Interesting way of putting it.

Imagine a world where only one of the three had existed.

Which player would benefit the most from this?

I think Federer. If he was the only member of the 'big 3' he wins 30 or more slams and goes down as an untouchable GOAT.

Apply this same circumstance to other guys and the effect is much less. I think.

This is Feds best case IMO, as his head to head vs the other guys is his worst.

Yea easily Fed. In Grand Slams H2H:
Nadal leads Djok 10-6
Nadal leads Fed 10-4
Djok leads Fed 11-6

Times eliminated by one of the other two:
Fed 21
Djok 16
Nadal 10

Federer clearly lost out the most by the existence of the other two. Whether that's an argument for or against him is up for debate

H2H is a bit misleading IMO. Fed is 5+ years older so he will naturally have a worse record measured that way. He also had 2 years of no competition whereas Djok and Nadal never could say that.

Nadal had a chance in 2017 AO to seal the GOAT, up 3-1 in the 5th, then realized what it meant and collapsed.

Lol, as opposed to Federer, who showed nerves of steal when he had a chance to seal GOAT up in 2019 Wimbledon?

The last 3 slams...

Nadal easily wins the french, easier than a two foot putt, just like he did in 2019

The US open lol, only Novax having a dumbass moment cost him an easy win

This AO where the only question mark for Novax was his health.

Next up: Nadal easily wins the french again

Heck last time Wimbledon was played a 62 year old Roger Federer had match point in the finals against Djokovic.


Right now Nadal is picking up easy French opens and Djokovic is getting easy wins everywhere else if he stays healthy. You could say that's because they're great, but if you do that then you have to concede also that Federer's dominance in 04-09 was also due to his greatness and not due to the weakness of the field.

All 3 guys have great cases IMO and I love debating this.

It's not interesting at all, just 100% accurate. Even Nadal said so so keep crying you salty hater.
"Interesting way of putting it" lol go back to reddit

Yeah ok if he didn't strike the ball he would have had a 0% chance to be disqualified as opposed to 0.0000001%

For me the Rafa 3-1 up in that set wasn't a choke at all. Fed was brilliant in that set, he was winning a lot of the bigger points. IIRC he had a break points in most of Rafas service games, gone close and aside from the break that Rafa took and the final game he was just awesome.

Rafa has had a few chances to complete the set twice but has just come up short a few times, the Stan final was a great chance as well but his body let him down.

The wimbledon final was a complete joke from Fed IMO, 3 sets dropped on tie breakers all of them he made a complete balls of. When leading 40-15, his serve went - although there was one which was close to an ace novax went the wrong way. Had that gone in it's a completely different story - fine margins and all.

It's kind of a strange one but theres now arguably a few players that are better than Rafa in Australia. Likewise Novax at the French. Neither are like to win the set twice from this point forward - if both are playing and healthy.

The 3 of them play at a slam they're going to beat virtually everyone bar a few who'll have to play the game of their lives in order to knock them out. Even if they're 90% fit. Sure theres going to be the odd game here or there.

Interesting times with the olympics coming up as well

> novax
because he said he doesn't want to be forced to vaccinate on nothing but trust with **** put together and "tested" in a few months, under the pressure of an unprecedented global pandemic? Him and his family are all vaccinated against everything but covid.

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There is no argument left to make for 40-15erer being the GOAT.

Novax nuthuggers have always been a special breed of crazy, it's a fascinating psychological study. They have their own definition of "hater" which is: anyone who doesn't completely dismiss any and all of Novax's mistakes and flaws. It doesn't even matter how much a person respects his game. One needs to be completely delusional about Novax as both a player and person in order to not be considered a "hater." It's entertaining to watch in performance art kind of way.

blah blah blah you said something which is demonstrably wrong. Would it have been better if he was more careful? Sure. Did he get extremely unlucky for the ball to land on the specific square inch area to temporarily incapacitate the woman to the point she had to fall on her knees in fear for her life? Absolutely so. If you can't admit that then yes you are letting your hate affect your judgement. Don't try to bluff your way out by going on an unrelated rant like this.

The difference being Nadal winning at the site he performed worst at, vs. Federer winning at the site he performed best at. GOAT equity for Nadal was more for winning 2017 AO than for Fed to win 2019 WIM.

Also, Nadal was -130, and Djok was -185.

We don't need to mis-characterize the risk posed by hitting a ball at someone not expecting it. There were plenty of areas that posed risk of something bad happening. It could have hit the official in the eye and caused blindness. The rules are in place to preclude a player from initiating the act, not to blame misfortune for causing injury.

You're pretending that was the one and only time he ever smacked a ball away. He's done that roughly a thousand times, and finally he hit one that went straight at a line judges throat. You apparently don't understand probability very well. If you do something once that has a 1000-1 chance of happening, then yes that can reasonably be considered bad luck. If you do the same thing 1000 times and it happens once, then you'd be an idiot to call that unlucky.

I don't remember which match it was but I watched Vax do literally the exact same thing at RG a few weeks later, smacked a ball away after losing a game. Only that time it didn't hit anyone, just like the other 998 times he's done it, so it was no harm no foul and no one cared and no one read about it in the newspaper.

Nah, Fed beating prime Djokovic at almost 38 would have been every bit as big a factor in the GOAT argument as Nadal having another AO.

The other difference of course is that losing from 40-15 two Match Points on serve is light years more of a choke than merely from a break 3-1 up in the fifth.

The main point though is that they've all had moments against each other where they were very close to winning something that in hindsight would have completely flipped the GOAT argument, but came up short. Even Djokovic was up a break in the 5th against Nadal in the SF of RG '13. Lol at it being some specific knock on Nadal that he choked AO '17

Would Nadal even be in the conversation for GOAT if he did not defeat Fed at WIM in '08? Fed winning 9 WIM or 8 is not going to make that much of a difference, even if it were Djok. Nadal winning 2 at AO instead of 1 also gives him 2+ at all venues, and the GOAT.

Its common knowledge that Nadal is not the most solid finishing matches. Sure Fed played great, but Nadal had a big edge and he did not close the deal. Call it whatever you want. Along with '08 it was the most important match of his career. A GOAT would likely get the job done. And I am as much a Nadal fan as anyone.

I mean, I get where you're coming from. He's won 2 wimbledons though and had 3 runners up, so it's not exactly likely that he wouldn't have ever won one.

Regarding all winning the set twice, Fed has finished runner up 4 times at the french, once after he won it.

Rafa has had 4 runners up at the AO, all after he won it, 3 after he won his second US and Wimbledon.

Novax only the once - last year at the FO to complete the set twice. RU 4 times.

They've all had chances do to the unique double.

I still don't think we're giving Laver enough credit for 62 and 69.

Also is Rafa dominance on clay a positive or negative attribute? I heard people say that it makes him more of a one trick pony - massively disrespectful imo he's won 3 or more on each surface, the other two can't say the same.

Also he's got gold, but rubbish indoor. So many ways of looking at it.

Yeah, a lot more ATP clay tournaments than grass, so IMO grass is the unusual surface.

If there was one slam on each surface, Nadal clearly the GOAT?

And for that matter, Federer is punished because the surface he dominated was underrepresented in the yearly schedule.

Easy wins?

Nadal's domination at RG is among the most impressive fetas in all of sports.

You could say the same for Nadal. Imagine this debate if there had been 2 clay slams all along. Or only 1 hard slam.

The GOAT debate is like 90% hypothetical what-ifs. The only real non-hypothetical debate you can have is who is best on a certain surface during a certain time period.

The problem with that is that clay is the WOAT surface. It'd be good if the Australian was carpet rather than hard just to have 4 different surfaces as they changed from grass. The surfaces are slightly different between the US and AO but they should go back to the older green courts that played differently if carpet isn't an option due to it being an outdoor tournament.

Fed/Serena are the only two to win on both surfaces I think.