Dan, Your valuation of several tennis events, especially the non-big world tours, is not serious and not objective and not stringent. You change their value rather often: You tell us that Hoad won the 1962 Trofeo Facis, rating it as one of his greater (albeit not greatest) successes. BUT you belittle similary tours like Perrier Trophy and European Grand Prix (both of them involving four top pros and lastening longer than a month, the Perrier "Tour de France" even from August to October!) because your darling played therein and fared terribly! That's DISHONEST, Dan!
But this is only one example of the usually kind of your thinking and argueing!
Even if I could get admonition from hoodjem, I must say that some (to be defensive) of your opinions, explanations and reasonings are very faulty and sometimes simply WRONG, if you want to learn my frank opinion about them after I having studied and analysed maybe hundreds of your posts that circle mostly about your idee fixe: Lew Hoad is GOAT.
Perrier and GP are surely bigger events than any South African tours and the 1962 New Zealand tour.
Next wrong point: Of course all achievements of a given player in a given year are YET part of his/her valuation and ranking, some events with more importance and some with less importance of course. All (not most) experts would agree at this point. Please reflect about if they all are wrong and only you are right. The latter is theoretically possible but VERY improbable!!!
Thanks that you at least concede now that you rank the greats only regarding their peak play. But even that way I'm not happy with that: Phoenix, a few others and me have told you that usually the experts rank rather according achievements than according peak play. But I concede that some experts (including me) sometimes mix and regard both categories. That's f.i. the reason why I include Hoad in my top ten. If I would go only regarding achievements, I (and all experts and posters I know) would not rank Lew even among the top FIVE, many of them not even among top TEN!
And, you have not specified which kind of peak play you mean (one match; one tournament; one pro tour; one year).
Yes, Dan, Laver, Rosewall and Gonzalez and the other mentioned opponents of Hoad have made lists where Lew is No.1. BUT: They did NOT mean that Hoad is ALTOGETHER and OVERALL the GOAT!. If you would ask them about the important category "Achievements", they would give you very different rankings and a non-No.1 place for Lew!!! You always conceal those NUMEROUS ranking lists (I'm sure you do know at least some of them) where true experts (panels of top journalists; former players; specialist journals) don't rank Hoad as the GOAT, most of them even not as a top Five player! I find this your behaviour pretty unfair...
I have not claimed that non-religious people are (generally) not stubborn and dogmatic. But we can find more open-minded and non-dogmatic people among the agnostics and atheists than in the several religions. I can begin with the fact that EVERY religion (Catholics, Protestants, orthodox people, Jehova's followers, Baptists, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Schiits, Sunnits, Alevits, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Scientologysts and hundreds of other religions and sects) claims that only its own religion is the right one and leads mankind to salvation.........!!!!!!!!! Every intelligent six years old child know that that is IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Furthermore some of the greatest philosophers and thinkers were agnostics or atheists: Sokrates, Seneca, partly Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Feuerbach, Freud, Russel, Einstein, Hawking (yet living of course)...
It's, by the way, similary with Ideologies like Capitalism, Communism, partly Atheism, I concede, Law and Order, Laissez fair, Creationism (ancient people were riding on dinos..), Pacifists and so on.
Even if you find me arrogant: I believe that I'm mostly NOT stubborn and dogmatic as I try to hear both sides in a discussion or quarrel. I even would say that I'm not stubborn regarding Rosewall's place in history, at least not in comparison with you(r Hoad bias). Shame on me if I push or defend Muscles as you sometimes do: with wrong data, wrong conclusions, circular arguments (you are caught therein at your main claim), exaggerations, self-contradictions, distorting other posters' words and arguments!
You see I answer you detailed and fundamentally because I still hope that you will "awake" one day and post only serious claims and statements. I still have a certain respect for you and your great knowledge, but this respect vanishes with every post you send to TT...
To be frank: You are too fundamentalistic in my opinion both regarding Hoad and religion. I just cannot stand you!!!
Some posters would probably think it's not worth to answer your strange posts at all anymore.
I'm very tired to explain you one matter 417 times and to sacrifice many hours of my sleep (as I'm just doing) if you don't concede any of your weak spots and try to improve them...
In the last few days I tried to avoid any insulting words towards yourself and even wrote a praising post to you. But you offend my intelligence too often.
So I hope that fellow posters will try to inform and teach you (sorry, hoodjem).
Maybe this is the last day for a certain time that I comment your posts.
Your last point is a delicious typical Dan Lobb argument: Not I have worried about aliens away Billions os Light years away. IT was a certain Dan Lobb who claimed that Jesus is the saviour of the universe (which he just can't be)!
Get serious, Dan!
