Both Djoko and Fed were pretty lousy for most of the 2011 USO SF (Nole in the 1st and 2nd sets and Fed in the 3rd & 4th).
I just gave that example to show one point could've turned djoko's season from an all-time great one to one quite a bit below that .......
I have to disagree with your assessment of the match though ... I think djoker played well throughout ..., level rising a bit from set 3 onwards ...
fed's level dropped quite a bit in set 3 and massively in set 4 ... his footwork was all over the place ....
the lousy things about the match were fed's performance in set 4 and him not recovering & falling apart after djoker had saved those 2 MPs ...
Better points of comparison for me are the same year's FO SF and last year's Wimby SF, where Fed's controlled aggression and all-court play proved superior to Nole's rock-solid court coverage off both wings. It was quite instructive to see Djoko struggle with Fed's onslaughts.
Now to be fair Nole was somewhat rusty in the FO SF (probaby from not playing his QF due to Fognini's withdrawal--contrary to popular belief extra days of rest don't always help) and grass is simply not his most comfortable surface, not to mention his less-than-stellar returning in the Wimby SF (think Fed had 44 of his 101 serves unreturned that day). But he's had his shares of problems with big servers before (Roddick certainly, and Isner in their most recent match at IW and even Tsonga at RG of all places last year), and while Fed (or Pete for that matter, compared to his fellow Yanks) doesn't serve quite as big as those guys he picks his spots just as well if not better. This is not to say that Djoko's return itself isn't up to par, because we all know it's an excellent shot, but he often struggles to find a balanced way to deal with the big servers, who are wont to go for broke more often than the typical baseliner. Also I don't think Djoko's passing shots are as good as advertised (I'd certainly not rank them among the top 5 of all time, as Steve Flink did recently).
agree ...
to be fair to djoker though , fed did serve darn well in both those matches, the wimby SF even more so ... having rewatched the wimby SF recently, I really couldn't blame djoker that much ....fed was serving exceptionally ....
though others like agassi, hewitt, connors, murray would've done a bit better (would put fed ahead as well when it comes to dealing with big servers on a medium to faster than medium surface )
as far as passing shots go, from the start of the open era ; laver, rosewall, connors, borg, lendl, wilander, agassi, chang,hewitt, federer, nadal are clearly superior ... I'd rate others like bruguera, rios, kafelnikov, murray superior as well ...
Long story short I don't see Nole winning the majority of matches against Pete outside of clay.
would take djoker over pete on slow HC ...
Yes, and 1977 to Borg. I've already explained why in my previous posts and don't want to go into the details again (certainly not regarding 1977), but it's not just the level of play that clinched it for me.
I'd agree with borg in 77, he was the best player on red clay & on grass & had a very good record on the other surfaces ...
Actually, I don't know if you're familiar with the rankings of 2003, but there was all of 160 points separating Roddick and Fed at the year-end. Not so hard to think how they could swap places per a slightly different ranking system. And don't forget Ferrero, who finished just 330 points short of Roddick. (In fact I'd rank Juan 1st for '03 without any shadow of a doubt if he'd managed to carry his countrymen to a DC victory, ATP points be damned).
yeah, like I said it was close .... but roddick's performance in the majors was quite a bit better than fed's ... (also had the canada-cincy-USO triple )
and before the YEC started, IIRC, for fed to get to #1, he needed to win all matches & roddick to lose all of them ... a very unlikely scenario ...the 2nd part in particular ...
again, subjectively given fed's wimbledon & TMC performances in 2003, subjectively, I can understand rating fed over roddick ... but would any objective system ?
You have to understand that in the past the smaller tourneys and even the majors (or their equivalents) weren't given such consistent "points" year after year, which makes sense because the importance of an event changes according to its draw, format and other circumstances (which remains true to this day). So in 1960 you could see Gonzales ranked 1st (along with Rosewall) based on his dominance in the world championship, although he was inactive for a great part of the year. Ditto 1999, when Pete clearly got the better of the offical No. 1 Agassi and was on a tear before an injury stopped him right before the USO.
One can argue for this or that ranking system. The official ATP Rankings (which, BTW, still neglect DC for the most part) are just one among many possibilities.
yeah, only pete's record at majors in 99 read : absent, 2R, W and absent ..
agassi's read : 4R, W, F & W ...
that's a massive difference ...
if we're just going by level of play in "select" tournaments, then you could argue for agassi over pete in 95 ( better on HC, better on clay ), argue rafter over pete in 98 (got the canada-cincy-USO triple )
as you probably know, sampras barely edged out agassi points wise in 95 ..
subjective analysis is ok when it is close ... but pete/agassi in 99, apart from h2h, there isn't a strong argument for sampras
agassi's RG win here is one defining factor for me ...
agassi was also on a tear in 95 before the USO ... turned out he had peaked a bit early, in it !?
take any objective ranking system, pete wouldn't come close to agassi in 99 points wise ..
as far as the gonzales example is concerned, that's quite different ... that time h2h was lot more significant ... he lead rosewall 15-4 h2h that year ... clearly was the best player overall until he became inactive ...he retired part-time convinced he'd beat all his challengers ...
P.S. What was abmk banned for
got into a bit of namecalling with some irrational posters... well you know .....should restrain myself at times
