Beating the best player in the world

[drm025]

Only a fool cannot see that it is the same topic.

How many threads are on this forum? How many topics of discussion are there?? Of course topics are re-discussed from different angles. This is a different angle.

 

[tennisaddict]

Exactly as I said, if hewitt and roddick outperform rafa at every tournament that is not clay, they should finish the year ahead of him. They could not and they did not.

You should reread my post. I think you have a comprehension issue if you dont understand that you had a mix of players in top 10 who were all good, unlike the top heavy current day.

Rafa got spanked on hard by several of them and returned the favor on clay.

 

[drm025]

You should reread my post. I think you have a comprehension issue if you dont understand that you had a mix of players in top 10 who were all good, unlike the top heavy current day.

Rafa got spanked on hard by several of them and returned the favor on clay.

You saying the top ten was better then is your opinion. Dont confuse that with fact.

Even if youre saying that there was more competition off of clay, rafa had to contend with them too. So, as I said already, hewitt and roddick should outperform him in every tournament off of clay if they are consistent and if they are better on the surface.

 

[objectivity]

With the top players winning across all surfaces, it could be due to either: 1) GOAT top players, or 2) lack of great surface specialists, due to surface homogenization. Unfortunately, I tend to think it's nowadays that 2nd option.

It was really refreshing to see Feliciano Lopez and Dustin Brown playing so well on grass this season. Lopez clearly is a grass specialist, and he should be offered an equal chance to collect points as all those HC specialists. The tour would really be much more varied, and top players would be in bigger trouble on early rounds, if they had to handle more of these surface specialists.

So my proposal: Make claycourts slower, grasscourts faster, and clearly develop two categories of hardcourts, slow and fast. Then add tournaments to all these categories THROUGHOUT the year, so that players can really specialize on a single surface.

so would you regard Ivan Lendl as the true GOAT, given that he dominated across all surfaces in an era of specialists?

 

[objectivity]

You dont understand that there was weak clay competition and there was high hard court competition ?

How does it matter how many hard court tournaments are there , when Rafa was mopping all the clay court points available in the calendar ?

you mean weak clay court competition from the US. i don't see how clay competition is weaker, given the great numbers of south american players and the existing and expanding cadre of european players who all grow up on clay. you only think its "weak" because besides Nadal, nobody else has essentially won on clay. but that's really more because Nadal is SO GOOD, to the extent that nobody else could win.

 

[tennisaddict]

you mean weak clay court competition from the US. i don't see how clay competition is weaker, given the great numbers of south american players and the existing and expanding cadre of european players who all grow up on clay. you only think its "weak" because besides Nadal, nobody else has essentially won on clay. but that's really more because Nadal is SO GOOD, to the extent that nobody else could win.

It would not matter how we call the clay competition - Nadal was winning them anyways.

 

[KtM]

Consistency of the field is nowadays better than ever due to surface homogenization.

Becker has 83% in the same era that had unhomogenized surface.

 

[NatF]

Djokovic has the same number of USO titles as roddick and hewitt because he had to deal with federer and nadal, come on now. He has 5 losses to just the 2 of them at the USO. Hewitt and roddick benefitted from the field and that was made clear when they won 0 slams after federer got to number 1.

Both of them lost multiple times to Federer in 04-07...

 

[jg153040]

While this is true, you can't use this metric to judge history, otherwise you would have to watch every single match ever played from start to finish. Nobody here has done that, yet everyone has an opinion. The best way to judge a player's level is by ranking and accomplishments. Everyone can have a good day or a bad day. The more consistent players have the highest sustained level. The highest ranked players are the most consistent. Therefore, the highest ranked players have the greatest chance of producing the highest level. This is my logic. You can say that so and so didn't play well one day, but you can never know whether it had to do with their opponent or not. That is subjective, ranking is objective.

The thing is rankings don't reflect form on the surfaces very well. Maybe we should use rankings by surface.

That way beating Rafa at RG even when he was ranked nr.4 is more impressive.

If we go by your logic we can't use overall rankings to measure the competition. Also beating Sampras at W was tons more impressive than at the FO.

My point is if we use rankings to measure the competition, we have to use them by surface.

 

[NatF]

Yep this metric completely ignores that the #1 or #2 player may not be the players to beat on that particular surface. It's also superficial because it doesn't take into account the forms of the players etc...

I will say it again Federer often beat the best hard court and grass players of his day back to back to win his slams. Nadal on the other hand despite beating a guy who on paper should be very tough had easy roads to finals like USO 13 and faced a Djokovic who was below par.

 

[TheMusicLover]

Yep this metric completely ignores that the #1 or #2 player may not be the players to beat on that particular surface. It's also superficial because it doesn't take into account the forms of the players etc...

Someone already mentioned Gonzo at AO 2007, which is an excellent example to prove the failure of OP's analysis.

I will say it again Federer often beat the best hard court and grass players of his day back to back to win his slams. Nadal on the other hand despite beating a guy who on paper should be very tough had easy roads to finals like USO 13 and faced a Djokovic who was below par.

Not to forget USO 2010.