Search results

  1. S

    The toughest draw of all time: Nadal at Wimbledon 2019

    True. To be more precise, here are the current ATP rankings for Nadal's first five opponents at Wimbledon 2019: Sugita: 274 Kyrgios: 43 Tsonga: 72 Sousa: 69 Querrey: 65 I know that rankings don't tell the whole story, but does that look like "the toughest draw of all time"? No seeded players...
  2. S

    Whats your top 10 of all time now (men)

    Gary: No snark intended, but Tignor is quite explicit about his criteria for selecting players for his list. I don't agree with all his judgements, but I can't think of any player on either the men's or the women's lists that I would have moved up or down more than two or three spots. You...
  3. S

    Have you ever enjoyed a match where your Favorite player got destroyed?

    Safin d. Federer, Australian Open semi-final 2005. Fed wasn't destroyed in this match, but it featured some great shotmaking by both players.
  4. S

    Federer's 10 defeated opponents

    For what it's worth, Federer was suffering from a cold during more or less the entire Wimbledon fortnight. That did not prevent him from winning the tournament without dropping a set. EVERY player will from time to time benefit when his or her opponent is injured. You can only play (and beat)...
  5. S

    Rate the first tier all time greats in terms of their competition

    How do we measure strength of competition? This looks like a purely subjective exercise. To put it as mildly as possible, many people will disagree with these assessments.
  6. S

    Forehand GOAT

    If you have any evidence that Nadal has won more points with his forehand than Federer has please provide it. I would be most interested in seeing such data. In any event, your original post (in this exchange) did not refer to "points won with the forehand". Instead you implied that Nadal's...
  7. S

    Forehand GOAT

    There was a feature on Tennis Channel a few weeks ago asking ATP pros who had the best strokes in the business. I remember that Karlovic won for the serve, and Federer was the overwhelming choice as the player with the best forehand. This was a bit surprising, because I don't believe that...
  8. S

    Greatest mens' open era achievement (poll)

    I voted for Laver's CYGS, Federer's 237 consecutive weeks at No. 1 and Federer's 18 of 19 finals. There are so many Federer options listed that I hesitate to add another one. To me, however, his greatest single achievement may well be winning 11 majors in four years. No one else - male or...
  9. S

    Best Peak Level: Sampras, Nadal, Federer or Nole

    An elo rating is a snapshot ,and a player's highest ever rating does indeed measure his peak according to the rating system. There is also the further question of how long the player sustains high levels of performance. According to one of the articles quoted, however that sustained dominance...
  10. S

    Best Peak Level: Sampras, Nadal, Federer or Nole

    I'm surprised that in this and other threads about peak performances no one has referred to elo ratings. They are not perfect (no rating system can claim that) but they are probably the closest we can come to an objective assessment of Open era players. Here are two articles describing these...
  11. S

    Such a pity what the powers the be have done to Federer

    Eldanger 25: "Dangerous floaters" posed very few problems for peak Federer. Players like Safin, Nalbandian and Hewitt could challenge him, but only when they were playing well - that is, when they were in the Top 10. We are not talking about a small sample set, since there were 24 majors...
  12. S

    Such a pity what the powers the be have done to Federer

    The move to 32 seeds may have helped certain players, but it's hard to see how it affected peak Federer's performance. Here is a complete list of all Federer's losses in Grand Slam events between 2004 and 2009: 2004: French Open - Kuerten (third round) 2005: Australian Open - Safin...
  13. S

    Why Borg > Nadal

    Every player has both pluses and minuses for his career, but you seem to notice only minuses for Federer, and introduced him gratuitously into a Borg-Nadal comparison solely to discuss his weaknesses. With Borg you discuss only the positives, and with Nadal you mention mainly positives...
  14. S

    Why Borg > Nadal

    Why introduce Federer into the Borg-Nadal comparison simply to take potshots at him? For what it's worth, there are far, far more tennis analysts who consider Federer to be the Open era GOAT than would make the same claim for Borg or Nadal. In fact, I don't know any who, as of today, maintains...
  15. S

    Pancho Gonzales is the mentally toughest and greatest tennis player of all time

    Gonzalez had great results in the pro tours and tournaments of the 1950's and early 1960's, and he was regarded as the world's No. 1 player for seven or eight years. We cannot make direct comparisons between his achievements and those of Open era greats because the structure of the game was...
  16. S

    Highest peaks, a little different.

    Great list for post-2000 tennis. :) It's difficult to make comparisons with earlier periods, but your choices for this era are all sound.
  17. S

    Did Sampras maximise his talent?

    Great post. When evaluating players the primary focus has to be on what they achieved, not what they might have accomplished if only... ALL players could have done more with a bit of luck. If we are in the business of identifying underachievers (relative to their talent) Hoad, McEnroe and...
  18. S

    In what year were the following players in their absolute prime?

    1998, when a player could reach No.1 without winning a major and another player could end the year as No.1 despite winning only one major tournament, is a much stronger candidate for that distinction.
  19. S

    Years at Number One (at year end)

    BOTH YE No. 1's and weeks at No. 1 matter. There's no obvious reason why we should be forced to choose between them. For me the main advantage of the YE #1 statistic is that it allows comparability across generations, since weekly rankings were not introduced until the early/mid 1970's and...
  20. S

    Repeated myths what make you laugh

    Your forecasting powers are now equal to your analytical acumen. Keep up the good work!
  21. S

    List your top 10 all time for both men and women at this point in time

    I'm a bit surprised at how certain some posters are that, even in the absence of any expert consensus, their view is the only correct one. All analysts would agree that Nadal belongs to the pantheon and is one of the greatest players of all time. However, the claim that "Anyone who ranks Nadal...
  22. S

    List your top 10 all time for both men and women at this point in time

    Just did some meta analysis on the responses posted here. It seems that eight names show up on virtually all Top 10 lists (omitting those in which posters restrict themselves to players they have actually seen) - Tilden, Gonzales, Rosewall, Laver, Borg, Sampras, Federer and Nadal. A fairly...
  23. S

    Greatest feat in mens tennis history

    The October 10, 2013 statement is not by any means Laver's most recent on the subject. The Japan Times article that I quoted is dated October 23, 2013, while the Guardian article is even more recent, dating from July 2014. In any event, even the most partisan reading of Laver's statement...
  24. S

    Greatest feat in mens tennis history

    I have asked in vain for this before, but please provide the evidence that "Laver kicked Federer to the curb." Here are four separate recent interviews in which Laver unequivocally states that Federer is the greatest: The Australian...
  25. S

    Greatest feat in mens tennis history

    As of today, there are far, far more tennis analysts (former players, coaches and journalists) who would select Federer as the GOAT than would choose anyone else. Want to compare lists? Here's a fairly easy exercise. Google "greatest tennis player of all time" and see whose name is quoted most...
  26. S

    1989 and 2014, will history repeats again?

    Remind us - who won the tournament in 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2010 and 2011?
  27. S

    More righteous contempt poured on the ludicrous notion of weak eras

    You don't need to persuade me about how dominant Federer was from 2004 to 2007. :) I've been on the other side of this argument many times, and I have quoted some of the same statistics you mention, as well as others. On the other hand, winning the Pro Slam and the Grand Slam in a 3 year...
  28. S

    More righteous contempt poured on the ludicrous notion of weak eras

    This may be an exaggeration. Rod Laver at his peak (1965 to 1969) was probably as dominant as Federer from 2004 to 2007. Laver won 17 tournaments in 1965, 16 in 1966 and 13 in 1968. In 1967 he completed the Pro Slam (among his 19 titles) and in 1969 the only Open era Grand Slam, as well as...
  29. S

    More righteous contempt poured on the ludicrous notion of weak eras

    The proponents of the "weak era" theory have never provided a set of testable criteria for determining the strength of competition in a given era. Anyone can point out the flaws in the techniques of certain players from one era, say those from 2004 to 2007. I could easily do the same for...
  30. S

    Is Nadal Really the Greatest Clay player in History?

    You misunderstood the article. The writer (Gaurav Sood) does not doubt Nadal's greatness as a clay courter. His point is that the "weak era" argument is nonsense. The same arguments used to discredit peak Federer's achievements between 2004 and 2007 can also be applied to Nadal's clay court...
Top