Have you ever seen Murray play? He has unbelievable skill but with his temper, I'll be shocked if he can become #1 in any era.

The fact is lol Roddick with his limited skill set made 4 grandslam finals while playing in the same era as Nadal/Federer and later Djokovic. But the players you mentioned combined for 4 grandslam finals total.

Federer wasn't playing well from 2001-thru middle of 2003. He wasn't yet the monster he later became. Why do you think no one dominated that weak era? How come no one breezed through that lol easy era and win 5 or 6 slams during this period? Maybe because utter domination like what Federer showed us isn't as easy as you think even if the competition is as easy as you think?

This is a good point and Fed had a temper which hurt him a ton early on. He showed flashes of greatness and win big matches and then freak out. Watching him in 03-04 from 01-02 was like two different people just from an emotional temperament standpoint. Novak is kind of like this, seems like a stone cold killer now - just shows it on the exterior.

Since Federer won his first major

Federer - 16 majors
Nadal - 10 majors
Djokovic - 4 majors
All others - 4 majors

If Djokovic can repeat this year, Fed/Nadal/Djoko will clearly be above the rest from other eras.
Laver > Sampras
Remember the sports writers rated that horse a better athlete than Sampras.

I think it's pretty fair to say that we have collectively witnessed the best tennis ever played in 2011. We are living through a special time in the history of this game and I believe that the Nadal-Djoko-Fed era will overshadow all other rivalries of the past. If Nadal gets motivated and improves his serve back to 2010 US Open win level then it's definitely game on.

Nobody should be laughing at Safin, the guy played some excellent tennis. Just go look at his US Open win over Sampras in straight sets to see what I'm talking about - utter domination.

It's a GREAT time to be a tennis fan.

marcos baghdatis

It seems that all the Fed haters keep repeating the same thing over and over, that his competition was inferior.

Simple question for all you guys then:

Who is the GOAT and why?

So far, I believe only one candidate has been mentioned ITT and Djoko at this point is pretty LOL for alltime GOAT.

So who then? Nadal? Sampras? Someone else?

Pick your player, and make your case. I think you may find that it's a lot easier to pick on Fed's perceived shortcomings then to make a case for someone else.

Why is it "pretty LOL"? Nobody is arguing that Novak has the most impressive career resume. The claim is that he is the best tennis player to ever pickup a racket. The people are arguing Novak are confident enough in this despite his performance only looking for that like one year. One year is a decent enough sample. If he goes out and does the same thing next year I would expect everyone to agree.

He hasn't done that yet and I guess I understand that some are hesistant to call him the GOAT, but I'm convinced already. I have never seen anyone play better. I would put Nadal at #2 and Federer at #3.

There is a huge difference between "I have never seen anyone play better" when talking about one year. It's not like anyone is calling Tsonga the GOAT because he has had a match here or there when he has looked like the best ever. One year is a fine sample in tennis when you're playing all the same people and play more than 60 matches.

Bitchface, if Novak was 5 years older and had peaked at the same time as Federer, what do you think their head to head record would have been?
Its 13-10 in favor of Federer right now btw.

Playing a bunch of matches in one season, especially when a lot of them are smashed into a few months in the summer, is probably not a great sample. The main issue is that if something is wrong with one of the players healthwise, that's real likely to be a persistent issue over that time span. Suppose that Nadal's serve dropped off this year because of some nagging injury and that in the offseason he can get it back together, as a possibility. (I'm not saying this is the case, merely offering a plausible example.)

Sigh. This has been answered many times. U just trolling now?

One more time then, for most people, most impressive career resume = GOAT.

You define GOAT differently, fine. Almost everyone (not just "some") disagrees with you. Get over it.

I would ask you to explain why you have Nadal>Federer but considering your definition of GOAT is what it is, it would be a waste of time.

There are many more issues, I think BF knows this and is just trolling.

One season sould be fine if everyone were at their peak IMO. In theory, take peak Federer, peak Nadal and Peak Djoko, let them play a series of matches on all surfaces and if one player comes out well ahead of the others then that's that. Of course not everyone peaks at the same time, the fact that peak Djoko owned a way past his peak Federer proves nothing.

Maybe Nadal owns Djoko next year. Could easily happen and if it does, then calling Djoko GOAT or even saying Djoko>Nadal is just LOL.


All this discussion if obv pretty subjective and there's no definitive criteria for who is the GOAT. I would be interested if someone knowlegable made his case for Nadal though.

he won't answer this. this is all through this thread but goes ignored.

The case for Nadal has gotten a lot worse. He's going to need a monster year next year, and while it could happen I don't think it's very likely. But if you read the posts in this thread from before this year's US Open, I think you'll see some reasonable arguments.

EDIT: I guess to expand a bit and repeat some things said before, I do believe that at their best, averaged over the surfaces, Nadal is probably better than Federer head to head. I'm not sure where Djokovic fits with that, but speculating I think you'd actually end up with a circle here: Djokovic > Nadal, Nadal > Federer, Federer > Djokovic. So that's probably not such a great metric to be using. If Nadal had gotten close to Federer's overall slam record and had another year or two on top of the world, I think their similar accomplishments would then make the head-to-head consideration decisive in proclaiming Nadal the best. But he has to get pretty close resume wise first, and that looks unlikely to me now.

So... shall we pick this up where we left off?

^Relevant

Non majors don't count, ldo

I'm not going to read the entire thread here, but I just watched the Nadal/Fed match from the Masters and it's up there as the best performance I've ever seen on a court. I watch a reasonable amount of tennis and I've never seen anything quite as dominant, powerful and flawless as that was. Sure, there are fitness issues for Nadal to factor in, but it's hard to see them making a difference to the result and it's hard to see anyone's best topping that performance.

Obviously a single match isn't very telling, but if we're comparing individual player's peak performances it has to carry some significance.

I still give the title to Roger and i'd be very surprised if he didn't have a couple more majors in him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StUvrjIfGd8

never gets old

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH0EG...eature=related

Magician

so sick

not sure this guy knows wtf HD means...

Might be the greatest rally ever imo

Henry was in Feds box the other day as well.

Where's Tiger?

Who?