Chess and Tennis

People have often tried to find chess analogues in other realms. For example, music (Capablanca=Mozart, Botvinnik=Bach, etc.); I find the exercise totally meaningless and loads of fun. I wonder if the same could be done with tennis. Obviously, you've got to be big tennis history nut to "feel" the similarites in style/vibe. Anyway, here's my list:

Sampras=Kasparov

Borg=Fischer

Federer=Capablanca

Nadal=Carlsen

Lendl=Botvinnik

Connors=Alekhine

McEnroe=Tal

Djokovic=Petrosian

Ferrer=Korchnoi

Agassi=Anand

Edberg=Smyslov

Some interesting people with distinctive styles, for whom I couldn't find good matches: 

Tennis players: Gonzales, Laver, Becker, Rafter, Budge, Emerson, Chang, Ivanisavic, Rosewall, Roddick, Safin, Hewitt, Murray, Courier

Chess players: Karpov, Lasker, Steinitz, Morphy, Rubinstein, Bogo, Nimzowitsch, Leko, Morozevich, Topalov, Keres, Euwe, Spassky

wwht abot wawrinka

Meh. Fine player, but does he have a distinctive enough style to make an interesting analogy? 

Wawrinka? Okay. He's... Ulf Andersson.

lol, how random.

 Where would you put Karpov? I still find it an interesting topic.

@yureesystem: Yeah, I'm not sure. There isn't anyone that leaps to mind. I mean, Karpov's calling cards are the use of subtle moves on the back rank to reorganize his pieces, to exert pressure at a distance. 

I was thinking maybe some power baseliner like Del Potro or Berdych, but that doesn't feel right. Karpov wasn't a "power" player. He was about building up a position slowly. A point-constructer like Federer makes more sense, but Karpov is a bit more of a grinder tan Federer ever was. Besides, Federer is obviously Capablanca.

Maybe someone like Ken Rosewall, who uses guile and intelligence to outfox his opposition -- but really, that's a closer fit to someone like Nimzowitsch.

I dunno. I'm a bit at a loss. You gotta find a tennis player with a classic style, who is a bit of a grinder (but not too much), who plays from the back of the court, who's really all about maneuvering and controlling space, and who isn't all about blasting, power, and speed. The analogy just may not provide a suitable counterpart. 

Maybe Gasquet? But now you have the problem that you're comparing one of the greatest chess players of all time with a guy who, despite his monumental talent, is more than halfway through his career, and hasn't even gotten to the finals of a major.

Billie Jean King = Nigel Short

Brilliant... just... brilliant.

Never before have I typed the acronym: LoL. And yet, there it is. I am LoL.

what has Andre Agassi got in common with Anand, apart from they're both past it?

I think both would've been hugely dominant in their times, but for the fact that they had the bad fortune of being contemporaneous with even bigger talents (Kasparov and Sampras). 

Agassi was also a very "classical" all-around player, who played aggressively from the baseline, with a really excellent backhand. Analogously, Anand is a very "classical" all-around player, who lacks any obvious weaknesses, and who tends to seek a balance between activity and sound pawn structure.

Less obviously, one of Agassi's biggest innovations was to guard the baseline, and take deep balls "on the rise" consistently -- which has some resemblance to Anand's penchant for moving quickly. Also, as you point out, both played at the top level to an unusually "old" age.

And their names both begin with "A." 

Can you think of a better match (for either)?

good reply, thanks.

i think a good metaphorical opponent right now for Anand would be Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, of France. content to get the ball back over the net, just as Anand would have been happy to draw with Carlsen

you missed the most obvious comparison though, didn't even hit the target

Judit Polgar=Serena Williams

What? Jo-Willy is most certainly not content to get the ball back over the net. In fact, I'd estimate that next to Federer, he's probably the most aggressive player among the top 10. As usual with the French, he's super stylish and super aggressive. He is not Anand. He's more like Morezevich or Aronian.

As for Judit... well, not Serena. Serena's personality is too strong... her personal nastiness often overwhelms her substantial on-court accomplishments. 

It's actually not so easy to find a Judit's match. I'd say maybe Margaret Court, since Court was clearly the most dominant female player in history, and Judit is also by a long shot. But I confess, I've never actually seen Margaret Court play, so I dunno whether they had comparable styles. 

As a gut thing, I'd say that Steffi Graf or Justine Henin remind me more of Judit than Serena. They have the aggression and scrappiness of Polgar. Serena is almost all about overpowering her opponents. 

Yeah, Tsonga's very aggressive -- definitely not a grinder. Djokovic and Murray are more grinding type players, would that be fair to say?

I think Charlotte was mainly talking about the styles of the two ladies, not necessarily their personalities. It seems pretty clear to me that both Judit and Serena have very aggressive styles.

Definitely Djokovic is a grinder. Even more so than Nadal, if that's possible. Lately, he's been trying to be more aggressive, coming to net -- but he doesn't have the volleying skills of Federer, Murray, or even Nadal, so it seems an odd attempt to change things up, especially since just grinding it out on the baseline had been working so well for him.

Murray is a bit of a different story. Yeah, he is definitely on the grinder side of the spectrum, but I think he's a lot more versatile. Some of his most memorable rallies have been cat and mouse exchanges at the net. The variety of his game, the delicate touch -- he can be unbelievably subtle and stylish when the occasion calls for it. Unfortunately, given the state of play today (slower courts, spinnier strings), he isn't really in a position to utilize it so often -- it's safest for him just to sit back and grind like Nadal and Djokovic, though it does not show off his full repertoire of shots.

As for Serena -- well, I guess the question is whether there's a distinction between "aggressive play" and "power play." I would say that Federer is the most "aggressive" player, but he's certainly not a "power" player. He can't pound serves as hard as Raonic, Isner, Karlovic. And his groundstrokes don't have the force of Monfils or Del Potro. 

So how does that translate to chess? I sort of think that a "power" player relies on forcing their opponent back, putting them under constant pressure. That's not the same thing as aggression. An aggressive player takes risks and tries to force things to a decisive conclusion early. A power player is indifferent about drawing things out or ending them quickly.

I have always seen Judit as more of an "aggressive" player than a "power" player. She plays high-risk, attacking chess. I dunno... it's hard to make matches for those players. If I had a gun to my head, I'd say Serena's game is more comparable to someone like Carlsen or even Anand.

dude, tried ferrer for that one?

@EDB:

Yeah, maybe. I thought Korchnoi was a better fit for Ferrer, but I can see Karpov working, too. It's a little bit weird to match Karpov (the winningest player in history) with a guy who seems doomed to never win a major, though.

Well, its n odd matchup, but maybe ferrer'll win something.

Hmm... well, I'm not totally convinced of the distinction between  aggressive and power, at least the way I have come to understand the usage of these terms (they're not synonymous, but it's very hard to have one without including the other) but if we go by your distinction I would say that both of them are both :)

I mean, Judit is an attacking player (isn't she?) -- isn't power a perfectly good term to describe that? She goes after you, in direct attacking style.  Well, of course any top player does way more than just that, but that seems to be her natural style. Maybe with Carlsen you could say he is aggressive in a different way, e.g., he has a quiet style but is extremely competitive and fights for a long time, but Polgar seems more focused on brute force, hence power player.

"If I had a gun to my head, I'd say Serena's game is more comparable to someone like Carlsen or even Anand."

But Serena is basically about hitting the ball really hard, whereas Carlsen grinds you positionally or with endgame technique (fiercely as he may do). Actually I think their styles are closer to being opposites than being the same. For the record I do think your Nadal choice is a good one for Carlsen; and interestingly enough, Nadal and Serena seem totally different. Maybe Anand is a better comparison for Serena... even that really seems to ignore the elephant in the room... Judit really does seem perfect to me.

Perhaps. You're beginning to convince me.

Honestly, while I think that aggression and power are vastly different in tennis (e.g., McEnroe would be an excellent example of aggression without power -- and not just for his off-court antics -- he was a true artist at the net, with a touch comparable only to Laver and Rafter, and he was basically rushing up there at every opportunity, but he wasn't really known for striking the ball particularly hard), I'm inclined to agree that the distinction makes less sense in chess. This might be why we're getting weird comparisons.

Actually, despite Hicks83's hilarious comparison to Nigel Short, I think maybe the better analogue to Polgar might be Billie Jean King. Arguments in favor: 

(1) King is a woman... obviously.

(2) King was known as being super aggressive.

(3) King won the (in)famous "Battle of the Sexes" match against Bobby Riggs. More than being the best woman tennis player, Polgar is perhaps more notable for being able to go toe-to-toe with the top echelon of male players.