Biggest hole in All-time Great Resumes

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drm025

Hall of Fame
What is the one biggest hole in the following player's resumes? Here are my thoughts:

Federer - H2H against main rivals

It's hard to really find any other weakness in Fed's resume, tbh. Of course I am talking about Nadal and Djokovic as his main rivals not Roddick and Hewitt. The only reason you could call them main rivals is because they were around when he was dominating and are similar in age, but he has played both Nadal and Djokovic more in slams and outside of slams.

Nadal - time away from the tour

While a lot of people will note his achievements off of clay, I can't call that a hole when he has 5 slams, 8 masters, the olympic singles gold, and 2 WTF finals off of clay. Also, people might say WTFs, but it's not a slam. Hard to put that as his biggest hole.

Sampras - lack of clay success

Maybe people will mention his performance in Masters, but the Masters weren't as important at that time.

Djokovic - record in slam finals

Many people will point out not winning RG, but it's so hard to knock him for that, given the circumstances. Losing to Nadal 6 times in RG is brutal, and his number of finals appearances suffers due to drawing Nadal before the final 4 times. Since 2011, he has been the second best clay courter in the world and has the most wins on clay against Rafa in history.

Agassi - record in slam finals/ time away from tour

Admittedly, I don't know as much about his career, but an 8-7 record in slam finals (1-4 against Sampras) isn't great and all the time that he took off doesn't help him either.

What do you guys think are their biggest holes?
 
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Honorable Mention:

Roddick - lack of a Wimbledon. 2009 could have changed his whole legacy...defeated his biggest rival, finally won Wimbledon. Not a one slam wonder.


note to the OP: Actually these "holes" help make these guy's great, showing their humanity and fight to rise above these "setbacks."
 
drm025 said:
What is the one biggest hole in the following player's resumes? Here are my thoughts:

Federer - H2H against main rivals

It's hard to really find any other weakness in Fed's resume, tbh. Of course I am talking about Nadal and Djokovic as his main rivals not Roddick and Hewitt. The only reason you could call them main rivals is because they were around when he was dominating and are similar in age, but he has played both Nadal and Djokovic more in slams and outside of slams.

Nadal - time away from the tour

While a lot of people will note his achievements off of clay, I can't call that a hole when he has 5 slams, 8 masters, the olympic singles gold, and 2 WTF finals off of clay. Also, people might say WTFs, but it's not a slam. Hard to put that as his biggest hole.

Sampras - lack of clay success

Maybe people will mention his performance in Masters, but the Masters weren't as important at that time.

Djokovic - record in slam finals

Many people will point out not winning RG, but it's so hard to knock him for that, given the circumstances. Losing to Nadal 6 times in RG is brutal, and his number of finals appearances suffers due to drawing Nadal before the final 4 times. Since 2011, he has been the second best clay courter in the world and has the most wins on clay against Rafa in history.

Agassi - record in slam finals/ time away from tour

Admittedly, I don't know as much about his career, but an 8-7 record in slam finals (1-4 against Sampras) isn't great and all the time that he took off doesn't help him either.

What do you guys think are their biggest holes?
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Well with Nadal I agree. But Djokovic entered his peak when Fed was already close to 30. This isn't really fair
 
mike danny said:
Well with Nadal I agree. But Djokovic entered his peak when Fed was already close to 30. This isn't really fair
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I see your point, but Fed has beaten Djokovic twice just this year, at 32. It's hard to discount the whole thing due to age. The 2 of them always play close, competitive matches.

When you could say age benefitted Federer, around 2007, Djokovic was able to beat him. When you could say age benefitted Djokovic, this year, they are 2-2. So, age hasn't mattered as much with their rivalry.
 
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drm025 said:
What is the one biggest hole in the following player's resumes? Here are my thoughts:

. . .

Also, people might say WTFs, but it's not a slam. Hard to put that as his biggest hole.
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So what if the WTF is not a slam? This thread is not entitled, "Biggest slam hole in all-time great resumes," is it? Moreover, Federer's head-to-head marks against various opponents not only are not a "slam," they're not even a tournament. So for one player you zero in on a cumulative statistic, but for the other you ignore an outright lack of titles at the fifth-biggest event in the game. The latter is actually the definition of a resume "hole."
 
OP, all fine, except Federer has h2h vs one main rival. Not vs all of them.

He leads Murray and Nole at majors 10-7, I think even when they have mostly met when they had the prime advantage.

Also Nadal's biggest hole is consistency(of course time off is included here) and unbalanced resume.

Also Sampras hole is consistency too. He skipped slams but also has a lot of early losses in his prime vs journeymen.

For now it seems that Federer has the smallest hole. And this hole is even smaller than you think. He only has bad record vs Nadal because he was so good to reach all those extra GS finals. If he lost before semis all of those, he wouldn't have negative h2h. So, you can't really penalize him very much for that.
 
Federer has done great in keeping a positive h2h against Djokovic despite 30 of 35 (and 16 of 35 after 2010) matches being played after 2007. Come on now, would Djokovic lead the h2h against Federer if he was 6 years older than Fed instead of the other way round?

Not even close, a 25-year old Federer would lay serious beatdowns on a 31-year old Djokovic.
 
jg153040 said:
OP, all fine, except Federer has h2h vs one main rival. Not vs all of them.

He leads Murray and Nole at majors 10-7, I think even when they have mostly met when they had the prime advantage.

Also Nadal's biggest hole is consistency(of course time off is included here) and unbalanced resume.

Also Sampras hole is consistency too. He skipped slams but also has a lot of early losses in his prime vs journeymen.

For now it seems that Federer has the smallest hole. And this hole is even smaller than you think. He only has bad record vs Nadal because he was so good to reach all those extra GS finals. If he lost before semis all of those, he wouldn't have negative h2h. So, you can't really penalize him very much for that.
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Kido, in case that you don't know Novak Federer is 6 6 at GS, 1 1 in GS finals.
Can you be more limited?
 
mike danny said:
Well with Nadal I agree. But Djokovic entered his peak when Fed was already close to 30. This isn't really fair
Click to expand...

Because of age difference Federer had a privilege of winning Slams against average players, as Matts Wilander said it was the worst era of all time. It isn't just really fair compared to Nadal and Djokovic who has had it way tougher, it's completely unfair.
 
Noelan said:
Kido, in case that you don't know Novak Federer is 6 6 at GS, 1 1 in GS finals.
Can you be more limited?
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And this is hole for Federer how?

And if you can't do math.

Fed defeated Djokovic and Murray 10 times in majors. He lost to them 7 times.
Hence 10-7.

And please say something smart and useful in your response or I won't respond.
 
tennis_pro said:
Federer has done great in keeping a positive h2h against Djokovic despite 30 of 35 (and 16 of 35 after 2010) matches being played after 2007. Come on now, would Djokovic lead the h2h against Federer if he was 6 years older than Fed instead of the other way round?

Not even close, a 25-year old Federer would lay serious beatdowns on a 31-year old Djokovic.
Click to expand...

What exactly has he done that's so great? :confused:
 
Claudius said:
Nadal - Extreme vulnerability against opponents who are playing well.
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The guy with the best win-loss ratio of the Open era has "extreme" vulnerability to opponents that are playing well? So he must have had about 3 opponents total that have played well to not expose this "extreme" vulnerability?
 
@jg153040
You will be much smarter if you don't respond and spills your noncence all over again.Kido there is life behind federer ..one poster called you a psychopath the other day, think about it.
For your information, Murray is not all time great:oops:
 
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smoledman said:
Nadal - inability to deal with a big-hitting hot player in slams. Not even once.
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So in none of his 9 victories against Federer in slams would you consider Federer to be a big-hitting hot player? Matches that come to mind: 2009 AO final, 2011 RG Final, 2012 AO SF.

Again, where is the shame in losing to a big-hitting hot player, lol, wouldn't that be the hardest player to beat? Wouldn't that describe Federer at his best?
 
tennis_pro said:
Federer has done great in keeping a positive h2h against Djokovic despite 30 of 35 (and 16 of 35 after 2010) matches being played after 2007. Come on now, would Djokovic lead the h2h against Federer if he was 6 years older than Fed instead of the other way round?

Not even close, a 25-year old Federer would lay serious beatdowns on a 31-year old Djokovic.
Click to expand...

If we are to be very rough, we could take the end of 2010 as our cut-off point of it going from Fed being better than Novak to Novak being better than Fed. I think it works out quite nicely in fact. That rough selection gives us 19 matches with Fed as the "better" player and 16 with Novak and we have a head-to-head of 18-17 for Fed so it pretty much works out. Novak did just as well to win matches when Fed was ranked above him as Fed has done when he got older and Novak was ranked above him.

I agree with you that 25-year-old Fed would likely beat up on 31-year-old Djokovic (whom we have yet to see) most of the time, but 26-year-old Djokovic would equally beat up on 20-year-old Federer (whereas 20-year-old Novak pushed and even beat 26-year-old Fed). Different players develop and peak at different times, and endure for different lengths of time.
 
JMR said:
So what if the WTF is not a slam? This thread is not entitled, "Biggest slam hole in all-time great resumes," is it? Moreover, Federer's head-to-head marks against various opponents not only are not a "slam," they're not even a tournament. So for one player you zero in on a cumulative statistic, but for the other you ignore an outright lack of titles at the fifth-biggest event in the game. The latter is actually the definition of a resume "hole."
Click to expand...

When talking about all-time great resumes we are concerned with the big picture. WTFs is not something that stands out just like Rome or the Olympics isn't for Federer. The slams are more significant by far, 7 matches to win, all best-of-5, highest paychecks, and most ranking points.

Either way, I didn't say WTFs wasn't a hole, I said it wasn't his biggest.
 
drm025 said:
So in none of his 9 victories against Federer in slams would you consider Federer to be a big-hitting hot player? Matches that come to mind: 2009 AO final, 2011 RG Final, 2012 AO SF.

Again, where is the shame in losing to a big-hitting hot player, lol, wouldn't that be the hardest player to beat? Wouldn't that describe Federer at his best?
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Well Federer rarely lost against players who played high career matches. Evennow at 33 he wins such matches. But I don't see this being mentioned
 
lack of nadal is clearly his weeks as number one (consistency at the top). nadals longest stretch was just 56 weeks.
also his performance indoors is pretty bad with no year end title.
with djokovic I would also he lacks a little bit success when reaching the semis. he has "only" won 7 GS titles out of 23 times reaching the semis. federer has 17/35, nadal even 14/23.
 
drm025 said:
When talking about all-time great resumes we are concerned with the big picture. WTFs is not something that stands out just like Rome or the Olympics isn't for Federer. The slams are more significant by far, 7 matches to win, all best-of-5, highest paychecks, and most ranking points.

Either way, I didn't say WTFs wasn't a hole, I said it wasn't his biggest.
Click to expand...
So why is H2H, which isn't even a tournament,a hole for Fed?
 
mike danny said:
Well Federer rarely lost against players who played high career matches. Evennow at 33 he wins such matches. But I don't see this being mentioned
Click to expand...

Fed's style doesn't really allow for players' career-best matches because he is more offensive. If you are "hot", you'll want to play a more defensive player who will give you more opportunities to take control of the point.

What career-best matches has Federer faced this year? The only match I could think of was Monfils last night, and when he was playing career-best he found himself up 2 sets to none.
 
drm025 said:
Fed's style doesn't really allow for players' career-best matches because he is more offensive. If you are "hot", you'll want to play a more defensive player who will give you more opportunities to take control of the point.

What career-best matches has Federer faced this year? The only match I could think of was Monfils last night, and when he was playing career-best he found himself up 2 sets to none.
Click to expand...
Well he came back vs Monfils's best career match and won. And at 33 as well.

Let's see Nadal at 33 do this
 
drm025 said:
My response was to someone saying that Nadal can't deal with a player who is playing well.....
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Yes and I said, how do you determine they were playing well?

Just because they beat Nadal? Maybe he just isn't that good, so he wasn't able to replicate his level and that's why he lost, not because those guys were good.

Well, anyway if he lost due to him playing badly or them playing well, it's still a hole.

You can see the glass half full or half empty, but it's still only half of glass.
 
mike danny said:
So why is H2H, which isn't even a tournament,a hole for Fed?
Click to expand...

Because an all-time great should bring their best to the biggest matches. Your biggest matches are against your biggest rivals on the biggest stages. To me, that means against your biggest rivals in slam finals. And his record is 3-7 there. In slam finals outside of Nadal and Djokovic, he is 14-1. So, he either wasn't able to bring his best against them, or they were simply higher caliber than the players he faced in his other 15 slam finals. Either way, it's not something you want from an all-time great.

For Nadal at the WTFs, he has played it 6 times, made the finals twice, and made the semis twice. He has beaten Federer there, he has beaten Djokovic there, he has beaten Murray there. He hasn't been fortunate enough to win the tournament yet, facing Federer (6-time champ) in one final and Djokovic (3-time champ) in the other. How many 6-time AO champs has Fed beaten in the AO final? How many 3-time AO champs has Fed beaten in the AO final? Heck, how many 3-time champs has Fed beaten in any slam final?

Hardly a huge hole considering this is only against top-8 players, the majority of which prefer the surface more than Nadal.
 
mike danny said:
Well he came back vs Monfils's best career match and won. And at 33 as well.

Let's see Nadal at 33 do this
Click to expand...

Was it Monfils career best match? If he played like he did in the first 2 sets for the entire match, sure. Who loses 3 straight sets during their career-best match? Who hits more errors than winners in their career-best match? Monfils hit 43 winners to 49 errors.

Compare to some of Nadal's losses: Krygios was 70 winners to 31 errors, Darcis was 53 winners to 24 errors, Rosol was 65 winners to 29 errors....
 
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The biggest hole is when a player failed to win the most important tournament of the year.

Borg - US Open
Sampras - French Open
Nadal - WTF
Nole - French Open


The next big hole would be the ranking(reach #1 and end the year #1). However this is rare because becoming an all time great by winning multiple slams would fulfilled this criteria. Unless Murray proved us wrong by winning 10 slams without ever reach #1.
 
jg153040 said:
Yes and I said, how do you determine they were playing well?

Just because they beat Nadal? Maybe he just isn't that good, so he wasn't able to replicate his level and that's why he lost, not because those guys were good.

Well, anyway if he lost due to him playing badly or them playing well, it's still a hole.

You can see the glass half full or half empty, but it's still only half of glass.
Click to expand...

Are you saying any loss is a hole in your resume?
 
In the 90s people would be asking "why can't Nadal win a round at Wimbledon or the US Open". So all these "holes" with Petros and the French open are irrelevant to modern tennis.
 
drm025 said:
Because an all-time great should bring their best to the biggest matches. Your biggest matches are against your biggest rivals on the biggest stages. To me, that means against your biggest rivals in slam finals. And his record is 3-7 there. In slam finals outside of Nadal and Djokovic, he is 14-1. So, he either wasn't able to bring his best against them, or they were simply higher caliber than the players he faced in his other 15 slam finals. Either way, it's not something you want from an all-time great.

For Nadal at the WTFs, he has played it 6 times, made the finals twice, and made the semis twice. He has beaten Federer there, he has beaten Djokovic there, he has beaten Murray there. He hasn't been fortunate enough to win the tournament yet, facing Federer (6-time champ) in one final and Djokovic (3-time champ) in the other. How many 6-time AO champs has Fed beaten in the AO final? How many 3-time AO champs has Fed beaten in the AO final? Heck, how many 3-time champs has Fed beaten in any slam final?

Hardly a huge hole considering this is only against top-8 players, the majority of which prefer the surface more than Nadal.
Click to expand...
As a GOAT candidate Nadal has to learn to win in every conditions. So what if it's indoors? You don't hear Federer complain RG is on clay. He just sucked it up and went on to win it. Federer won on every condition imaginble. Nadal didn't.

About the 3 slam champ thing, it is a foolish argument. The only reason Fed's opponents didn't have 3 slams was because Fed denied them slams. So he should have lost some slam matches to Hewitt and Roddick to allow both of them to reach 3 majors for his wins to count? Do you even hear yourself? How many 3 time champs has Nadal beaten at RG then? See how this works?

As for the slam finals H2H well that H2H is lopsided because of Nadal. Djokovic barely did anything. He just won a slam final against Federer at almost 33. It's admirable Federer even played that well in a slam final. Let's see how Djokovic does at that stage, if he's still playing. If Federer keeps on reaching slam finals from this point on, obviously his record will get worse. The younger opponent wins most of the time. You can't use this against him.
 
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drm025 said:
Hardly a huge hole considering this is only against top-8 players, the majority of which prefer the surface more than Nadal.
Click to expand...

LOL. The fact that the WTF field is limited to top-8 players makes the event a lot more important, not less important.

In any event, if you really wanted to launch a thread in which you could rehash for the millionth time the argument about how Federer's head-to-head record against Nadal is allegedly a devastating blow to Fed's legacy, you should have given it an appropriate title. E.g., "Is it not obvious that Federer's H2H is the worst 'hole' any player could ever have?!" Because the remainder of your "analysis" of various players' records is inconsistent and illogical, and doesn't even seem to interest you very much.
 
drm025 said:
Was it Monfils career best match? If he played like he did in the first 2 sets for the entire match, sure. Who loses 3 straight sets during their career-best match? Who hits more errors than winners in their career-best match? Monfils hit 43 winners to 49 errors.

Compare to some of Nadal's losses: Krygios was 70 winners to 31 errors, Darcis was 53 winners to 24 errors, Rosol was 65 winners to 29 errors....
Click to expand...
It is the best he ever played against Fed in a slam. Not many guys can win the first 2 sets even vs this Fed.

In case you forgot Monfils played some really dominanat tennis this USO. I think he even reached the QF without dropping a single set. So he was in great form coming into the Federer match.

Yes I believe he never played better in a slam than he did now.
 
JMR said:
LOL. The fact that the WTF field is limited to top-8 players makes the event a lot more important, not less important.

In any event, if you really wanted to launch a thread in which you could rehash for the millionth time the argument about how Federer's head-to-head record against Nadal is allegedly a devastating blow to Fed's legacy, you should have given it an appropriate title. E.g., "Is it not obvious that Federer's H2H is the worst 'hole' any player could ever have?!" Because the remainder of your "analysis" of various players' records is inconsistent and illogical, and doesn't even seem to interest you very much.
Click to expand...

I'm only to responding to others' comments. I put no emphasis on any player's biggest hole, and I even made it clear that Federer had the least holes in my OP.

The fact that the WTFs is limited to only top-8 gives Nadal a bigger hurdle to climb than any other player on their worst surface.
 
drm025 said:
Because an all-time great should bring their best to the biggest matches. Your biggest matches are against your biggest rivals on the biggest stages. To me, that means against your biggest rivals in slam finals. And his record is 3-7 there. In slam finals outside of Nadal and Djokovic, he is 14-1. So, he either wasn't able to bring his best against them, or they were simply higher caliber than the players he faced in his other 15 slam finals. Either way, it's not something you want from an all-time great.

For Nadal at the WTFs, he has played it 6 times, made the finals twice, and made the semis twice. He has beaten Federer there, he has beaten Djokovic there, he has beaten Murray there. He hasn't been fortunate enough to win the tournament yet, facing Federer (6-time champ) in one final and Djokovic (3-time champ) in the other. How many 6-time AO champs has Fed beaten in the AO final? How many 3-time AO champs has Fed beaten in the AO final? Heck, how many 3-time champs has Fed beaten in any slam final?

Hardly a huge hole considering this is only against top-8 players, the majority of which prefer the surface more than Nadal.
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Being able to beat only the top 8 players to win a tournament obviously boosts your legacy. It means you have to beat the best of the best in every match.

It's Nadal's problem that he can't beat only top 8 players to win it. It is his problem that he can only win tournaments beating just 2 top 8 players at best
 
mike danny said:
It is the best he ever played against Fed in a slam. Not many guys can win the first 2 sets even vs this Fed.

In case you forgot Monfils played some really dominanat tennis this USO. I think he even reached the QF without dropping a single set. So he was in great form coming into the Federer match.

Yes I believe he never played better in a slam than he did now.
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It was his best slam, but the Fed match was not his best. That would have been the match against Gasquet.
 
mike danny said:
Being able to beat only the top 8 players to win a tournament obviously boosts your legacy. It means you have to beat the best of the best in every match.

It's Nadal's problem that he can't beat only top 8 players to win it. It is his problem that he can only win tournaments beating just 2 top 8 players at best
Click to expand...

It's a double standard because you mention Fed being able to win the French, but the only time he did that he beat only one top ten player, and the final was against a first-time slam finalist. Nadal can never be that fortunate at the WTFs given the format of the tournament.
 
drm025 said:
It's a double standard because you mention Fed being able to win the French, but the only time he did that he beat only one top ten player, and the final was against a first-time slam finalist. Nadal can never be that fortunate at the WTFs given the format of the tournament.
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Even better. Upsets can't happen at the WTF, which sometimes makes it harder to win than a slam. Just sometimes.

And i have never denied Fed being fortunate at the FO. But hey, he was the only one who managed to stop the Soderling hurricane. Even Nadal couldn't, so it works for me.
 
drm025 said:
Agassi - record in slam finals/ time away from tour

Admittedly, I don't know as much about his career, but an 8-7 record in slam finals (1-4 against Sampras) isn't great and all the time that he took off doesn't help him either.
Click to expand...

minor point, but the idea that Agassi took 'all this time off' implying he was missing for years at a stretch is a myth. From 1987-2005 he played 43+ matches every year but one; even in his notorious down year of 1997 when his ranking dropped below 100 he still played 24 matches.
 
Nadal has had many lows in his career, certainly a lot more than someone like Federer. But Nadal's lows make his highs seem even better still, so it's a part of making up the overall brilliance of enjoying Nadal's matches for all these years. Nadal has lows where he's struggling to get the form, injured, or goes many months without winning a tournament. But he also has periods of concentrated brilliance, where he is the undisputed best at beating his biggest rivals on the biggest stages.
 
Noelan said:
@jg153040
You will be much smarter if you don't respond and spills your noncence all over again.Kido there is life behind federer ..one poster called you a psychopath the other day, think about it.
For your information, Murray is not all time great:oops:
Click to expand...

LMAO, not because of his Federer love! Just the way he types and thinks in general. It got me thinking......maybe psychopath was a LITTLE bit too far.
 
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