23 consecutive men's Grand Slam semifinals Stands Alone
36 consecutive men's Grand Slam quarter-finals Stands Alone




This along with 18 GS's

Conversation is over.


Remember that time when Federer was in his prime and he lost to Sam Querrey in the 3rd round, or mf Dennis Istomin in the 2nd round, or anyone before the QF?


look at that

M F 23 semis in a row

23!


That might be more impressive that 18 overall

And did it all without bitching or taking injury timeouts

Djoker is a weird one bc he seems to go on streaks for no apparent. How did he go from so dominant to meh so quick last year? this is why the argument for him is based on his high being so high, not that he has been uber consistent like Federer. He broke into the big 4 at an early age, didn't win a slam for 2 years, had a GOATish 2011 (Nadal himself said Djoker 2011 was "probably the highest level of tennis that I ever saw") was very good but not mega elite for a couple years, then went back to a GOAT run in 2015, and now is back to a weird meh streak

Nadal only has 24 semi's in his career

PEDs weren't working correctly, slight injuries, trouble on the home front?

Everyone's bodies mature and peak at different points. The vast majority of people it's around 25. With Rafa it was much earlier. If you compare him and Roger at different ages of their careers. Rafa had four slams before Roger even won one. Fast for word a few years, they are both 27 and both won 13. Had 6 when Novak had 1. By 27 he had 7.

People aren't giving fed enough credit during his peak.

#GlutenFree

Accusing him of PEDs is like admitting he's the best.
"No one has ever been that good so he must be juicing."

Rename thread: Fed GOAT

I think his peak his quit high. just not as high as Rafa's or Djokers.

It's the same argument people have made forever: that if you want to narrowly restrict Fed's peak to just the single year of 2006, ok, but it's an awfully convenient truth for you that Nadal was 20 and Djoker and Murray 21 back then and the next best players were ???. and yet these guys were still already emerging as the next big group. if most people peak at 25, it speaks really poorly to Fed's "younger days" competition" that all these youngsters were so easily able to become Fed's biggest competition.

there was no decent contingent of 25/26/27/28 year olds to hold them back. except Federer.

But you're talking about 2 of top 5 or even top 3 players of all time. Is it at all surprising that they were among the best in the game in their early 20's? Murray is probably the best player ever to be so overshadowed by the greatness of others in his career, since 3 of the GOATS were mostly the only guys beating him.

Federer was the number 1 ranked player in the world himself at just 22 years old. He broke into the top 10 at age 20. He reached the quarters of Wimbledon at age 19.

Or maybe there was and Roger is so good he made them all look terrible.

The man made 23 semis in a row.

lol.


"In the 2009 Wimbledon final, Roddick lost to Federer in five sets. The match included a fifth set of 30 games (a Grand Slam final record) and was over four hours long. In the final game of the deciding set, Roddick's serve was broken for the first time in the match. With that victory, Federer broke Pete Sampras' record of 14 Grand Slam tournament titles, and Roddick apologised to Sampras (who was there) for not being able to stop Federer."

+1

It's very difficult for anyone to really prove it's not this. Especially given a 35 year old Federer winning a major title in 2017. And that his top contender 10 years ago was once again his top contender.

meh, ELO considers this. you can look at the top players records against each other. there were no other great players when Fed was 25. if there were, somebody would stand out when compared to the universe of non Fed players, and that didn't happen

look, it was still a great season but Nadal and Djoker had better ones

and even that being said, I have a very hard time with the argument that peak Fed was x year but one or 2 years later he was significantly different. we're talking about the guy who had the longest extended peak ever. just find the argument awfully convenient that his age 27 and 28 years were WAY different for him and it just so happens that's when guys like Djoker and Nadal happened to start beating him, and in Nadals case by a lot

Fed is by far and away the most consistent player of those 3. Fed almost never loses to bums in slams like they have. The consecutive number of semis and quarters he reached is just as significant as the slam winner totals for me. The Nadal argument is an interesting one, but not being able to beat a guy six years younger than you and in the prime of his career AKA his last three finals losses isn't a very compelling argument to me.

My point was that market data seems to suggest that 2015 Novak was not that much better than 2015 Federer. So for the claim that 2015 Novak to be best ever, or v v near it, you would also need to assume that 2015 Federer was not that much worse than 2007 Federer and/or the market was wildly wrong about how good Novak and Federer were in 2015.

Maybe one of those is true? But of the three explanations, the one that says Novak was something in the coinflip-ish area against Federer in 2015 slam matches and binked 2 seems the most plausible.

No way get out of here

Federer was 59-6 (91%) in non Novak matches in 2015.
Federer was 68-9 (88%) in all matches in 2007. Throw out whichever opponent you want from that year like I did above and you get pretty close. Only reason Fed 2015 isn't a GOAT season to rival his best is that GOAT Djoker happened to be playing a bit better.

I think we probably need to agree to disagree on this, because I look at those facts and see a different interpretation. You can get to 34 y.o. Federer having a similar winning record as 26-28 y.o. Federer by saying either "he got a decent amount worse at tennis, but some combo of lower competition and run good makes up the difference" or "34 y.o. Federer is comparable to 26-28 y.o. Federer in quality". Without some substantial data analysis to the contrary, the latter seems far more likely. You can kinda sorta get there with a model in a flawed-ish way and even w/ a model its probably right to be skeptical, but absent that, to me its a slam dunk choice for the more reasonable explanation.

*former

yes perhaps, could be run good, could be an oddly weak year for opposition. I always make fun of *eye test* but "Federer looks as good as ever" was a common refrain I was hearing back then. and sure, a late career resurgence is not the norm but it does happen. look at...a 39 year old Tom Brady who is apparently just as good as ever (he claims he is faster now than ever). That is far stranger than my Fed argument.

2015 Djokovic's competition is weaker than Fed's 2006 competition. Who was he competing against? Raonic, Thiem, Berdych...all these guys are mental midgets. Safin is better than Murray. Hewitt is better than Wawrinka. Federer and Nadal are old and out of their primes.

This era is so weak that Monfils was seeded #6 at AO. Did you ever see Monfils win anything ever? What about Raonic at #3?

But I'd put 2011 Novak season over 2006 Fed season because he was beating prime Nadal in the finals.

last 25 years:

1. fed
2. pete
3. rafa
4. djo
5. agassi

Yanks over rate Pete.

Wasn't good on clay. Won one 1000 (new name) event on clay iirc and wasn't consistent on it. Rafa is great on all and won everything.

Novak probably ahead too at this stage due to wins on all surfaces and plenty of then.