re: Federer is the #GOAT

quote:

---

Such a dimwitted, pathetic fanboy

---

It appears this is how you respond to everybody who occasions to make salient and reasoned points that go against your already-arrived-at conclusion.

Quite cerebral of you, I must say.

Gonna chime in here for a change. Although my opinion is worth as much as anyone else's opinion (nothing), I don't want to die without at least having a written record of my thoughts on this overplayed topic.

It's easy to pile on Federer at this point in his career, but my opinion of him now is not any different than it was two years ago. Had he won 2 or 3 more slams since then, would my feelings have changed? Somewhat, yes.

Unfortunately, I don't feel he's part of the GOAT discussion. There are fans who will defend him to the death because of the visual appeal of his game, or his class, or aura, or some other nonsense. But when it comes to on-court accomplishments, I feel that Novak and Rafa will end up comfortably ahead of him.

He's falling behind in so many stats that his fans are starting to make up their own stats, or come up with achievements that are basically meaningless. "Well, he has the record for the most round-of-16 appearances in slams." I have no idea if that's true or not, but I can picture FedFans saying it.

If you pull up his slam results in finals, you can see that he took full advantage of the weak era, and caught Rafa and Novak a couple times in their early 20's while Roger was closer to peak form. From 2008 to 2019, his record vs. Rafa/Novak in slam finals is 1-8. The rest of his wins in that time frame came against Murray (3 times), Cilic (twice), Roddick, and Soderling.

Since Rafa and Novak still have plenty of time to make their case, there's no use debating their numbers at this point. I would lean Novak, but that's based on him passing everyone in slams, which is no guarantee for sure. I'll try to revisit this in 4 or 5 years.

quote:

---

Kind of amazing to think about how many trophies Fed and Nadal could have if not for each other.


100%

---

if no opponent, boring.


Sound of one hand clapping.

I don't know a lot about men's tennis.
Honestly, I've prefer women's tennis, the volleys, among other things.

Long story short, wife & I flew to Zurich.

Zurich Museums have free access and their National Museums are a shrine to Federer. I was impressive with their exhibits to tennis, golf, and skiing.

That said after walking through that Museum, I'm sure Switzerland's GOAT is Federer

Do you think the current big 3 will go down as the top 3 goats? Where do you rank Sampras out of curiosity?

quote:

---

All I have left is butthurt about technology or court/ball conditions contributing to neverending 30 shot rally wars of attrition.

---

I have to admit that I under-emphasized this factor in my analysis. Some will argue that if he's the GOAT, he should have been able to adapt to the newer strings/rackets and slower courts, but in my opinion it's not that simple.

Imagine coming up in an era where, with the exception of clay, almost all courts played fast and everyone was on a level playing field with regard to rackets and strings. You tailored your game to succeed in these conditions and completely dominated the sport.

Then suddenly everything starts to change. Rackets are being developed with much larger head sizes and sweet spots, string technology improves extensively allowing for ridiculous spin, courts are slowed down to create longer rallies, and different balls are being used at seemingly every tournament.

Naturally, all of the young phenoms climbing the ranks have playing styles that are suited to the newer technolgies and conditions. At first you think your game is strong enough to fight them off despite these differences. When they start getting the best of you, that's when you finally decide it's time to change.

But where do you start? After 20-25 years of playing tennis, every facet of your game is calibrated perfectly. Any change in racket size, racket weight, string type, or string tension will affect all of your shots in different ways. In other words, if you switch to a string that's made for more spin, your shots may start landing shorter in the court, so you will probably want to reduce string tension to compensate. But now your serves begin landing a few inches long or wide due to the new string setup. All of this takes time to calibrate, especially when you are older.

And you can't just switch to a 2-hand backhand on a whim, or try a new grip to add extreme spin to your game overnight. These are things that have to be developed at an early age and practiced for years. Not to mention the longer rallies require a level of fitness that was never needed in tennis until the late 2000's.

This is why he had such a long adjustment period, and why so many people (myself included) thought he was done about 6 years ago. It could be argued that remaining a top-3 player for the majority of the last 10 years is more of an accomplishment than what he did in the first half of his career.

quote:

---

These 3 guys at their best would absolutely obliterate Rod Laver at his best. But is that a fair comparison? Look at the differences in rackets, strings, courts, balls, nutrition, coaches, money, stats, technology, training, and on and on. Even McEnroe and Sampras were way behind in most of these categories.

---

It's definitely not a fair comparison. The best way to make it apples-to-apples is to compare guys against their own peers. How much better were they than the other top players.

Same deal with other sports. Can't really use raw numbers in baseball or basketball when some eras have been slower or more pitcher friendly. So you just ask how much better was a guy than everybody else in the league.