Could Djokovic nudge Nadal into 3rd place in the GOAT debate?

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If Djokovic wins another 7 slams and Nadal stays at 14 or heaven forbid Djokovic tops out at 15 how would we judge them in the GOAT pecking order?

Granted, at this juncture this scenario looks like an unlikely outcome, but if Nadal starts to fade and Djokovic continues to show this good form when there is frankly such little new talent of apparent promise, this scenario may gain traction. If Djokovic wins 3 slams next year as many fans of all fan bases acknowledge as a possibility, we will be hearing a lot more of this type of stuff.

Federer fans can take a comfortable back seat on this one!
 
Easily, he isn't a "China Doll" who always breaks down and looks to be getting better with time.
 
YetAnotherFedFan said:
If Djokovic wins another 7 slams and Nadal stays at 14 or heaven forbid Djokovic tops out at 15 how would we judge them in the GOAT pecking order?

Granted, at this juncture this scenario looks like an unlikely outcome, but if Nadal starts to fade and Djokovic continues to show this good form when there is frankly such little new talent of apparent promise, this scenario may gain traction. If Djokovic wins 3 slams next year as many fans of all fan bases acknowledge as a possibility, we will be hearing a lot more of this type of stuff.

Federer fans can take a comfortable back seat on this one!
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Fed has a better chance of turning around his head to head with Rafa than Novak has of winning 7 more GS titles.
 
yes, if novak wins 14 slams he will be ahead of nadal because his slams are much more diverse (if he wins a FO which he will if he gets to 14) and he will also have a lot more weeks at one and masters tournaments won than nadal if he does that.
 
dominikk1985 said:
yes, if novak wins 14 slams he will be ahead of nadal because his slams are much more diverse (if he wins a FO which he will if he gets to 14) and he will also have a lot more weeks at one and masters tournaments won than nadal if he does that.
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4 of Djokovic's 7 majors are at the Australian Open. More diverse, indeed? Nadal has 5 majors off of clay, which is as many as Djokovic has won on hardcourt altogether.
 
dominikk1985 said:
yes, if novak wins 14 slams he will be ahead of nadal because his slams are much more diverse (if he wins a FO which he will if he gets to 14) and he will also have a lot more weeks at one and masters tournaments won than nadal if he does that.
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As of right now, his GS titles aren't particularly diverse, they are predominantly AO titles.
 
Mustard said:
1 of the last 7 majors has been won by Djokovic. 3 of the last 7 majors has been won by Nadal.
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Totally irrelevant point, question is not HAS HE (no), it is COULD HE, and based on which future looks brighter, hell yes.

Nadal can't stay healthy for 10 seconds anymore, it's probably close to closing time (sadly, trust me I'd love to be proven wrong). Joker on the other hand rides out child birth and a busy off court late season and comes back just as strong if not better..no signs of slowing down...all signs of slowing down for Rafa.
 
Of course, according to the logic of a lot of hardcore Nadal fans, maybe all Djokovic needs is 11 to 12 slams given his WTF victories, the implication of that being more weeks at No1 and the fact that he may have overturned the h2h however marginally...

But his accomplishments would no doubt be undermined by an extremely weak era!
 
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HRB said:
Totally irrelevant point, question is not HAS HE (no), it is COULD HE, and based on which future looks brighter, hell yes.
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No, it isn't irrelevant. It shows how Djokovic is underachieving on the biggest stages, when considering his general dominance on the tour. Nadal is still winning more majors, even at this stage.
 
With the talentless and or brainless players that are coming up.. I see no reason why at this point. Nole seems to be showing no real signs of slowing down.

Barring a big health issue, Nole can manage another 6-8 slams. Who's gonna stop Nole except Nadal exactly if Nole is motivated? NO ONE!!!
 
90's Clay said:
With the talentless and or brainless players that are coming up.. I see no reason why at this point. Nole seems to be showing no real signs of slowing down.

Barring a big health issue, Nole can manage another 6-8 slams. Who's gonna stop Nole except Nadal exactly if Nole is motivated? NO ONE!!!
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Nishikori, Stan, Murray and surely more to come. Perhaps Cilic, perhaps Dimitrov, only time will tell.

He's averaging 1 per season since 2011, so I guess you think that based on that trend he'll be playing and winning until 33-35 years old?
 
Mustard said:
No, it isn't irrelevant. It shows how Djokovic is underachieving on the biggest stages, when considering his general dominance on the tour. Nadal is still winning more majors, even at this stage.
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"Nadal is still winning more majors, even at this stage"...nope, HAS WON MORE MAJORS..currently not doing anything at all.

Here is a major RELEVANT point..Nadal isn't doing SH#T once again, Joker still is...so that relates to COULD HE SURPASS RAFA..and answer is HELL YES!:twisted:

Listen, your boy is broken, it's ok...he may never be surpassed, but it just looks unlikely Cuz...and that takes nothing away from what he did. His *** picking, unorthodox, sleeveless pirate exploits will live on! I enjoyed the hell outta of it, just always felt it wasn't a style built for the long haul, and sadly looks like I MAY (relax) be correct.
 
BringBackSV said:
Nishikori, Stan, Murray and surely more to come. Perhaps Cilic, perhaps Dimitrov, only time will tell.

He's averaging 1 per season since 2011, so I guess you think that based on that trend he'll be playing and winning until 33-35 years old?
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Well thats because Nadal has stopped him at a USO and a few French Opens. I've said if Nadal doesn't come back healthy and in top form by January, and with Nadal's ever increasing perioditic injuries and set backs, Nole will 3 slams slams next year. Maybe the AO,RG,Wimbledon.

I don't see another miracle run from Wawa or Cilic again. That was just a FLUKE level.

Unless Dimitrov gets a lobotomy or some awesome coach in which he steps it up next year.
 
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90's Clay said:
Well thats because Nadal has stopped him at a USO and a few French Opens. I've said if Nadal doesn't come back healthy and in top form by January, and with Nadal's ever increasing perioditic injuries and set backs, Nole will 3 slams slams next year. Maybe the AO,RG,Wimbledon.
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We'll see, I expect Murray to be better (perhaps he needs to fire his coach though) and is a better grass player. I expect the younger guys to make inroads a bit against the current top players and I don't think Novak is going to have it any easier than this year. This past season Novak won ONE and he was only stopped by Rafa once. Point being, it's not just Rafa he will have to contend with IMV.
 
HRB said:
"Nadal is still winning more majors, even at this stage"...nope, HAS WON MORE MAJORS..currently not doing anything at all.

Here is a major RELEVANT point..Nadal isn't doing SH#T once again, Joker still is...so that relates to COULD HE SURPASS RAFA..and answer is HELL YES!:twisted:

Listen, your boy is broken, it's ok...he may never be surpassed, but it just looks unlikely Cuz...and that takes nothing away from what he did. His *** picking, unorthodox, sleeveless pirate exploits will live on! I enjoyed the hell outta of it, just always felt it wasn't a style built for the long haul, and sadly looks like I MAY (relax) be correct.
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They won the same amount of majors this year and went to the same number of finals. You are just arguing nonsensically, you have no point. Rafa won more the year before 2 >1 and they had the same amount in 2012. This despite the fact that Rafa has missed 3 GS events over that period.
 
HRB said:
"Nadal is still winning more majors, even at this stage"...nope, HAS WON MORE MAJORS..currently not doing anything at all.

Here is a major RELEVANT point..Nadal isn't doing SH#T once again, Joker still is...so that relates to COULD HE SURPASS RAFA..and answer is HELL YES!:twisted:

Listen, your boy is broken, it's ok...he may never be surpassed, but it just looks unlikely Cuz...and that takes nothing away from what he did. His *** picking, unorthodox, sleeveless pirate exploits will live on! I enjoyed the hell outta of it, just always felt it wasn't a style built for the long haul, and sadly looks like I MAY (relax) be correct.
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Nadal won his last major 4 weeks before Djokovic won his. Have several seats.
 
No, because Nadal is not in the 2nd place.

Personally, I'd have Open era being #1 Federer, #2 Borg, #3 Sampras, #4 Nadal and if you go all time then you have arguments for the likes of Laver, Rosewall and Pancho being ahead of all of them, including Fed.
 
I think Djokovic will get to 8-10 slams, if he did get to 14 and won the FO you would probably have to place him higher then Nadal with WTF, weeks at number 1.
 
If both are equal in Majors then WTFs, total weeks at #1, YE#1, M1000 titles, Olympic achievements come into play.

If they are still equal then h2hs, highest percentages per season etc come into play.

If they are still equal SexiMasterclassRogi will tell who he likes more.

:)
 
Djoko is too far back in slam count. Best he can hope for i a scenario where he leads in other areas, but trails in the slam count by no more than 2-3 slams.

Something like 15-13 career total slam count. Djoko has 2 RG's, 3 USO's, 5 AO, 3 W and is then more accomplished on 2 of 3 surfaces, and 3 of 4 slams. At that point, maybe you could consider them equal. I don't want to get in a h2h argument, but it's doubtful even then he would lead Nadal h2h, certainly not in slams. A bit different from Nadal-Federer, so in 15-13 hypothetical I would say equal at best, and probably still advantage Nadal.

I would consider this scenario pretty unlikely as it would have Djoko outpacing Nadal 6 to 1 in slams which seems a bit thick. It also assumes Nadal not to do much.

The more realistic final numbers, even somewhat optimistically as a Djoko fan is like 17-12.

Basically, Novak simply did not convert the opportunities when needed the last 3 years, many times against Rafa, and he is too far back now realistically to challenge his career legacy. The best he can probably hope for is to get to Borg tier and score enough quality wins over Rafa, do some cool things even Rogi and Rafa never have, and go down as an all time legend who is seen as in the same league as Fedal in terms of "he could play with the best when his game/mentality was 'on'".
 
I would put chances for Novak to get 14 majors is as good or bad as Rafa winning 18 majors.

In any case, he is not going to end up anywhere near Nadal.

As at this time, he has half the accomplishment as Nadal and is not even in the ball park.
 
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tennisaddict said:
I would put chances for Novak to get 14 majors is as good or bad as Rafa winning 18 majors.

In any case, he is not going to end up anywhere in the ball park of Nadal.

As at this time, he has half the accomplishment as Nadal and is not even in the ball park.
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Pretty absurd, dude
 
YetAnotherFedFan said:
Could Djokovic nudge Nadal into 3rd place in the GOAT debate?
Click to expand...

He simply can't. I don't think he'll win another 7 slams, for starters, because of his age. At best, I think he'll add 4-5 more, but more realistically, he'll get about 3 more. He had his chances to overtake Nadal, though, during 2011-2014. He should've won 3-4 more slams during this period to be considered as great as the likes of Fed or Rafa, but he just couldn't do it. If he was on 10 or 11 slams now, people would've talked about if Djokovic would become another one of the greats of all time.
 
Mustard said:
1 of the last 7 majors has been won by Djokovic. 3 of the last 7 majors has been won by Nadal.
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While I feel that Djokovic has not been winning enough slams to overtake Nadal and Nadal did have a 2 slam year last year and Novak has had three 1 slams years in a row now, using the last 7 slams is such an arbitrary number. Could that because if you said 8 slams it would only be 3-2 and if you said 6 slams it would be 2-1?

Also how many slams will nadal miss? Still not enough for djokovic to catch up but it could make a bit of a difference. What if nadal actually had to skip RG one year like he's done several times for the other slams? That could be his first no slam year and allow djokovic to win 2.
 
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BringBackSV said:
They won the same amount of majors this year and went to the same number of finals. You are just arguing nonsensically, you have no point. Rafa won more the year before 2 >1 and they had the same amount in 2012. This despite the fact that Rafa has missed 3 GS events over that period.
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What the EFF don't you understand about the OP's question??? COULD!!! COULD!!! COULD!!! Joker surpass Rafa...the answer is YES!

Give me all the "proof" you want about what Rafa has previously done...that is NON SENSE. It has no correlation to what COULD happen, that is the POINT. From the beginning I simply stated that Joker is playing lights out and Rafa aint' doing Sh#t at the moment, so HELL YES..Joker COULD surpass him in time.

If you want an argument, then argue with the OP that the only answer to a hypothetical like this is yes. Certainly anything can happen within reason, and Rafa not playing well again, while Joker goes on to win more slams is a distinct possibility that you can't deny.
 
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125downthemiddle said:
Rafa has a better chance to win 4 than Novak to win 7 lol
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Novak shows up in every single major. His problem has been closing it in the final.

Rafa does little outside of FO. Tell me how many majors he has won outside of FO in the last 4 years ? ONE.

How does it magically increase his chances over Novak ?

You would think given his consistency and the competition we are seeing, it is anything but normal that Novak gets twice the majors that Nadal is going to get from this point on.
 
tennis_commentator said:
But can Djokovic still beat Nadal at a slam event?
We've been waiting since their 6 hour AO final back in 2012.
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Because Nadal is hiding by not playing or losing early in most of the slams outside RG.
Also not to forget he was being helped by biased officials like Pascal Maria or by rain in couple occasions as well.
 
tennis_commentator said:
But can Djokovic still beat Nadal at a slam event?
We've been waiting since their 6 hour AO final back in 2012.
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How can we answer if Rafa is bed ridden or Kyrgios / Coric have his number ?

Of course , he remains Novak's nemesis at FO. But anywhere else, he is going to get thrashed next time he meets Novak.
 
Djokovic_is_the_best#1 said:
Absolutely! I think he can catch nadal. Next year I can see nole winning 3 slams. He will continue to dominate the next few years :)
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I don't see that, he needed 5 sets to beat Federer at Wimbledon to win his only slam this year.

The advantage he does have is,

Nadal: I think he'll win FO this year, Nadal can only win it for so long and with all his injuries I doubt he'll ever be the same. You can only make so many miraculous comebacks and I think when Nadal came back in 2013 and dominated the competition it was almost like a last hurrah.

Federer: Every year is another year getting older and he'll be 34 the month after Wimbledon, I believe it's Federer's beautiful style of play that gives him his longevity.

But after that I believe we'll have another 2014, full of surprise champions, I do hope Federer will win Wimbledon one more time. But we are definitely in a transition period again.

I do hope Nishikori win's a slam, it would be good for tennis.
 
HRB said:
What the EFF don't you understand about the OP's question??? COULD!!! COULD!!! COULD!!! Joker surpass Rafa...the answer is YES!

Give me all the "proof" you want about what Rafa has previously done...that is NON SENSE. It has no correlation to what COULD happen, that is the POINT. From the beginning I simply stated that Joker is playing lights out and Rafa aint' doing Sh#t at the moment, so HELL YES..Joker COULD surpass him in time.

If you want an argument, then argue with the OP that the only answer to a hypothetical like this is yes. Certainly anything can happen within reason, and Rafa not playing well again, while Joker goes on to win more slams is a distinct possibility that you can't deny.
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Well there are two things to note.

A ) I was responding to your faulty logic. While you do have valid reasoning for pointing out that Rafa is seemingly hurt a lot, that has not stopped him from winning more GS events than Novak over the past 3 seasons. So certainly, we can not dismiss Rafa's chances of continuing to pile up hardware just because he's been hurt lately. This point is true of course only if you are a reasonable person (I'm not convinced you are but lets see).

B ) Of course Novak could technically still reach 14 major titles but it would be ignorant to make a proclamation that there is any reasonable likelihood of this happening (especially given how many years Novak has played to date) without taking into account his career history and that of other players out there. If you don't understand the relevance of using history to predict the future, I'd suggest perhaps you need to go back to school.

Here is another thing worth considering. Novak is 7 out of 14 in GS finals and based on that conversion percentage, Novak would need to make 14 more GS finals to get to 14 titles. Do you think he's going to make another 14 finals?
 
Chico said:
Because Nadal is hiding by not playing or losing early in most of the slams outside RG.
Also not to forget he was being helped by biased officials like Pascal Maria or by rain in couple occasions as well.
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Rafa has been in the past 3 USO finals he's entered, you should know this because he beat Novak down 2 of the three times. As to the AO, how did Nadal hide when it was Novak who didn't make the final this year?

The only slam that Rafa is losing early in recent history is Wimbledon but believe whatever you want.
 
tennisaddict said:
How can we answer if Rafa is bed ridden or Kyrgios / Coric have his number ?

Of course , he remains Novak's nemesis at FO. But anywhere else, he is going to get thrashed next time he meets Novak.
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I don't give Djokovic a hope of beating Nadal at the US Open. Breadsticked in the 4th set.
And AO? Took PEAK Djokovic 6 hours, even with the MASSIVE mental edge of 6 wins in a row.
 
tennis_commentator said:
I don't give Djokovic a hope of beating Nadal at the US Open. Breadsticked in the 4th set.
And AO? Took PEAK Djokovic 6 hours, even with the MASSIVE mental edge of 6 wins in a row.
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At the AO he'd played a 5 hour match with Murray, when Nadal played a 5 hour semi in 2009 I seem to remember a lot being made out of that and how tired it would make him. He squeaked by federer in that final even with his mental edge but don't remember people saying how this meant he could barely beat federer...

also djokovic breadsticked nadal at the us open in 2011. He's favourite vs nadal on any hard court but depends on who is in for at the time really.
 
YetAnotherFedFan said:
If Djokovic wins another 7 slams and Nadal stays at 14 or heaven forbid Djokovic tops out at 15 how would we judge them in the GOAT pecking order?

Granted, at this juncture this scenario looks like an unlikely outcome, but if Nadal starts to fade and Djokovic continues to show this good form when there is frankly such little new talent of apparent promise, this scenario may gain traction. If Djokovic wins 3 slams next year as many fans of all fan bases acknowledge as a possibility, we will be hearing a lot more of this type of stuff.

Federer fans can take a comfortable back seat on this one!
Click to expand...

What's the point of 'ifs'?
 
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