well tennis is garbage right now, no one is disputing that.

amazing run by Fed.

I still think the highest peak ever is debatable and there is a strong argument it was reached by Rafa or Djoker

that said, it's close enough that's Rogers edge in 'sustained greatness' makes it a moot point. in order for Djoker or Rafa to be considered GOAT I think it either needs to be crystal clear that their peak was a good bit higher than Fed or that they were elite for longer...but neither looks likely to happen

this is a joke. Every other sport on here its argued that lol olds or that people from a previous era wouldn't be able to keep up as humans are obviously evolving..bigger, faster, etc...but for some reason its not like that in tennis. I don't like comparing eras too much for obvious reasons? But while djoker and murray be injured (if that's what you're referring to) there's still some very good players out there.

Lets face it, nobody has ever been able to compete at the highest level for over 15 years (Sampras was close) and also still showing he can beat the best. Federer has and deserves an immense amount of credit

You seem a little salty.

Ah.

Nothing I said is inaccurate bro

depends on if you were saying GOAT sarcastically or not. Bro

The thing is that Nadal only dominated Fed on clay, Fed has a winning record now on both other surfaces.

So basically Fed's problem was that he was the 2nd best clay court player when they were ranked 1-2, and thus kept losing to Nadal in clay finals matches.

If Federer had been a poor clay court player, and not made those finals, his career record against Nadal looks different.

Everyone can easily agree that Nadal is the greatest clay court player of all time, so if Federer was the 2nd best clay court player during that era, it isn't much of a knock on his GOAT status.

I dont think there is a way to sugar coat the Nadal H2H record. You can't look at 13-2, 9-10, 1-2 and say Federer comes out ahead in 2 of the 3 courts in an intellectually honest way, imo. Thats a curb stomping, a coin flip and an incomplete. If your long term expectation against a player was to win 85% of your clay court matches and 45% of your other courts, you're the better tennis player.


I just tend to think Nadal just ran 4 or 5 matches ahead of expectation against Federer (it happens all the time, it just matters a hell of a lot more when many of them are major finals). And at that point the over sampling of clay argument would have a lot of merit.

For Djoker or Nadal to be considered GOAT they need 18 slams. Slam total is like 90% of the GOAT argument.

Grass is only 2 tournments (and that's if they play same Wimbledon warmup) per year. Roger has been to 10 Wimbledon finals, giving them let's say 10 chances to play each other. Rafa 5. So they could have played a lot more on grass. Rafa has been finished on grass for about 5-6 years. So I think we can safely say that Roger is better on grass than Rafa. Likewise Rafa is better on clay. Roger is better on hard (plus indoor) 10 slams to Rafa 3, loads more semis, 6 wtf to Rafa 0. I don't think it's a stretch to say if they play 15 games on grass Roger has a massive upper hand.

That's why they both are the two best ever but Roger is ahead by consistency and slam wins.

We need an 1000 grass event and longer grass season.

Yeah, for all effective purposes Roger has "curb stomped" Nadal on grass, he just didn't get to do it personally because Nadal was usually out too early.

I don't disagree with any of these points, nor would I try to argue that Nadal > Federer. My point was that you can't view the H2H record as anything but a massive check mark in the Nadal column. SF counts and 2nd round losses arent relevant to that point.

but the point is that there are check marks on that check mark (nadal didn't make as many grass qtr/semi/finals as #2+ in the world so he didn't face fed nearly as often on that meanwhile, fed was the #3-4 clay court player ever and faced nadal all the time on his best surface).

if you're gunna say that the head to head is a check mark in the nadal column, you also have to say that the bias of surfaces in the head to head is a check mark in the fed column.

Basically this

Agreed.




I dug into it a little, and you can see:

1) Of the 151 times Fed/Nadal showed up to play the same tournament, they have met 37 times, meaning they didn't meet 114 times

2) That 114 is broken into 57/45/12 for Nadal Fault/Federer Fault/Both

3) 37/22 outdoor hard really stands out imo; despite the 8-5 Nadal lead in H2H, you can clearly see they should have met more if not for Nadal bowing out early on the regular

4) Most importantly imo, Federer won ~10% more matches than Nadal. Thats a lot.

If the two dominant players in the same generation are close in terms of overall accomplishments in a sport and one has a clear H2H advantage, IMO that's an argument for the other guy being the better all-time player. In most sports, there is such a thing as a matchup issue and it's quite unlucky for you to match up poorly against the one guy with whom you're constantly competing for titles. Your accomplishments as a whole, already disproportionately take into account the H2H record. Federer, for instance, lost disproportionately more GS titles as a result of matching up poorly against Nadal as opposed to matching up poorly against, say, Wawrinka or Hewitt. While Nadal won disproportionately more GS titles as a result of matching up well against the one guy you always had to beat to win. The conventional thinking about H2H isn't just wrong - it's the exact opposite of reality.

Great graphic that illustrates perfectly why Fed>Nadal.

Fed had already won 2 slams prior to their first meeting. I wonder if Nadal will have any slams in him after their last meeting happens.

My 2 favourite players in any case, I've tried to model my forehand based on Nadal's and my backhand based on Federer's.

Modelling your stroke on either of those seems like huge FPS and a real mistake. Don't model your stroke on a pro at all nevermind two specialist shots like that.

not to mention the fact that the grip change would be super weird to go from nadal's forehand to fed's backhand. would be tough to adjust when returning serve. but yea, ofc don't build a game on a pro's shot. you can take lessons from their footwork most of all b/c that's something tons of people lack in general. other than that you gotta find a shot that works for you. and i say that as somebody with absolutely no playing expertise lol.

footwork is a deceptively hard one. I took a lesson with Mats Wilander once (as part of his Wilander on Wheels clinic, highly recommend, he is an awesome teacher and guy) and he showed us the subtle differences in how pros think about footwork and guys like me do - and yeah it's tough.

one thing that (looks) super simple that guys like Federer do amazing is keeping their eyes on the ball. look at any picture of his swing and he is staring the ball down. I think this is something a lot of weekend hackers like myself don't do that well, and it's important. though it sounds super easy.

Nadal's forehand style was my natural style, everybody who plays with me says they've never played against such heavy topspin.

Federers backhand is a thing of beauty to me so i always wanted to hit like that. For years though i lacked consistency and had to just slice my backhands when playing for points. But after more dedicated practice in the last year, my backhand on some days is also a weapon.

The grip change is the most challenging yes. For return of serve i can only slice the backhand, and return of s3rve is definitely the weakest part of my game (well overheads too) because in general its hard to get a lot of practice in returning serves.

I mostly just love to pound deep heavy topspin shots and my oponents are consistently challenged by balls they arent used to encountering.

Since i play just for fun, i see no reason not to hit the strokes that i get most enjoyment from.

I never got the same appreciation watching Djokovic play, always found his style the least pleasing to watch.

Nadal won some tournament for the 10th time. First person in the Open Era to do so.

He won Monte Carlo for the 10th time last week....

imo that win just makes federer's wins over nadal this year even more impressive. it's not like nadal didn't bring it in those 3 matches (well the indian wells one that was 6-3, 6-2 i guess he didn't). nadal is playing v v well, beating everybody else except kyrgios and federer. it's pretty amazing that kyrgios is 2-0 vs. djok, 1-1 vs. fed, 2-2 vs. wawrinka, and 1-1 vs. nadal. if he wasn't 0-5 to murray he'd have a WINNING overall record against the best players in the game.

anyways, nadal is going to win the french. i just hope fed keeps the #4 ranking going in so at least he can likely get some SF points. if he has to play 2 of the top 5 guys on clay before then that'll be bad.