Congratulations, BUT 30 years ago you would have lost...?

[RaulRamirez]

In real life - if any of this is real - I'm a writer who can be quite imaginative, irreverent, innovative, etc.
I get and write satire, understand irreverence much more than most, and am not totally averse to hypotheticals, even in sports.
But, I just don't see the value in producing hypothetical scenarios as a way to evaluate players.

I can't prove this, but my theory/supposition is that the true elite of all sports would have found a way to be great in any era.

As I replied on another thread, but I'll save us all the verbiage, any player is simply trying to win a given match and a given tourney.
They also - as they have earned the flexibility to do - set up their playing schedules accordingly (or to peak for the slams).

Roger/Rafa/Novak...Serena, Ash Barty, Iga, etc....didn't care how their victory in a given slam would have looked on another surface, in different weather conditions or in another year, decade or century. Bjorn Borg was not trying to win the 2025 French Open.
Stop the madness.

 

[AnOctorokForDinner]

So long as comparing different players is a thing, this will have its place. Don't just assert you're better/worse than another because you won more/less, etc.

 

[RaulRamirez]

So long as comparing different players is a thing, this will have its place. Don't just assert you're better/worse than another because you won more/less, etc.

Sure, it's double-edged, but reduced to its most basic: The results are the results. I don't mind considering context, but 99% of posters do this with no sense of objectivity or fairness.

 

[fedfan24]

So long as comparing different players is a thing, this will have its place. Don't just assert you're better/worse than another because you won more/less, etc.

results need context, unless you have 2 players with similar strengths who are the same age who played exact same number of slams then it’s more comparable. djokovic federer is a silly comp, fed had 2 more seasons of close to prime tennis once djokovic peaked, 0 slam meetings between 04-06

 

[TTMR]

In real life - if any of this is real - I'm a writer who can be quite imaginative, irreverent, innovative, etc.
I get and write satire, understand irreverence much more than most, and am not totally averse to hypotheticals, even in sports.
But, I just don't see the value in producing hypothetical scenarios as a way to evaluate players.

I can't prove this, but my theory/supposition is that the true elite of all sports would have found a way to be great in any era.

As I replied on another thread, but I'll save us all the verbiage, any player is simply trying to win a given match and a given tourney.
They also - as they have earned the flexibility to do - set up their playing schedules accordingly (or to peak for the slams).

Roger/Rafa/Novak...Serena Barty, Iga, etc....didn't care how their victory in a given slam would have looked on another surface, in different weather conditions or in another year, decade or century. Bjorn Borg was not trying to win the 2025 French Open.
Stop the madness.

It's not that people only want to talk about hypotheticals, it's that almost any thread not related to hypotheticals and GOAT discussions gets shut down, making the forum monotonous and predictable.

And also, God forbid, that we have any actual fun, on the forum. A little light-hearted repartee goes a long way to rounding out the community. While sometimes comedic replies are permitted to stand, very rare is it that a light-hearted thread poking fun at this or that will remain long.

 

[RaulRamirez]

results need context, unless you have 2 players with similar strengths who are the same age who played exact same number of slams then it’s more comparable. djokovic federer is a silly comp, fed had 2 more seasons of close to prime tennis once djokovic peaked, 0 slam meetings between 04-06

I want this thread to be much more "global" than just a Big 3-type debate...please.
But when it comes to context, it seems that this becomes an excuse for individual biases -- either directed to support or to denigrate another player. And more germane to this thread, transplanting players to other conditions or eras does not make any sense as a way to evaluate players...especially, in ranking players who have played so many matches (and so many head-to-head matches).

 

[RaulRamirez]

It's not that people only want to talk about hypotheticals, it's that almost any thread not related to hypotheticals and GOAT discussions gets shut down, making the forum monotonous and predictable.

And also, God forbid, that we have any actual fun, on the forum. A little light-hearted repartee goes a long way to rounding out the community. While sometimes comedic replies are permitted to stand, very rare is it that a light-hearted thread poking fun at this or that will remain long.

Sure, good-natured irreverence is cool.
Not to mention names: There is a poster who lives to tear down Rafa, but he almost always does so in a humorous way.
Mostly enjoyable.

What gets me is that most people aren't nearly as humorous or clever as they think they are...and the same talking points just get done to death.
As to hypothetical matches, they have their place, I suppose, but they're just not useful in evaluating careers.
Aren't we evaluating - and putting into context - actual results?

 

[jl809]

I agree with this, yep. The idea that had they been born in the early/mid 70s, Nadal or Djokovic would have developed games identical to the ones they did IRL is laughable. They would have adapted. And Djokovic’s ROS and Nadal’s footspeed and passing ability would have been brutally effective in any era.

It doesn’t mean we can’t point out (for example) that Agassi managing to win Wimbledon on the fast grass of the 90s and pulling off a career slam in that era isn’t a more impressive achievement than what the Big 3 went on to do for their career slams in the 00s and 10s, plus it’s easier to speculate that Borg’s mastery of wildly different grass and clay in the late 70s would have translated over to success on in a more homogenised setting than vice versa with the Big 3 going back in time on wildly varying courts.

But the big 3 are undeniably Uber talented freaks of nature. I think 20+ slams has become so quickly normalised that we often don’t just step back and think “20 slams for 3 players in the same era, holy ****”