tennis

I think tennis is a terrific sport to play and watch. Andre Agassi was a great player. Here are the greatest players of all time (in approximate order)

Rod Laver
Pete Sampras
Bjorn Borg

John McEnroe
Ivan Lendl
Jimmy Connors
Andre Agassi
Stefan Edberg
Boris Becker
Roger Federer

I have to admit that I don't really know much about tennis players before the 70s, but I put Laver up there since he won 2 grand slams. Federer may well advance up this list quite a bit before the end of his career. The 80s were truly a golden age of tennis with McEnroe, Connors, Lendl, Wilander, Edberg and Becker regularly matching up. Back then serve and volley tennis was actually viable, and yet a guy like Wilander could still win 3 majors in 1 year mostly by being consistent and outmaneuvering and outlasting opponents from the baseline! 1 thing I like about tennis is that it truly rewards endurance. I never liked the fact that Sampras was able to overpower his opponents with his serve so easily that he often didn't try very hard to break when he didn't have to. Clearly, that helped his longevity but not his popularity (at least with me :)