GOAT? You go with your gut, these guys do it with science.

[fleabitten]

The boys at the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois have constructed a complex system of analysis to determine the greatest tennis player of all time.

If you are really into this stuff, you'll love it, but it's going to be too technical for about 75% of this forum:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:...l.pone.0017249

"In our top 10 list, there are 9 players having been number one in the ATP ranking. Our ranking technique identifies _____________ as the best player of the history of tennis. This could be a posteriori justified by the extremely long and successful career of this player. Among all top players in the history of tennis.... Prestige score is strongly correlated with the number of victories, but important differences are evident when the two techniques are compared....."

[tennisdad65]

what a waste of time.. is this what science has come to?
ps. Rod Laver is not on the list

[tenis1]

Jimmy Connors. Not a bad conclusion.

Federer #7 and Nadal #24. ***** are not going to like the science

Here is the list, to make it easier:

[Semi-Pro]

Good god, it's like a thesis paper.

[viduka0101]

waste of time

[tenis1]

Interestingly #1, #3 and #4 are all left handed.
8 left handers in the first 30.

[fleabitten]

Originally Posted by tenis1

Jimmy Connors. Not a bad conclusion.
Here is the list, to make it easier:

Good god, don't jump to the answer. Make them at least look at all the pretty graphs and pie charts.

[Dilettante]

This was already posted, but this gives another chance to say that the conclusion —the list— is utter stupid.

Just to talk about my country's players, just for an instance: Orantes is #15 (??) much ahead of Nadal (???) and ahead of Santana too. Nonsense.

And Vilas, Edberg ahead of Federer... simply laughable.

BTW, this is not exactly scientific, it's just statistics and statistics can be almost, almost as gut driven as threads in this forum. In fact I don't know if I've seen in this forum a GOAT list as moronic as this one.

[tenis1]

An example is reported in panel b of Figure 4, where the prestige rank calculated over the contact network of 2009 is compared with the ATP rank of the end of the same year (official ATP year-end rank as of December 28, 2009). The top 4 positions according to prestige score do not corresponds to those of the ATP ranking. The best player of the year, for example, is Novak Djokovic instead of Roger Federer.

I like the science

[ChipNCharge]

I think an interesting stat to know would be who won the highest percentage of tournaments they entered throughout their career (ie: Borg entered XXX number of ATP tournaments in his career, and he won 63 of them, or XX%)

[gunnd5000]

Originally Posted by tenis1

I like the science

the irony of you posting this.

Djokovic not making top 4 here either and there 00's top 4 goes with what i said :L

But i agree this is pointless, you can make stats say what ever the heck you want as long as you present them in the right way

[tenis1]

Originally Posted by gunnd5000

the irony of you posting this.

Djokovic not making top 4 here either and there 00's top 4 goes with what i said :L

But i agree this is pointless, you can make stats say what ever the heck you want as long as you present them in the right way

LOL. The winner of "the most failed and clueless poll" award tries to twist this in his favor. Laughable.

[jackson vile]

1) we have people in the list that are not yet finished with their careers
2) Goes to show you that anyone can make a good argument for GOAT LOL



GOAT = meaningless

[Bud]

Okker and Dibbs can be co-goats, ahead of Laver

- - -

As someone stated, this study has been hashed and re-hashed on here ad nauseum.

[fleabitten]

Originally Posted by jackson vile

1) we have people in the list that are not yet finished with their careers
2) Goes to show you that anyone can make a good argument for GOAT LOL



GOAT = meaningless

So true!
I agree. I think overall they are on the right path, but they seem to put too much stock in the length of a career (to me). There's still a level of subjectability to it.

[sureshs]

Andre Agassi above Federer and Sampras is correct due to Olympics gold and French Open respectively.

But all of them above Nadal is wrong.

[kishnabe]

Originally Posted by jackson vile

1) we have people in the list that are not yet finished with their careers
2) Goes to show you that anyone can make a good argument for GOAT LOL



GOAT = meaningless

That is the true thesis of this paper!

[rossi46]

If we go with our guts then the GOAT has to be Nalbandian

[Gut Check]

So-called scientists claim to have a foolproof method of objectively ranking players, then base it heavily on a subjective "prestige" factor they make up arbitrarily. I grade this thesis paper "F" for Fail.