That Djokovic is career even against both Federer and Nadal seems another decent argument against the notion that Federer is clearly GOAT. He's not clearly better than the other two best players of his era.

You seem to be under the impression that peak performance is the only criteria for determining the GOAT. If this was the case then yeah it would be close between the 3 of them. However results, longevity and consistency are also all important factors and are why Federer is a distance clear of the field in this discussion. I'm a bit of a Fed hater and yet I don't think that there is a more obvious GOAT currently active in any sport.

Djokovic and Nadal are probably two of the other top 3 of all time. That's part of what makes Roger even GOATerer not less.

Also lol Serena. Women's doesn't count unless you also want to include disabled and junior tennis. Maybe some wheelchair player is the GOAT. Men are better than women. Serena can be the greatest female player but not player when she wouldn't be in the top 2000 players in the world at her peak.

Grand slams
20

16

12


Also. Fed is winning grand slams at 35

Nadal won’t be in the top 1000 at age 35

It's like that famous saying:

When Grand Slams are on your side, pound Grand Slams.
When longevity is on your side, pound longevity.
When neither are on your side, pound a break-even H2H record.

fyp

Federer's era was like 2004-2007

Fed is 11-9 against Nadal on Hard courts, and 2-1 on grass.

Nobody denies Nadal is the great clay court player of all time. And nobody denies he's one of the best players of all time, period. #2 in many people's minds.

Best clay court player of all time

Rafa



Best grass court player of all time

Roger


Best hard court player of all time

Novak



Goat

Roger

Overall best player of all time Federer. He'd be the best player on carpet, or astro turf, or whatever other surfaces people could come up with. Actually that would be cool. Why stick to 3 surfaces with indoor as a weird variation when there's infinite?

Best player on snow


I got Berdych on that one.

Who would be the best table tennis player between Rog Nadal and Djoker?

Novak. He's got that elastic man stretch stuff going on.

That’s easy

Nishikori

Bolded includes indoor games. On outdoor hard courts, Nadal leads, although 6-8 and 11-9 should both be regarded as even. 2-1 on grass is obviously meaninglessly small sample, although one would have expected 3-0, so what information it does communicate is against the Federer lovers.

In general, don't see why longevity is an argument for GOAT. So Kareem is the GOAT NBA player? (Maybe). In the context of tennis it seems mainly an indicator of who had the best doping regimen.

So who's your tennis GOAT

Spanish Steph Curry is arguing (poorly) that Nadal is the GOAT.

His "arguments" just get worse and worse though. "Don't see why longevity is an argument for GOAT" is perhaps his worst one yet. As if we're saying that longevity at being a mediocre player is important, instead of longevity as the best player in the world who is still winning Grand Slams over his much younger 2GOAT and 3.5GOAT peers - which is indeed important.

For example, imagine that every H2H record and stat and # of GS's for Nadal and Djokovic is the same, but Federer won all the others and had won an absurd 40 GS's. He would obviously be the unquestionably definitive GOAT even more than he already is. And yet all of estefanio's horrible H2H arguments would still "apply" - but they would just be exposed as stupid and irrelevant, even more than they already are.

Undoubtedly

Absolutely

Definitively

I don't think so. I'm curious why you say this, when Federer has 11 hard court Grand Slams to Djokovic's 8. That is clearly the most important measurement, but even if you include all the other hard court tournaments, Federer has won 16 more hard court titles than Djokovic, and leads by almost every measurement at all levels. Here are the numbers by tournament type, all on hard courts:

Tournament	Federer	Djokovic	Federer advantage
Grand Slam titles	11	8	3
Grand Slam finals	14	13	1
ATP titles	6	5	1
ATP finals	9	6	3
Masters titles	21	22	-1
Masters finals	31	30	1
Total HC titles	67	51	16
Total HC finals	92	68	24
HC H2H record	17	17	0

Clearly Federer leads Djokovic by these figures. So what is the rationale for Djokovic being the greatest hardcourt player of all time over Federer?

Come on man. It’s not just “longevity”


The mf is #1 in the world at 36 and is still regarded as the best player in the world. At 36


He is still at that top level


Also, when talking “peak”. Federer is still the best


Also the eye test. Federer is the most graceful tennis player of all time


Think on this. If there was 1 clay major and 0 clay masters 1000 and 1 grass major and 3 grass masters 1000 we would not even be having this discussion.

I’m just going eye test on this one

For 5 years Novak was unbeatable on hard courts. If he sustained that level he would improve those stats above.

I’m saying peak Novak beats anyone on hard courts.

WTF does this mean?

Also, Fed is the GOAT obv.

Having a clay court season style grass court season and not just two grass court tournaments (yes there are more but they are on at the same time) would have had Roger winning way more grass tournaments and have a similar record to what Rafa has over Roger on clay. Rafa hasn’t been competing on grass since around 2011 so the chance actually of him playing Roger due to their rankings would be slim anyway. Roger has remained competitive on clay during that time, sf, final couple of qf in the French. Won and finished runner up in clay 1000 events etc there’s an argument that Roger is also one of the best clay court players ever as well, certainly top 5 anyway.

There are 3 masters 1000 on clay and 0 on grass

Rafa 30
Novak 30
Roger. 27


How many of rafas 1000 came on clay?

A lot

If it was 5 hard. 3. Grass. 1 indoor

Roger would have like 35+

And neither Queens or Halle want to be 1000 events either due to the history of both of them and if you made either one it it’d kill the other.

You could cancel the season ending hard court but that’s screw up the US and the Asian money.

Since we're talking "of all time", it's also worth mentioning that historically, grass is a much more important and prestigious surface than clay. Wimbledon > US Open > French Open in prestige and importance.

We just count all GS's the same nowadays, but if you were to assign any extra value to that consideration, then Federer's greatness and lead over the 2GOAT and all others just gets even more dominant.

This. If you want to go even further, there's an argument that without Nadal, Federer would have 6 French Open titles and be the best clay court player of all time. And thus that, even with Nadal, he should be in the conversation for 2nd best clay court player of all time (best, but not greatest, since he doesn't have the actual titles).