There are countless former players of numerous sporting codes who sit down to pontificate about the game they once played and invariably come up with the same, sad old assessment: “It was better in my day.” To those in tennis who want to talk like that, I simply say, ‘Get real.’ When it comes to assessing the pinnacle of the men’s game with Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic pushing things to new levels, things have never been of a higher quality.

Casting my mind back over the decades, I cannot come up with a time when there were three finer athletes at the top of the game. Arguments can be put forward for the Aussie trio of Rod Laver, Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall or perhaps Roy Emerson. Farther down the track there was Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe. Then more recently along came Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Jim Courier.

Naturally I treat each group with respect because, by and large, the names mentioned are legends of the game. But as a threesome I believe the physical powers of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic combined set whole new standards. Partly, of course, this is down to the evolution of the sport, but also to the scientific advances of technical understanding of how to get the very best out of players. Conditioning now is so different to the times of all those former stars of the game. I’m sure in 10 years’ time things will have moved on again and we will be marvelling at the physical attributes of a whole new generation. Perhaps all the leading tennis players will be close to 7ft tall.

For the time being I look at Federer, Nadal and Djokovic and then measure them alongside the six qualities that are all important to today’s game: power, strength, agility, endurance, flexibility and speed. To be repeatedly successful in today’s top flight of tennis you cannot have any weakness in any of those aspects. Plus, of course, there is the need for extreme mental toughness. I find it impossible not to give each of these men top marks.

There have been other great athletes whom I admire; there was no finer mover around a tennis court than Stefan Edberg. Pat Rafter was also a great exponent of the art of serve-and-volley that required not just great athleticism but also great powers of dedication when it came to putting in the hard yards on the running track and in the gym.

When I was playing, some critics accused me of being obsessive when it came to doing the physical work but I found it fascinating. Now many of the things that were very much in the experimental stage when I was playing are the norm for the leading players.

Preparation of the body to withstand the rigours of what the sport demands is today so important. We are all in debt to Harry Hopman, that little Australian visionary who back in the 1950s appreciated the fact that the best tennis players were the ones who were super fit and insisted on new levels of physical condition that only came as a result of long and gruelling hours of training.

Back then, remember, players did not even have a chair on which to sit at the changeover and played a lot more best-of-five set matches but Hop’s band of Aussies did not mind. They’d run and run, and then run a bit more. Plus they would do a lot of toughening work with the medicine ball as well as playing countless hours of on-court drills and sets. They were fit but probably nowhere near as fit as these three are today.

Borg, of course, was a super-star with wondrous staying power. He would also not shy away from the running but took the view that playing any form of tournament in between the French Open and Wimbledon was not a good idea. Instead, he headed for the Cumberland Club in Hampstead for two weeks and set about tweaking his clay court game for grass. Sometimes his shots on those first few days weren’t pretty.

McEnroe was deceptively quick around a court but will tell you himself he could have been a better player in his heyday if he’d been a little more diligent over his conditioning work. I do not exaggerate when I say he could barely touch his toes when he was winning all those Wimbledon and US Open titles and it is only relatively recently that he has seen the positive effects that come out of concerted gym sessions.

Back then there was no such thing as an entourage complete with physical trainers and fitness experts. They came along in the time of Sampras, Agassi and Courier, but there was not the importance put on core strength and functionality that today is the mainstay of tennis conditioning.

The hard work is done in that all too brief off-season in December and the principal areas on which to focus are the muscles in the stomach, the back and the groin. This is the core that holds the body together and it must have the strength to allow players to accomplish many things when they are basically off balance. Legs and arms may be moving in different directions yet as long as the core is firm then things will work fine.

Nadal could have been a top-flight soccer player and you always see him kicking a ball around with his mates. Djokovic grew up on the ski slopes and his posture, biomechanics and sense of balance are reminiscent of a downhill or slalom champion. Stretching, both preand postmatch, is something I’ve always viewed as hugely important but I’ve seen Novak in the locker room employing completely new techniques that go a long way to explaining his great flexibility. Federer knows there is no substitute for hard work and once Wimbledon is over and he’s enjoyed a few days’ holiday, he’ll head to his training base in Dubai to hit in the brutal summer heat and to get ready for the Olympics and American summer.

For me, it is impossible to look beyond this trio to produce not just the Wimbledon champion but also the Olympic gold medallist in Beijing and then the US Open champion.

Nowadays the top guys hit the ball probably a good 25% harder than players did in my day, although the slower conditions on the grass do allow them more time to swing with more accuracy.

But to my mind that’s the only thing that was better in my time, and it does not bear thinking what might have happened if things had been the same then. Why, Ivan Lendl might even have won Wimbledon in 1987!

Serve & folly

Stefan Edberg and Boris Becker were the last two players to meet in a third successive Wimbledon final yet Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are seeded to fulfil a similar tryst in a fortnight’s time. Edberg won two of his three finals against Becker but believes the chances of a serve-and-volleyer winning Wimbledon are increasingly remote. “If I was playing in today’s game, I couldn’t play serve and volley nine times out of 10,” he said. “It would be too predictable as more guys are returning well, the grass is a little longer and the balls are slower.” Edberg, 42, won six grand slam titles, including Wimbledon in 1988 and 1990, his deadly volley combined with a wickedly spun serve marking him out as one of the most graceful and athletic champions of the past 30 years. What puzzles him now is that Federer, the one player who could match him both for elegance and power at the net, refuses to serve and volley more often. Edberg believes the key to beating Nadal is variety of tactic and shot. “I would try to move Nadal around more,” Edberg says. “Use more drop shots, four in one game if necessary, just to get him out of his rhythm. Roger will have to serve and volley more this year – he is not going to beat Nadal from the back of the court. Nadal can win it this year. People are starting to realise they can beat Federer. It happens to all the great champions. Roger might never get back to what he was.”