2/3 of Nadal majors are on the same event

TheAssassin · Jun 9, 2019

I prefer better distribution myself, seeing a player performing so good throughout most parts of the year. But I admire dominance as well, and nobody has done that better than Nadal on clay. He's been pretty much perfect at maximizing the potential he has.

MichaelNadal · Jun 9, 2019

You know how much grinding it takes to win the FO 12 times?

how can he even still walk, nevermind everything else he's done

What a beast.

Harry_Wild · Jun 9, 2019

Sephiroth · Jun 9, 2019

If Nadal had 3 US Opens, 2 Wimbledons, 1 AO and 4 French Opens (just to round the count to 10) he would be considered a versatile ATG and no one would be batting an eyelash but because he has so much more French Opens ON TOP OF non-clay slams, he's apparently just a clay courter.

Nadal is comfortably in the top 10 list of US Open champions in the open era, tied with Djokovic and Lendl with 3. There's only 12 multiple Wimbledon champions and Nadal is one of them, given how many tennis players there are that haven't even won it once he hasn't done bad for just a clay courter LOL

asifallasleep · Jun 9, 2019

Clay court tennis is not real tennis anyway. It's all endurance and baseline bashing. 12 of his 18 are on the dirt........without the dirt he's Stan Wawrinka. Not bad, but Rafa is 3rd behind Fed and The Joker. The Joker has time to pass Fed.

asifallasleep · Jun 9, 2019

Sephiroth said:
If Nadal had 3 US Opens, 2 Wimbledons, 1 AO and 4 French Opens (just to round the count to 10) he would be considered a versatile ATG and no one would be batting an eyelash but because he has so much more French Opens ON TOP OF non-clay slams, he's apparently just a clay courter.

Nadal is comfortably in the top 10 list of US Open champions in the open era, tied with Djokovic and Lendl with 3. There's only 12 multiple Wimbledon champions and Nadal is one of them, given how many tennis players there are that haven't even won it once he hasn't done bad for just a clay courter LOL

Even if he has your reduced "more balanced" record, he still falls behind Fed and The Joker.

Sephiroth · Jun 9, 2019

asifallasleep said:
Even if he has your reduced "more balanced" record, he still falls behind Fed and The Joker.

So? You keep penalizing slams from Nadal if it'll make you sleep any better

Doctor/Lawyer Red Devil · Jun 9, 2019

asifallasleep said:
Clay court tennis is not real tennis anyway. It's all endurance and baseline bashing. 12 of his 18 are on the dirt........without the dirt he's Stan Wawrinka. Not bad, but Rafa is 3rd behind Fed and The Joker. The Joker has time to pass Fed.

Without the dirt he is still three times more successful than Wawrinka (since we don't count his dirt either).

Autodidactic player · Jun 9, 2019

dunlop_fort_knox said:
a dirt baller who isn't great on other surfaces can never be the goat.

Rafa has been in the finals of the other majors at least four times each and won six of them. That fact alone confirms he is "great" on all surfaces. Is he the greatest outside of clay - no. But no reasonable person could deny that he is "great" on all surfaces. If he never won a single French Open he'd be a unanimous first ballet selection for the Hall of Fame and one of the top 20 players of all time.

augustobt · Jun 9, 2019

RaulRamirez said:
I don't mind thecquestion. Yes, I've both played and followed tennis for quite a while.

Nadal is a genius on clay, and also excellent on both hard court (not as strong on indoor HC, though I think there are extenuating factors involved) and grass. Clay has been a significant surface in tennis since well before any of these guys were born.

While perhaps not your attention, there are dozens of posts daily here that try to either marginalize Nadal - or clay in general.

I understand people being like that... I have no problem in admitting the guy is just too good and extremely dominant on clay! As well as I don't have problem in assuming I don't like the kind of tennis he plays, no one can't say it isn't effective - it's just not pleasing for me.

The whole thing is that everything nowadays seems like a GOAT competition. I do see my blame as I often fall on these bait debates, but for as much as I consider Nadal a clay goat, as distant he seems to be the overall goat, for those reasons previously mentioned during those threads in general.

MichaelNadal · Jun 9, 2019

Autodidactic player said:
Rafa has been in the finals of the other majors at least four times each and won six of them. That fact alone confirms he is "great" on all surfaces. Is he the greatest outside of clay - no. But no reasonable person could deny that he is "great" on all surfaces. If he never won a single French Open he'd be a unanimous first ballet selection for the Hall of Fame and one of the top 20 players of all time.

Exactly.

augustobt · Jun 9, 2019

titoelcolombiano said:
What percentage of Laver’s slams were won on grass? Why was Pete considered GOAT in his time without slams on all surfaces?

The answer to these questions show the ‘surface distribution’ argument for what it is.... irrelevant

Those questions you asked sound more like a lack of analytical capabilities from you than anything else. When we are analyzing different periods, we are analyzing different scenarios that require some adjustment when we put things into perspective.

1 - During "Laver Era" all of the majors, with the exception of the French, were played on grass.
Is not about surface-wise. The whole different surfaces thing came in when we had the first major to be played on HCs.

That brings to 2 - Pete was considered GOAT because he was the biggest champion in not only one major (Wimbledon), but two (the US Open as well). He had a huge dominance on Grass - not as big as Nadal's on Roland Garros specifically, but he was quite unbeatable there. Pete had a dominance over the whole tennis that was not reduced to a particular event and/or surface.

This is something that Nadal fans can't accept. He's great, the greatest ever on clay definitely and surely, no matter the circumstances for that. But there's more in tennis than clay, and there's people far superior there. Period.

Ajosin · Jun 9, 2019

Look at his final appearances too. Great success in going very deep across all surfafes. Some very tight finals too on the other surfaces. One of the best all timers on all surfaces and the undisputed best on one of the three.
Don't forget his many HC masters too.
This debate has been over for a long time. Nadal is great on many surfaces and we are lucky to have him. Anyone who can't see this is missing beautiful tennis iny oppinion.

Rosstour · Jun 9, 2019

MichaelNadal said:
Lol ill put it this way... yall are going to REALLY be mad when he gets proclaimed GOAT if he wins 3 more slams. I have a huge hunch he will win one of the next 3. This place will explode. I for one can't wait to see it. Honestly, if he gets 1 more slam off clay, yall can forget it. Btw, Nadal is 800 points ahead in the race now

I accepted that Rafa and Djok will pass Fed, and I accepted it a long time ago. Rafa's 2017 was huge, he was able to keep pace with Fed instead of falling behind.

IMO he has to fall off a cliff to not pass Fed, and I don't see that happening. He could win the French for the next 10 years for all we know.

It's just kind of a shame IMO because he is only a truly dominant player on one surface, but that doesn't matter to most people.

VaporDude95 · Jun 9, 2019

MichaelNadal said:
But winning 12 French Opens IS Goat-worthy, sadly.

CLAY-goat worthy, yes

Ajosin · Jun 9, 2019

Rosstour said:
I accepted that Rafa and Djok will pass Fed, and I accepted it a long time ago. Rafa's 2017 was huge, he was able to keep pace with Fed instead of falling behind.

IMO he has to fall off a cliff to not pass Fed, and I don't see that happening. He could win the French for the next 10 years for all we know.

It's just kind of a shame IMO because he is only a truly dominant player on one surface, but that doesn't matter to most people.

Well to be frank, people either dominate the clay or they dominate the faster HC/Grass. To first order it seems like there are really two kinds of surfaces. Rafa is the one with more success on both all around from that point of view.
Put Novak and Fed together and they only have two slam clay courts. Nadal alone has 3x the amount of non-clay slams.

So who is really missing a dimension here?

MichaelNadal · Jun 9, 2019

Rosstour said:
It's just kind of a shame IMO because he is only a truly dominant player on one surface, but that doesn't matter to most people.

Lol he still has to play TENNIS to win his slams. Listening to his haters you'd think he's sitting on court playing checkers or something. If anything it's harder to do what he did considering on average you hit way more groundstrokes. "Surface"...... "On clay" lmao. Last time I checked the score still goes 15-30-40-Game.

Ajosin · Jun 9, 2019

33/35 mayors outside of Clay. Are Roger and Novak missing a dimension to their tennis?

VaporDude95 · Jun 9, 2019

MichaelNadal said:
"Catching him" has never been a goal

Ha

I’ve read the Nadal thread. Nice try.

And pointing out facts isn’t “hating”.

MichaelNadal · Jun 9, 2019

VaporDude95 said:
Ha

I’ve read the Nadal thread. Nice try.

And pointing out facts isn’t “hating”.

Lol you better try to distract

Meanwhile....

Don't forget it's my day today boo

one hour left at work, then it's wing and drink time

VaporDude95 · Jun 9, 2019

MichaelNadal said:
Lol you better try to distract
Meanwhile....

Don't forget it's my day today boo one hour left at work, then it's wing and drink time

No one cares.

I haven’t seen people care less about a slam victory ever.

Rosstour · Jun 9, 2019

Autodidactic player said:
Rafa has been in the finals of the other majors at least four times each and won six of them. That fact alone confirms he is "great" on all surfaces. Is he the greatest outside of clay - no. But no reasonable person could deny that he is "great" on all surfaces. If he never won a single French Open he'd be a unanimous first ballet selection for the Hall of Fame and one of the top 20 players of all time.

If he never won a single French Open, that's 12 Slams that would have gone to someone else. 4-6 to Fed, another handful to Djoker, and a few to some specialists.

That would definitely affect the whole picture. With 6 Slams outside of the French he wouldn't even be considered on Agassi's level, let alone Laver, Sampras, Djoker, Fed.

Ajosin said:
Well to be frank, people either dominate the clay or they dominate the faster HC/Grass. To first order it seems like there are really two kinds of surfaces. Rafa is the one with more success on both all around from that point of view.
Put Novak and Fed together and they only have two slam clay courts. Nadal alone has 3x the amount of non-clay slams.

So who is really missing a dimension here?

Putting hard/grass together is a mistake IMO. That reduces tennis to either being a clay-court master or not.

MichaelNadal said:
Lol he still has to play TENNIS to win his slams. Listening to his haters you'd think he's sitting on court playing checkers or something. If anything it's harder to do what he did considering on average you hit way more groundstrokes. "Surface"...... "On clay" lmao. Last time I checked the score still goes 15-30-40-Game.

Yup, he still has to play tennis. And clearly this surface allows him to show the absolute best in his playstyle. No sense in downplaying that.

It's the leap from "this guy is the clay GOAT" to "this guy is the GOAT" simply based on how many he is piling up at one tournament that is annoying/bothersome to people outside Rafa's fan base.

I'm not a Djoker fan at all but this affects him negatively as well and that also annoys me.

MichaelNadal · Jun 9, 2019

Lol I've heard the word GOAT from Maestronians about 700 times today. I wonder what's on your mind?

Deleted member 743561 · Jun 9, 2019

MichaelNadal · Jun 9, 2019

FedFosterWallace said:
Just think: if that day arrives, and you're still here to party up the Net with your keyboard salt...

The world will be like 80 bazillion MichaelNadal message board posts richer. And you can take that class to the bank!

With more to come, no doubt.

Have Maestronians officially gone crazy?

Somehow Nadal fans are "salty" today, and Federer won a slam today

So it's 18 that officially did it lol, I was wondering what the magic number would be

Deleted member 743561 · Jun 9, 2019

MichaelNadal · Jun 9, 2019

FedFosterWallace said:
Not Nadal fans, generally. Just you.

You're a lot like your idol, though, no?

You know... putting up a front?

Mmhmm

RaulRamirez · Jun 9, 2019

augustobt said:
I understand people being like that... I have no problem in admitting the guy is just too good and extremely dominant on clay! As well as I don't have problem in assuming I don't like the kind of tennis he plays, no one can't say it isn't effective - it's just not pleasing for me.

The whole thing is that everything nowadays seems like a GOAT competition. I do see my blame as I often fall on these bait debates, but for as much as I consider Nadal a clay goat, as distant he seems to be the overall goat, for those reasons previously mentioned during those threads in general.

The GOAT discussions are always out of hand, but I just wish that they were conducted on a much higher plane. I'm a tennis fan, first and foremost, but do think that at all three players in question are absolutely special, and all pretty easy to like and admire. I've evolved into a dual Rafa/Novak fan, but still appreciate and like Federer. It's just hard for me to put him on this unassailable pedestal, as so many do. Admire what he has done and is still doing?Absolutely. But like him to the point of hero worship and denigrate rival players and "rival fans"? Why? (I'm not accusing you.)

And while there are unreasonable and obnoxious fans of all three players, the Fed army predominates here. He has some very good fans, but ...I just wish there were a greater percentage of reasonable ones.

Azure · Jun 9, 2019

@MichaelNadal - keep it classy my friend! You are one fine poster here. I know it's our day but better savor the moment than argue no?

titoelcolombiano · Jun 9, 2019

augustobt said:
Those questions you asked sound more like a lack of analytical capabilities from you than anything else. When we are analyzing different periods, we are analyzing different scenarios that require some adjustment when we put things into perspective.

1 - During "Laver Era" all of the majors, with the exception of the French, were played on grass.
Is not about surface-wise. The whole different surfaces thing came in when we had the first major to be played on HCs.

That brings to 2 - Pete was considered GOAT because he was the biggest champion in not only one major (Wimbledon), but two (the US Open as well). He had a huge dominance on Grass - not as big as Nadal's on Roland Garros specifically, but he was quite unbeatable there. Pete had a dominance over the whole tennis that was not reduced to a particular event and/or surface.

This is something that Nadal fans can't accept. He's great, the greatest ever on clay definitely and surely, no matter the circumstances for that. But there's more in tennis than clay, and there's people far superior there. Period.

Point 1. Absolutely correct - Laver is still talked about as one of the greatest ever proving that distribution is a non-issue made up by those wanting to detract from Rafa’s legacy.

Point 2. Correct Pete should have been considered GOAT in his time again proving that distribution is a non-issue

A slam is a slam and if Pete and Laver are / have been in the GOAT conversation then so is Rafa.

Autodidactic player · Jun 10, 2019

Rosstour said:
If he never won a single French Open, that's 12 Slams that would have gone to someone else. 4-6 to Fed, another handful to Djoker, and a few to some specialists.

That would definitely affect the whole picture. With 6 Slams outside of the French he wouldn't even be considered on Agassi's level, let alone Laver, Sampras, Djoker, Fed ...

All true. But six slams at three different events certainly qualifies as top twenty, at a minimum in the open era. I'm not arguing that Rafa is the GOAT - that goat has been beaten to death; merely that two of the top five and three of the top ten players players of the open era (and arguably all time) are currently playing and we should enjoy it while it lasts.

P.S. Since Laver's records were set across both the amateur and open eras, we may be witnessing three of the top five open era players playing now!

RaulRamirez · Jun 10, 2019

Autodidactic player said:
All true. But six slams at three different events certainly qualifies as top twenty, at a minimum in the open era. I'm not arguing that Rafa is the GOAT - that goat has been beaten to death; merely that two of the top five and three of the top ten players players of the open era (and arguably all time) are currently playing and we should enjoy it while it lasts.

P.S. Since Laver's records were set across both the amateur and open eras, we may be witnessing three of the top five open era players playing now!

Mostly agree,. although I would say that it's 3 of the top 3, and I recognize how great Sampras, Borg and others were.

2/3 of Nadal majors are on the same event

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