The people trying to asterisk Nadal winning the AO are absolute morons and their opinions are disqualified. This was the first time in Nadal's entire career he played a GS without one of Federer or Djokovic in it. There's plenty of valid arguments for Fed/Novak>Nadal, obviously it's completely subjective, but there is zero argument as to who has had to face the toughest competition in the path to their GS's. Nadal's peak started during Federer's absolute peak and ran through Djokovic's rise to his best. Argue who had the highest peak all you want, only one of them had his entire peak having to deal with another GOAT. Fed had '03-'06 largely to himself, Novak had '14-'16. Nadal spent all of '07-'13 with either Federer or Djokovic.
Record vs Big3 in GS Finals:
Nadal: 11-7 (4-7 on non-clay)
Federer: 4-10
Djokovic: 8-6
# of GS's having to play both
Nadal: 5
Federer: 2
Djokovic: 3
# of GS's won having beat both
Nadal: 3
Federer: 0
Djokovic: 0
I'm sure someone will chime in with "well if Nadal made it deep more they would have had more chances".
Nadal: 36 SF's/63 GS's played (57%, 22/49 or 45% on non-clay)
Federer: 46 SF's/81 GS' played (57%)
Djokovic: 42 SF's/66 GS's played (64%)
Again, I have no interest in defending my position in who I think the greatest is. Especially in 2022 when 95% of people live in an echo-chamber and refuse to have an open-minded conversation or cede an inch on their preconceived notion. But miss me with this asterisk bullshit. Beating Shapo/Berettini/Medvedev on a hard court is approximately 37,000x tougher than 5+ of Federer's paths to a title.
First post in what seems like years. Hope everyone is doing well