Depending on the criteria (I am valuing level of play over achievements) I honestly think Murray is closer to being ahead of Sampras than Djokovic/Nadal are to being behind him. If Murray played in an era without 3 of the greatest players of all time it is quite possible he would be in double digit slams himself (every one of his GS final losses has been to one of those 3, as well as many more in semis and quarters). Sampras had a game that was perfectly suited to the faster courts and capitalised on that amazingly well but as kingweed mentioned, he was just not great on clay (never reached a FO final, only reached one masters 1000 final on clay).

If peak Sampras were to play peak Murray on the surfaces today I think Murray would be a decent favourite everywhere outside of Wimbledon. Obviously this isn't a perfect comparison as the faster courts are a large part of why Sampras developed his game the way he did. I wouldn't actually have Murray ahead of Sampras in a GOAT list but I think Murray is often severely underrated and Sampras somewhat overrated in this context unless people are valuing achievements significantly higher than the actual level of play.

Career

Fed>>Nadal>Djoker>>>>>Pete>Murrary>everyone else

Peak

Djoker=Federer>Nadal>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Everyone

I completely agree

I and everyone else in this thread completely disagree with your post.

Safin better than Murray has to be a joke, right?

No way safin is better than Murray and Safin might be in my top 3 all time favourite players.

Murray has a better career than Safin but I'd bet on prime Safin over prime Murray. Murray has yet to beat Fed in a major or a non injured Nadal in majors. He's a massive underachiever

Ahh I see your problem, you're ignoring things that actually happen. Like the 2008 US Open and the 2013 Aus Open.

Yes there's an argument that Murray has underachieved in his career, but he's also had to play against the 3 best players of all time (and to consider his top-10 of all time career an underachievement you'd have to think he's pretty damn good). Since 2011 Murray has lost 5 total matches at slams to people not named Federer/Nadal/Djokovic, and had a run of 18 QFs in a row. If you consider "prime" to mean the highest possible level in a single tournament then there might possibly be an argument between Murray and Safin, but if you consider prime to be anything sustained for longer than 2 weeks then it's not remotely close.

He beat Roger in best of 5 at Wimbledon finals, of the Olympics.

So yeah he has

Roger really really wanted that match

I'm not so sure the courts are faster. I haven't been able to find any empirical or direct evidence that that would be the case, other than changing the grass at Wimbledon around 2001 or so. I used to be convinced the courts were deliberately slowed, but now I think that increased topspin (Luxilon) and possibly balls are the culprit. Another explanation might be the courts are measured just as fast, but the way the ball plays off the surface makes it effectively slower. Either way, I am convinced that the game is effectively slower now than in Sampras era.

I think this is about as close as you can get to correct.

the corpse of Nadal is never winning another major.

That match on Sunday was for the title. I've been team Nadal since it's ever been a discussion, and I was about 3-4 games away from being proven correct, but you can't argue with what Federer just accomplished. He's the GOAT. Lock it up.

Correctamoondo, imo. That was "GOAT Point" in Australia. For now ...

Correctamoondo, imo. That was "GOAT Point" in Australia. For now ...

Fed took back a piece at least of his only down side (his Kryptonite foe).

Nadal beating a 35 year old Fed without having to play Murray or Djokovic wouldn't make him the GOAT. Literally the only thing Nadal does with that win is opens the door to become the GOAT way down the road if he somehow could return to elite form (which he probably can't, so the win means nothing in terms of the GOAT).

The win for Fed just makes it harder for Djokovic to become the GOAT because people will now argue that Djokovic has to be elite when he is 35, but I don't think that matters.

lol at being 3-4 games away from being correct. That's obviously wrong. Nadal isn't even close to being the GOAT right now.

Come on Gus. Rafa is ****ing awesome. And baring injury in that final against Stan. I believe he'd have won it at the time. 2 of each slam. Not getting nearly enough credit. Imo

Rafa still ahead of Novak for me.

Murray's biggest problem so far in his career is that his coaching was so **** they didn't think it was necessary to fix his broken, slow second serve.

One of his coaches even said "he's number 4 in the world, what am I going to say to him?" on the topic of his second serve.

For a large part of his career it was just utter ****.

This is a supernova type take.

This is just false narrative.

Wasn't hurt in the first set, Stan won 6-4 and was crushing him.

You can't just say that.


You can bring up AO 2009. Rafa up 4-2 40-30 in the 5th and missed a sitter. Instead of up 5-2 and probably winning, he gets broken and loses. But all players have those

Novak's first US open win. Fed has two match points in the semi. Novak basically gives up at 40-15 and hits a return as hard as he can. He's basically saying "**** this"

Someone goes in. Breaks fed. Wins match, wins final.

So fed could have had 19

But look at fed in the French open the year he won. 4th round vs haas. Down 2-0 sets. Serving at 3-4. Its 15-40. Dude hits one the most amazing passing shots I've ever seen

If he misses, haas wins that match. Fed never wins French.

Andy Roddick Wimbledon final. Up a set and 6-2 in second set breaker. Fed just takes it from him.

If Roddick wins that breaker. Probably wins the title


That's the thing about sports. Everyone had a title or two they shouldn't have, but they have it

All that matters now is.

18
14
14
12



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Good post.

Safins peak that is better than Murray's peak is based on what? Literally two matches in a career? I love Safin but let's be realistic his peak AND his career are both lower and he had lower competition.

No, the point from my post is that he's now been in 4 AO finals. He's won 14 slams. He's a freaking beast. I do agree with what youre saying with the could go either way and it is correct. To be fair not giving Stan nearly enough credit for actually breaking his body in that final.

It's the same reason why Roger is number one. 6 AU finals, 5 FO, 10W and 7 US.

Just sheer consistency that is unrivalled.

hindsight is 50 50 great match at australian

I put together my attempt at doing this analytically as best I can. There are two major downsides: 1) I dont really have data pre-2007 2) I only have useful historical numbers every 100 days for some techincal reasons.

The graphs below are 2007 => 2017ish modeled game (not match) win probabilities for the 4 main court types. Probabilities are for the first player playing the second player in the title. I've overlayed market implied dots of the corresponding colours to the extent I have them. Its just a formula to take in the vig free implied match win probability, and move it to game win probability space. In general, the dot should line up relatively closely to the corresponding line. To the extent it doesn't, I would tend to think the model hadn't caught up to something yet, or there was some injury type information that wasn't in the model. If a dot lies above the corresponding line, its probably fair to assume the model is undervaluing the first player at that time and if it lies below the line its fair to assume the model is overvaluing the first player at that time.








There is a lot going on in the plots and we probably need to synthesize them down into fewer numbers. I've taken a few stabs at trying to come up with reasonable numbers. First, lets be mindful of this plot from https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/inde...alists.453446/, which shows how frequently people of various ages have made finals of big tournaments:





Given that, I've taken the modeled data and taken 3 date range samples (3/2008 => 10/2014, 2/2008=>9/2016 and 1/2012=>9/2016, the 100 day rule causes screwy start and end dates).





Arguments for and against:


Federer:

- The data strongly indicates he is the best modeled all around tennis player of the three
- Sampling from 2008=>2014 vs Nadal, wherein > 50% of which occurs after Federer's "standard tennis peak" of 20=>29, he is very slightly worse on average, and better if you sample 2007=>2016
- Federer only slightly worse than Novak if you sample 2008=>2014 and 2007=>2016, again periods that ought to a priori favour Novak materially.
- Put another way: in terms of pure ability, Federer is only slightly worse than Novak on an apples to apples comparison if you disregard everything Federer did before 2007, a period in which he won 9 majors
- However, at least since 2007, under performed in important matches running almost 2 majors below expectation in finals


Novak:

- The two data points that stand out in Novak's favour are the average performance he has in the model against Federer and Nadal in 2012=>2016.
- This is the peak Novak argument, I've played around with the numbers, and the only other 4 year strech I can find like that is Federer over Nak 2007=>2010
- Novak is much much better than Nadal and during a period wherein Nadal "should" still be pretty good given his age
- Nadal enjoyed an earlier prime though, and when you look the four years like 2007=>2010, Novak is getting killed by both in a way that the other two never do, and rewarding Novak for Nadal breaking down and Fed being 33 seems iffy


Nadal:

- There probably isnt a solid argument in this data for Nadal in my opinion
- We tend to value tournament wins as opposed to game wins, and being a court specialist like Nadal tends to push up your tournament win probabilities. This is a contrived example, but imagine a world where you face 3 scrubs then a good player in the final:



- The numbers tend to work out in way that you can shift around your game/match probabilities to put all your eggs in one basket and come out ahead. In the example, the generalist has more expected wins in every round but fewer expected tournaments. I don't have an easy way to prove this, but I'm pretty sure that peak Nadal of like 2008=>2014 has a ~= average to Federer but a good amount better expected majors / year because he kind of hacked tennis at the FO
- This is very compelling to me but could not be to others: Rafa got dicked over hard when they were handing out major courts. At or around half of all professional tennis is played on clay courts, but only 25% of the majors are. 2-3% of all tennis is on grass and 25% of the majors are. There are probably alternate universes where we pick the most important tournaments and he is slightly worse off, but there are probably just as many alternative universes where clay makes up a third or a half of all major tournaments and he is so far and away the best player ever by consensus no one is talking about it.



I vote Federer, and I think its going to be very very hard for Novak to get there.

Does the data include factors like injuries?

I like your work but I'm just not having Novak > Rafa.

Injuries has screwed his numbers, esp at Wimbledon where you need to be >80% fit. They are similar level on hard court, Rafa better on grass (pre knees, even with Novak having three), Novak better indoor and Rafa smokes on clay. LOL carpet I guess.