You never know when SARS will flare back up.

or when he will get anthrax.

First of all, Roddick and Hewitt are not terrible. They were #1 at one time and were grandslam champions. Federer made them look terrible eventhough they were good enough to reach the finals. Game evolves constantly, so players of the previous generations will usually look terrible unless they were otherwordly talents. Btw, he also played and beat players like Safin, Agassi, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray in his slam finals.

Second, what do you want to us to address? You want Federer to pick his finals competition? He can only play whoever makes to the grandslam final. He can't go back in time and pick Sampras to play in his wimbledon finals or go forward and grab Djokovic at his peak to play in the US open finals(although he did play him in couple of semis and showed that even against the toughest of competition, he's good enough to compete on even terms at 30 yrs of age. Imagine him at 25 when his speed, reflexes and confidence are at an all time high).

It's strange that only Federer is being blamed for his finals competition. What about Sampras? Was he playing Agassi in every grandslam final? Look at the names Borg beat in his 6 french open wins. Or his wimbledon wins. Or Laver when he completed his slams. A player can't choose his competition. We can only judge him based on how he handles his competition. And Federer handled them pretty well..

I've only watched the French, Wimbledon, and the US Open this year. I thought Novak played great, but not mindblowingly great. Would my opinion be different if I had watched the whole season, given that I already know he has compiled a stellar record this year?

Come on. Roddick sucks. He is a one trick pony. Other than his serve, there is nothing about his game that stands out. Next to the great players of the past 20 years he is decidedly poor.

Leyton Hewitt's name would never come up in even an hour long conversation about great tennis players for the past 20 years. He was decent.

Andy Murray is much better than either of those guys ever were.

Murray is a far superior player to either of them now but at the time those two where the best in the world and #1 players in the world and gs winners.

So Djokovic's record this season is now 64-3, I doubt it will be better than Federer's 81-4 2005 season, maybe not even better than Federer's 2006 92-5 record if Djokovic plays the remaining Masters 1000 and the World Tour Finals.

Not really an article about GOAT tennis player but rather about best ever season by one (which then inevitably touches upon some GOAT) but it's still a nice perspective to the kind of discussion I've usually seen when reading (and quickly exiting) these threads:

http://joeposnanski.si.com/2011/09/1...s-season-ever/

& The thing about Roddick is, whenever someone loses to him, they are losing to someone who isn't even as smart as a monkey.

Butt IIRC Nadal had to beat Roddick to get to the semis at the US Open, and has probably had to beat him in the course of winning some other tournaments, so maybe we should count that against Nadal.

Roddick actually has a 5-3 record against Djokovic and is only 3-7 behind against Nadal (3-5 without clay), that's not bad.

u guys act like roddick was awful. he prob would have had 4 slams like Djokovic if it wasnt for roger...

Roddick is a much better player than he is being given credit for itt. His career looks a lot better if his entire peak wasn't during Federer's domination of the sport. He'd never enter the GOAT conversation either way obviously, but he likely has 4-6 Slams if Federer doesn't exist.

Even mentioning Roddick in the same sentence (paragraph, page even) is a disservice to the others. The others are all around players that are versatile and without major weaknesses. Roddick has 1 weapon and at his peak his forehand was too I suppose. His backhand is like 150x worse than any of the real contenders worst shot. And his volleys as well.

Fed now quite clearly imo

Nadal already has 10 so if he lasts as long as Fed has then sure he could do it, unless Djok has his number forever.

Djokovic has a decentish shot to take it over I'd say. A couple years ago I could never imagine anyone getting close for a long time, but it really has changed. The way Djok has owned the other two time and time again on every surface is huge. I just hope a couple of younger players start making inroads. We are in danger of hitting another lull in a few years if no young players start showing flashes of brilliance. Maybe we have just been spoiled the last few years.

Milos Roanic, Bernie Tomic, Donald Young, Christina McHale FTW. Fed will bow down to them much like McEnroe bows down to Nadal now.

I mean it's inevitable, some snotty douche who's been playing tennis since before he popped out of his momm''as fajita is gonna blow alway all these mother****ers. Until then, enjoy the pseudo joy of watching someone who is the consensus GOAT, for now.

Milos Raonic just lost to some guy who is 186th in the world at the latest Davis Cup competition.

Donald Young doesn't have the weapons to be a top 10 player, he'll be a good top 20-30 player though.

I think you can add Dmitrov and Golubev to your list.

yeah he "could" do it, but he was going into this year needing 2 at min to have solid shot and 3 for a great one, getting worked by Djokovic mostly ended his chances at 17, he already took a solid step down from last year's play and he shouldn't age well I think his o/u is 12.5 now

So correct.

You can dissect Roddick all you want, but at the end of the day he's just an average player (for a top guy) with a big serve. You can't even be in this conversation without a real backhand.

Roddick and Hewitt in prime are never Top 4 in the current slate of players

Bottomset - Nadal will give Djoko something new to look at in 2012, I can guarantee that. I say if Nadal hasn't figured out the Djoko riddle by 2012 I will totally agree with your statement.

Adding to Milos Raonic, I think the latest Davis Cup loss shows that the guy is really out of practice and it's going to take him a while to get back into form. With a TON of points to defend in early 2012 he knows that the stakes are high - if he's still rusty by then he could take a huge ranking fall going into Wimbledon. I want the guy to succeed, I'm Canadian after all, but I gotta say it like it is.

Roddick - Gilbert combo was his peak. He lost his grittiness once Gilbert was given the boot unfortunately.

With Hewitt #1 in the pre-Federer era were very dark days for tennis. The quality of tennis was really really poor and the interest in tennis was waning. This was in the days when Patrick Rafter was competitive - lol, such a one dimensional player with an average serve (he's the only player to date that I have actually slept while watching him play live). Thank God for Federer.

bolded is not true. also, murray will never win a grand slam.

Who are some of the best tennis writers/bloggers?

roger ainec

bolded is true.

Just thinking of some of the most tilting kind of people to play tennis with.
maybe #1, is the guy that plays with his racquet constantly. Such as taking 20 second time- outs to play with his strings, or is constantly fiddling with the shock stopper.

fufufufufufufufufufufu.

Do ppl really believe that Andy Murray will never win a slam? I say he wins 2 or 3 before he retires, but only on hard courts. I agree that he is better than both Roddick and Hewitt at their #1 levels.

I respect Roddick and think he's made the most out of marginal natural talent. He's been a good American (i.e. plays Davis Cup just about every year and will likely coach one day) and a good citizen. It is a shame that he will be associated with the downfall of US tennis.