lol

I don't always have people claim I'm the GOAT, but when I do, I back it up by getting bageled in a 3-set loss to a 23 year old in the Quarters.

djok 2017 might be like fed 2013 (wins 1 title, does nothing else but fall in rankings). djok has a chance to bring it back together once he gets his work/life balance in order and with agassi as his new coach.

but djok will always go down as having the best year ever (2015), so imo he can definitely come back to form.

i was looking forward to a nadal/djok semi, but i don't think it would have been sporting what with nadal playing as he is and djok struggling like he is.

To a guy I beat 6-0, 6-1 a month ago.

Rafa is incredible. I thought Fed was untouchable when he hit 18 GS's, but now I'm having second thoughts. Rafa could very well win several more FO's. He's 5 years younger than Fed who was still able to win a GS this year at 35.

At 15 GS's now, Rafa could still make it to 16 to (gasp) 20. Obv that's extremely unlikely, but so was Fed and Rafa being the 2 reigning GS champions in 2017. With 5 more years of FO equity and still some equity at the other events, Rafa is still in the hunt.

And Fed could of course bump it up even further to an unbelievable 19 GS's in a month. It is just absolutely astounding to me that the best players in the world and the story is still Rafa vs Fed in the year of our Lord two thousand and seventeen. Utterly incredible.

not similar unfortunately. fed glides whereas rafa plays a game that punishes his body terribly. it's extremely unlikely nadal will be playing at the same level at 35, let alone 37 given his previous injuries and what his game does to his body.

yes, rafa can make it to 16 and MAYYYBE 17, but beyond that is insanely unlikely. he doesn't have 5 more years of "equity" lol.

this is 100% true. it's beyond insane that the two 2017 champs are in their 30s and it just goes to show what fed has done to nadal in 2017. nadal has lost 6 matches this year (48-6). 50% of those loses were to fed (aus/iw/miami) and the other 3 were to raonic, weirdly querry, and theim.

if fed hadn't lost to the random donskoy (eugene?) guy, he'd be undefeated (assuming he then went on to win that tourney). but instead fed is 19-1 this year with THREE titles lol.

and fed is poised to start his grass court season this wednesday or thursday in stutgart (sp?).

but yea this is absolutely incredible. i'd hate to say "never to be seen again" but who knows given that THIS IN AND OF ITSELF was never to be seen in the first place!

He's clearly goat on clay that's for sure

never underestimate a man willing to take all the roids

CLAY GOAT. Nadal has improved his all-time record in best-of-five-set clay matches to 102-2.

What a fall Djoker has taken

your info might be wrong.

if you mean best of 5 clay matches, those only happen at the french open as far as i know (am i wrong?). his record at the french is like 82-2.

if you mean other clay tournaments, he has a different record that includes more losses.

what is the 102 you're quoting here? are there 20 other non roland garros clay court matches that were best of 5s?

but yea, nadal is 100% the best clay court player of all time. and the most dominant human on any surface man or woman (overtaking martina)

Davis Cup?

The masters series back in the day was over 5 sets.

They changed it when it went to the atp1000 series as Rafa and Roger pulled out of a tournament following an epic 5 setter final the week before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_I...en%27s_Singles

Sure it was that one can't quite recall.

That tournament they pulled out of was the only ATP tournament I've ever attended. Me and a friend specifically made a stop in Hamburg Germany while touring Europe to watch the tourny. All the tickets had a picture of Fed and Nadal on them.

So sick, I'd be completely gutted as well.

Probably the right thing to do over all for the tour and keeping the 5 sets for slams and Olympic final makes them unique.

I don't really think it's possible for Rafa to beat Fed in GOAT Status even if he passes him in total majors. Most of those paths probably involve him winning 3-4 more French Opens, then like 2 others. And I just don't know that a resume with 20 majors, 14 of them at the same tournament is more impressive than Fed having 18/19, with a career slam, 10 on hard courts and 7 on grass.

Probably agree with this, though with Djoker collapsing the path for Nadal is broader than Roland Garros . That is, if he stays healthy

Speaking of, many Djoker predictions just a few pages back are looking ugly.

Though Djoker getting it back together quickly wouldn't stun me either

from way back!


nailed it.

did not nail it.

looks very bad to me. (has 0 since this post)

did not nail it!

wowowow

I guess so!

(I'm sure you could find many lol things I said in here as well, just funny how things change)

counting out novak now is like counting out fed in 2013. do so at your own peril. djok had the best tennis year of all time and has shown to be an absolute dominant threat on the court until he lost his mental edge and desire to work as hard as he has been due, likely, in part to a desire to spend more time with his new family.

but it's absolutely possible that he comes back in rare form in the coming years. he's young. murray's age (they're like a week apart in age i think, no?). and there's plenty of room for him to have a recurrence. here's to hoping he does b/c i'd like to see as many more matches w/ the top 5 guys at full strength. any combination of murray, nadal, wawrinka, djok, and fed with them showing up is a great match (wawrinka just didn't get a foot in the door early enough. he had to show up in rare form right off the starting line and he didn't do that)

largely agree, except:

- Djoker at 30 is not "young" and he is very likely past peak age
- what he's lost (desire) may not be very easy things for him to get back

I hope he does recover though

Novak will continue crashing out of tournaments unless he finally fires scum Pepe Imaz. It is that simple.

Fed was still top 4 player when 30. If he plays he way he has this year he's the best player in the world for the first hard court season, grass and 2nd hardcore. He won't play clay now, unless it's his fairwell tour. He's still good enough to run deep in Rome/monte/Madrid and fo. Rafa is very likely still a top 4 player on hard. Will be interesting to see how he copes with the grass as he's been rank on the green for a good few years now. Fully fit though!

I disagree with this, and I'm on Team Fed. I think Fed is clearly the GOAT, and that Rafa will not catch him, although he has a chance.

But if Rafa made it to an insane 20 as you describe, that would be a better GOAT argument, especially combined with his individual dominance of Fed. Although Nadal would have the majority of his titles on one surface, that surface still counts, and it's not like he would be a slouch on the other surfaces.

He would also have a career Grand Slam and have 7 GS's on the other surfaces (and 7+ Finals on those other surfaces as well). If you took away their best surface, their GS titles would be Fed 11-7 on other surfaces, and then Nadal 13-7 on their best surface. That's not enough of a discrepancy to invalidate the greater amount of GS's.

That said, I don't think it ever gets to that point. I think Nadal finishes at 16-17 and Fed at 18-19, with Fed staying GOAT perhaps forever. But if Nadal surpassed Fed, I would be forced to admit that he was now GOAT.

they're both great and it's great seeing them both play well in 2017

rafa may be ranked number 1 again soon

I think you can count out Djok for GOAT. He's past his peak. He may/should win more GS's, but the odds are prohibitively against reaching 18+.

Has any player ever won more than 2 GS's after age 30? Fed has 2, Agassi 2, Nadal 1, Sampras 1, Connors 1.

And even those few GS's after 30 were considered improbable, way past their prime, as 30 used to be considered ancient for tennis, and still should be, except that GOAT Fed and 2GOAT Nadal are just that good, making it seem more possible than it should.

ETA: Yes, in 2013, you could count out Fed on winning 6+ GS's.

Just using this as a jump-off to re-evaluate the best year/highest peak argument. I get the ELO and other arguments for Djok. Has the competition on clay argument already been pointed out previously?

Because in 2005-7, Fed beat everybody in the world except clay GOAT Nadal at the FO. In 2015, Djok lost in 4 to Stan. He didn't have to face Nadal during his peak year. If Fed didn't have to face Nadal at the FO, then Fed would have won 11 straight GS's for a multiple year rolling Slam.