitus even did the old school thing of holding both balls in the hand while serving. Vitas was clearly the better dresser and had the better hair stylist. McEnroe always looked like he shopped at the Salvation Army and used a weed whacker to do his hair. Its eternally interesting to me that McEnroe played through the transition from serve/volley with wood rackets to today’s baseline game with graphite composite rackets with large heads. A huge change. The game was so different.

And that’s the one thing YouTube is good at: historical videos. Whether its sporting events, driving videos of California in the 40’s & 50’s, or early film from the 1900’s of NYC, its all there. And things you didn’t even know you wanted to see! Its one thing to read the description of history from the words of a talented writer, its quite another to watch it take place.

[As a side note I thought it was just modern crowds that were loud, obnoxious and disruptive. Au contraire, this crowd from over 40 years ago was quite obnoxious.]

Very interesting machine. Its not powerful or anything, it just tosses the ball out there for you to practice your forehand and backhand. But seeing its at 1/4th the cost of the next option, what the heck. [9/5/21 update: I bought it and have had it out like 3 times now. I’ve been improving noticeably in just that amount of time. If it lasts a year I imagine it will have helped my backhand and forehand tremendously. Its like a number of sports, you really need the “reps” to perfect your game. And that’s what this is, 28 reps a load. One of the quirks about it is each of the 28 balls you put in has a different bounce it seems like. Really its probably 3 different bounces: Dead, kind of dead and lively! So you have to be ready to use good footwork to adjust for that, or open up 9 new cans of balls.]