this was always the principal argument against barry sanders.

What i dont get aboutvthis argument is that grass is more special than clay, so it's really federer, novak, and sampras that look better than they should.

Artificially choosing 6 rather than 5 excludes only nadal.

This isn't clear - court homogenization makes it easier for the top players to win more GSs in today's tennis than was the case historically (by making it easier to dominate on different surfaces, reducing variance both in terms of adjustments but also seeding). I don't think Pete Sampras was substantially worse when he retired than he was at his prime, it's just that his equipment was outdated, his style was outdated and the game has changed. At age 30, Sampras had 13 GS titles, Nadal 14, and Nadal's ability to win since then has more to do with the fact that the game hasn't moved away from his strengths, whereas for Sampras it had.

Rafa is way better than Sampras.

How so? I haven't seen any argument that takes into account the changes that have taken place. Obviously Nadal at his best would beat Sampras at his best in today's game, but that's just the evolution of the game. Sampras was more dominant relative to other top players of his time than Nadal. Despite the surface variance which makes it harder to hold on to the top spot, he spent more weeks at #1, he was year-end #1 more years, more consecutive weeks at #1 and so on. Also, more importantly, there was no extended period where Nadal was clearly the best player in the game.

Nadal won more grand slams, but given the top 3 GS title winners are all active today, that's an artifact of the homogenization of surfaces (and also improvement in quality more generally) which reduces variance and makes it easier for the best players to dominate. Even then, Sampras won nearly as many titles as Nadal.

nadal is obv better than sampras

I liked Pete as much as the next guy but yeah nadal is obv better.

How many GS does Nadal have if he is born in 1970? He probably wins 0 Wimbledons and is not so dominant in the French because he can’t generate 4K rpm forehands.

Correct. Overall Fed played better, but did/could not close it out. Look at their previous H2H and a pattern emerges of Fed failing in high leverage situations against Djok. That's tennis.

Although I think the result may have been different without the LOL new tiebreak rule.

I agree. ~50% of all professional tennis is played on clay courts. ~2% is played on grass. Nadal ran bad when people picked the 4 tournaments that count.

Considering that he's borg on steroids and wouldn't have retired so soon, a lot.

i dont get hypotheticals like this whatsoever (so kudos for confusing me) but if he was born 20 years prior he wins all the french cups. all of them. every. single. one.

and a lot of soccer is played on asphalt and street surfaces, and yet 0% of that surface is used in pro leagues. i wonder why that is?

if i was the GOAT moon baseball player, would that have any bearing on my earth baseball acumen? no, not really.

for tennis, specifically evaluating the greats, which is what this thread is all about, uses those 4 slams. no one is saying clay doesn't matter. but what the slams say is it matters IDENTICALLY to grass.

in high school we largely played on clay courts. over winter i played primarily on carpet courts! and yet for ALL of our matches, we played on hard surfaces. it sucked i was better on those other surfaces, and thereby weaker in matches. but my ability was evaluated based on how i played in actual matches on the actual surfaces rather than the arbitrary practicing situations.

Yea this. You can argue it's unlucky, but it doesn't really matter, it is what it is. Clay deserves a 25% weighting. (Though I'd argue a lot of people don't actually give it that when they say things like "yea but it all came on Clay")

Yeah, this is fair - when people denigrate clay to being "not worth anything", when clearly thats incorrect.

but all things equal would way rather have someone who is the GOAT on hard surfaces (ie. Djok) who also can win on clay rather than someone who is the GOAT on clay (ie. Nadal) who can win on hard surfaces. It's a small difference but pretty monumental for who is the overall GOAT

Djok is the only player ever to not have a losing record vs anyone with at least 10 matches. Pretty staggering.

going to leave this here from tennis subreddit

These three have pretty gaudy M1000 totals.

Rafa: 34
Novak: 33
Fed: 28

Each has won one this year (along with Thiem and lol Fognini). There are 4 remaining.

Yea but if all things were equal the GOAT on hard surfaces would have way more slams, because twice as many opportunities. That's the entire thing, all things AREN'T equal. Rafa on Clay >>>>> Anyone else ever on any surface ever. Just calling him only "the GOAT on Clay" in the same way Novak is GOAT on hardcourt is doing him an injustice.

Correct. Nadal is basically unbeatable on clay, and has been for over a decade. He is competitive at the highest level on the other surfaces, on which Fed/Djok are a notch better.

No player will ever be unbeatable on grass because it is only used for 1 month of the year. Hard court theoretically could yield an unbeatable player, but subtle differences between each location probably rule that out.

Its not moon tennis. Its tennis.

I'm a huge Fed fan but he's been getting owned by Djoker in high pressure situations for 5-7 years now. He's not choking as badly as he was circa 2011-2015 when he seemed to shank every MUST WIN point, but it's hard to watch knowing he gave away 2-4 majors along the way to Djokovic.

No longer playing tennis on dirt would be a positive development for humanity. But somehow that’s a controversial opinion.

I would add grass too.

Hard court is the only real tennis.