Came across this infallible analysis of mine from 2016 while digging thru my old dissertations:
Even before this FO final I suspected Novak is the better clay-courter for the simple reason he's the better grinder. Now I know some Fed supporters will point to that '11 SF meeting between the two, but the thing is anyone can have a hot serving day and string together an enough number of winners even on the slowest surface (see Verkerk at '03 RG). Clay-court tennis rewards patience over anything else and while neither is an old-school grinder with exceptionally high shot tolerance (forget Borg or Nadal, the likes of Lendl, Wilander, Courier and Bruguera would've driven them crazy) the fact of the matter is Novak is just a tad better at this thing than Fed, and certainly has enough firepower to fall back on when necessary. And I do think today's result tips the scales more towards Djoko.
Now the longer version. Some of you jokers may have perused my closer look at
Novak's seasonal GW%s on clay, but since this is a more appropriate thread for those #s let's reproduce 'em here, including TBs but excluding DC stats and updated with last and this year's %s:
2004 - 44.9%
2005 - 54.5%
2006 - 58.0%
2007 - 54.4%
2008 - 61.4%
2009 - 60.3%
2010 - 58.7%
2011 - 63.0%
2012 - 57.6%
2013 - 59.2%
2014 - 60.6%
2015 - 62.2%
2016 - 60.0%
2017 - 56.8%
2018 - 56.8%
2019 - 59.6%
2020 - 61.9%
2021 - 61.5%
Career - 59.2%
So Djoker's
career average almost suffices for lifetime admission to the
60% Club. Apart from Rafa, Borg and probably Lendl I doubt any of the other multi-FOers comes close, which reinforces my observation that
Nole's day-to-day reliability is 2nd to none.
But what about Fed, you ask? Here are Fed's GW%s, again including TBs but excluding DC #s:
1998 - 40% (his very 1st tour-level match!)
1999 - 32.4%*
2000 - 45.1%
2001 - 51.0%
2002 - 54.2%**
2003 - 59.8%
2004 - 59.8%
2005 - 60.9%
2006 - 59.1%
2007 - 58.0%
2008 - 58.3%
2009 - 58.4%
2010 - 57.0%
2011 - 56.6%
2012 - 58.0%
2013 - 56.5%
2014 - 57.0%
2015 - 57.1%
2016 - 54.5%
2017 - N/A
2018 - N/A
2019 - 56.9%
2020 - N/A
2021 - 55.2%
Career - 56.7%
*An atypical error from
@slice serve ace when
he said the ATP counted aces and DFs twice for Slam matches from 1992-99. In fact
the '92 AO was spared this double counting and
'98 was the last year with distorted service/return stats for each of the four majors (hat tips to krosero). For '99 only the AO and Wimby were subjected to this bastardization, so
what you see on the ATP site for Fed's Slam debut (excluding qualifying rounds) vs. Rafter matches RG's official stats shown at the end of this Eurosport coverage:
**Match stats for Fed's 1st round vs. Zabaleta at '02 MC are missing from the ATP database (I've tried several other sites including TA and
TennisLive.net, but no cigar), and while I was able to fill in the overall GW% and get the correct seasonal % this lacuna is preventing moi from putting together a 100% complete overview of Fred's career. If you happen to be a die-hard fan with recorded footage of this match and willing to gather the service/return stats or just share the video, let me know. (Ditto his 2nd-rounder vs. Popp at '99 Basel and his Olympic matches at '00 Sydney and '04 Athens. I actually have most of his DC stats but choose to exclude them from these player comparisons for consistency's sake.)
So Fed actually cracks the all-important 60% only once without rounding up, and even his career-high of 60.9% in '05 just barely eclipses
Pistol's, Rios' and Murray's and falls short of Coria's and Ferrer's. Now the latter's lack of size and firepower does render this comparison rather moot, but at the very least it's fair to say Novak edges out Fed vs. the rest of the field.
Of course this is where the Federer camp point to the '11 FO SF and claim checkmate, and it also must be acknowledged that
'15 and '21 were easily the worst versions of Nadal. But we all know anyone can get hot for one match, or what happened in the '12 rematch. A more instructive comparison must surely be based on a bigger sample size, no?
So let's look at their deep runs at RG, defined here as SF or beyond. Novak's 1st (again the GW%s include TBs):
2007 - 54.9%
2008 - 58.7%
2011 - 60.1%
2012 - 59.5%
2013 - 59.0%
2014 - 60.7%
2015 - 60.9%
2016 - 64.9%
2019 - 63.0%
2020 - 62.1%
2021 - 62.2%
As you can see Nole's best %s have come mostly in his 30s, which does support the idea that we're stuck with a truly godawful men's field at the moment, but then he has flirted with the 60% mark before so you know the guy was a legit FO contender at least since '08.
Now Fed's #s:
2005 - 61.1%
2006 - 59.9%
2007 - 59.0%
2008 - 57.1%
2009 - 58.4%
2011 - 58.7%
2012 - 57.3%
2019 - 57.3%
As you can see the one big outlier here is '16 Djoker vs. a gimme draw, why I keep telling y'all that
Fed or even Nole ain't beating peak Bruguera or Courier most of the time on terre battue. That said Novak still holds the edge at RG, if perhaps not big enough to withstand Fed firing on all cylinders a la '06 Rome or '11 RG.
Hence the party line about Fed having a higher "peak," but as I like to say what really matters especially on clay is not
how high but how often/long, and it's clear Novak's superior grinding game makes him the better dirtballer. I do think these two would be close peak to peak, but against the whole field you'd be wise to pick Djoker.
