Better all surface player. Better head to head with decent sample size. I like him better.

I never doomsayed and I never said anything remotely like he was going out in round 2. I said he very close to done as dominant and that's exactly what time it is. Quit making shyt up irrelevant to life.

I see it the classic way I guess that Rafa is clay court specialist and not anywhere near GOAT on other surfaces, just great. 7 majors on non-clay. Doesn't that mean Fed is clearly the better all surface player, even though Rafa had his number heads up. He was kryptonite to The Man. Fed > on hard and grass, Rafa > on clay.

It's been amazing. I didn't think Nadal had the knees or Djoker had the mind to run Fed down. Talking way back before it was even a thing.

Nonononono Olympics #1 by far so Murray is the GOAT

Rafa being first to 21?

Odds?

+500

Probably rather good. Djokovic will be favourite at the Australian Open and Rafa will be favourite at Roland Garros, but Novak arguably has more competition on hards courts than Rafa has on clay. But Novak should rightfully be favoured to win the most grand slam titles by the end of his career.

And everyone should disregard any chance of Federer winning at Wimbledon or anywhere for that matter. Ditto for Serena Williams.

Rafa SLIGHTLY more likely to be on 21 when the FO finishes than Djok, but event chronology says Djok massive fave to be first is how i'd have it

I'd love to see one guy get a big but strange celebration for reaching 21 first, only to have someone else else hit 22 first.

Zverev to win Australian Open
Rafa to win French Open for #21
Djokovic to win Wimbledon for #21
Djokovic to win US Open for #22

Yeah something like that. I want to see Nadal get his moment on top, his career deserves a moment of passing Federer if he gets 21. If Djokovic gets 21 first, and then ends with 24 to Nadal's 22 or something, I feel Nadal's career will have been shortchanged.

If we look at who was the youngest of the Big 3 to win each slam rather than the first:
Nadal - youngest to slam wins 1-10, 18, 19
Federer - youngest to slam wins 11-17
Djokovic - youngest to slam win 20

Novak might not play AUS due to vaccine requirements?

Possible hope for Nadal to take the lead lol.

Even that 20 Novak has has an asterisk because Nadal's 20th came in a tournament that was delayed for Covid, penalising him for "taking longer" to get to 20 for that schedule change is rough (It clearly didn't favour him)

VAMOS! Way to ****ing tank your legacy over a shot Joker.

Pretty astute non-changing of thread name over the past 9 or so months when he seemed to be drawing dead. Guess we all just subconsciously knew :P

Pretty disappointed by the choke job from Medvedev, I thought he was above the rest of Next Gen in mental game, but guess not quite

One asterisk slam does not a GOAT make. Nole is still GOAT, it's just that it's not the case any more that you get laughed out the building if you suggest otherwise (for now).

Whenever one of the big 3 wins the latest slam, he is proclaimed to be the all time best. I hope we all can understand how ridiculous that is.

This tournament is 1 of his 21 slams. It's 5% of his slam legacy. Novak didn't even enter the tournament. Previous tournaments where he beat Roger and/or Novak carry far far more weight towards his legacy

Rafa still being able to beat the young guys on a hard court is good news for Novak, it means he probably still has 3-4 more years left of winning slams.

I'm going Rafa GOAT. Double career slam overrides clay court specialist knock, heads-up against Fed was unimaginable when he started doing it, sick gutty performances and comebacks, a real hero not just a spoiled star (see Djoker), 13 French by far the most of any one major (so no one has been as great on any surface as he is on clay, pretty obvious by the record), has had to compete against both other GOAT candidates more ... I'm sure I'm leaving some stuff out. How old is the poll in this thread?

This is such a strange post lol

The race is so close that one slam can (and quite likely will, in the end) make the difference, and so yes opinions of who is the greatest changes often whenever one of them wins a slam, especially unexpectedly/out of turn. Why is that remotely ridiculous?

And why would it matter if this isn't his "most important" slam. Obviously he would still need the other wins too. Any increment no matter how small can be the one that gets you past a threshold (and this is by no means his smallest, even with no Djok, giving him the career Grand Slam double and a huge lead now in the main longevity metric of time between first and last slam*).

It's like you don't understand how addition works.

*Pretty sure he already had this anyway if you measured it down to the day, but was equal with Federer if you just went by calendar year. Now it's an over two years bigger gap.

Rafa's most singular achievement is his total dominance on clay. Nothing remotely similar ever seen in tennis. That on top of that he wins all the other slams and owns fed h2h is what makes him goat.

All the joker fans give him the goat because Rafa has 13 wins in France, but joker has 8 in Australia, which is the minor slam.

I think peak Djokovic is the best tennis player I've seen but he's an ******* and an idiot and you can't win if you don't play.

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

Because GS isn't the only metric and Djokovic wins in every other metric while only being 5% behind in the GS one.
lol you give Fedal fans an inch and they want to take a mile. Isn't recency bias great?

Yea except that's not remotely what he said. Like I said, it was a weird post