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"Overall, Federer and Nadal entered 151 tournaments together. Federer won more of these (47 vs. 37) and went further more often (73 vs. 67 with 11 ties). The same is true of the 46 majors they entered together - Federer went further more often (25 v. 19), and won more (16 v. 14). They have played in 25% of tournaments entered together (37) Interestingly, Federer won the title each time he beat Nadal (14/14). Whereas Nadal won the title 17/23 times he beat Federer."
This is all good to convince yourself, but it doesn't show "GOATness", it only shows consistency. "Going further" or making the latter stages of slams and tournaments, more often, will show nothing more than just great consistency, which is a facet of greatness, but not the be-all-and-end-all.
You've also conveniently left out the fact that Rafa is simply more injury-prone than Federer is, which is solely bad luck on Rafa, or just luck on Federer's part. An example of this are AO 2014 where Rafa was yet to drop a set against Stan, but lost after beating Federer relatively easily. Not to mention the fact that Rafa had to Nole to play in finals of slams where he beat Federer (USO 2011, AO 2012) who easily trumps Federer's tame opposition from the 2004-07 era, whereas Federer beat Rafa mostly in finals of slams and either before Rafa's prime, or after his decline. So your stats are oversimplified.
"Split by first and second half of season Nadal does better than Federer in the first half of the season, until RG (went further 50 vs. 29). And Federer does better after RG (went further 44 vs. 17). This should tell you how big a favourite Federer is for the year end ranking in 2017 - it won't even be close. The same trend is reflected in their head to head. Nadal leads 20-7 in the first half, and Federer leads 7-3 in the second half. The two most common explanations offered for this trend are: increased court speeds in the second half of the year, and fatigue for Nadal after clay court exertions."
Nah, this is a bit of cherry-picking to oversimplify and/or obfuscate the matter.
Firstly, you need to specify what exactly you're talking about. Are we talking about slams? Masters? If it's the former, then you'll know that despite only one of the 2 slams favouring him (in terms of pace) he still does better, in terms of strike rate and consistency in that one slam than Federer does in the 2 slams in the second part of the season, even though both favour him. If we wanted to use your self-serving way to compare to work out, we would have to make things a little fairer on Rafa and have 2 clay slams in the first half and keep Wimby and the USO the same and then we'll see that it really wouldn’t matter if Rafa got far enough on the faster surfaces or not, he's just better on his favourite surface than Federer is on his. This is again reflected in the H2H and in slams. Don't you think it's slightly telling how Federer has never taken Rafa to 5 at RG in 5 attempts and yet, Rafa not only took Federer to 5 at Wimby, but dethroned him in 2008? Secondly, on a more personal note, I wouldn’t be so sure on Federer ending the year No 1, it is possible, but given your poor analysis of the situation, you might want to save some face, or whatever's left of it, if your "confident" prediction shouldn’t come off.
Thirdly and unsurprisingly, you've once again completely ignored Rafa's injuries, which have hampered him time and time again and have no doubt been a lead factor in his inferior consistency.
"A key question is: why have they played 27 matches in the first half of the year, and only 10 in the second? There are two reasons for this: The first is that they entered far fewer draws together in the second half (67 vs. 84) The second is that they played in a greater fraction of the draws they entered in the first half of the year, than in the second (in first half, met in 32% of common tournaments, vs. 15% in the second half). Both of these reasons are due to Nadal: First, he enters far fewer events in the second half of the year (only 46% of his career tournament entries are after RG vs. 52% for Federer) Second, in the tournaments Nadal and Federer did play in the second half, Nadal only reached 28% of "dates". Federer, on the other hand, reached 64%. Compare this to the first half, where Federer was much closer to Nadal in reaching "dates" (51% vs. 58%)"
When will you comprehend that more consistent =/= greater? Nonetheless, I already answered your "key question", which is actually quite irrelevant, once we take into account just how much better Rafa is on his best surface, compared with RF. Just for your information, it is easier to stay consistent when you don't have a congenital bone defect, causing you to become so injury-prone and also when 2 of the slams play to your beat, as opposed to one for Rafa. Also, to further enforce my point, Rafa has almost as good a win% as Federer does in first half as in the second half, respectively, and yet, Wimby and the USO both favour Federer over Rafa, but you couldn't say the AO, IW or Miami favour Rafa over Federer. From the 3 clay Masters and the lone clay slam, Rafa gets enough to equal a guy who has pretty much both slams to himself in the second half of the season, not to mention, the overrated WTF, which is played on a custom-made court for him. If by "dates" you mean when they meet, well that is quite oversimplified and misleading too, simply because of Rafa's injuries. In fact, I'll give you an example, since the underlying fundamental to your logic is "Federer got further, so he would've won if they met". This theory gets exposed nicely in the 2009-10 period. Even if we take out RG 2009, there is nothing to suggest that Federer had anything on Rafa come Wimby or USO 2009, or even AO 2010, but if we went by your fanboy logic, we'd have to come to the conclusion that Federer got further and so he would've won, when the truth is that Rafa's injuries flared up, yet again, helping Federer to another few slams he would never have won otherwise, especially given how poorly he played in the Wimby 2009 final. I would encourage you to watch a few matches from Federer's AO 2009 campaign (especially against Delpo and Roddick). So, the real "key question" for you is, if Rafa lost early in AO 2009, would you be including that in your oversimplified statistic?
"Split by surface We can see the same trend when we split their records by surface. On clay Nadal killed Federer 13-2, and they played in 38% of draws entered together. On grass and hard courts, Federer leads, and they have only met 20% of the time on each. Specifically, on hard courts in the second half of the season, Federer leads 5-2; in such draws, they play each other only 1/3 as often as clay. (13% of draws, vs. 38%). Again, Nadal is clearly the culprit, having only reached their "date" 27% of the time. vs. 60% for Federer."
More oversimplifications. You don't appear to be in the mood for being specific. See, for any of your points to have merit, you would have to put them into context, for example, you've left out the fact that hard courts dominate the tour, therefore giving Federer an advantage. In fact, given that WTF is also played on a hard court, there are 2 slams and 7 Masters equivelant played on hard, compared with 1 slam and 3 Masters played on clay, so I make that more than double and that's not even counting the one other slam which is played on Grass.
Also, there is the fact that hard courts aggravate Rafa's "Kohler's" bone defect, which would partially explain why he is more injury prone during and after tournaments played on hard court. If you want to have this issue properly debated, you'll have to specify in exactly what tournaments you're talking about, until then, you're just repeating the same self-serving arguments, which all hint at the obvious, Federer is more consistent (but Rafa is better).
