Fed more consistent than Nadal?

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drm025

Hall of Fame
Of course the popular and most likely correct opinion is that Federer is a more consistent player than Nadal. However, there are different ways you can define consistency. If we simply look at finals appearances, we see something contrary to the popular opinion.

Federer
Total Tournaments: 294
Finals: 120 or 41%
Titles: 79 (80 with win today) or 27%
Win-Loss Pct: 81%

Total Slams: 63
Finals: 25 or 40%
Titles: 17 or 27%
Win-Loss Pct: 86%

Nadal
Total Tournaments: 197
Finals: 92 or 47%
Titles: 64 or 32%
Win-Loss Pct: 84%

Total Slams: 39
Finals: 20 or 51%
Titles: 14 or 36%
Win-Loss Pct: 88%

So, in all tournaments and slams alone, Nadal makes the final a higher percentage of the time and wins a higher percentage of the time while having a higher win-loss percentage. I'm sure that Federer must be more consistent at making semis and quarters, but does that make him undoubtedly the more consistent player?

Sure, Nadal's health has not allowed him to have as consistent participation as Federer, but I don't think that is relevant to his tennis when he is playing.

I'm sure the word "clay" will be popular in this thread, but what I'm talking about is overall consistency. That means counting all surfaces for both players.
 
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What if Federer only played Halle and Wimbledon? How consistent would he be then? :lol:

Get real. Nadal is not consistent, and skipping tournaments doesn't work in your favor in any way. It's worse than 1st Round losses.
 
Two things separated Fed from Nadal.

1. Fed has been blessed with near PERFECT health his entire career and hasn't had to miss any extended time or slam opportunities. While Nadal had to endure injuries and time away from the game at the peak of his Powers in 2009 and later on.

2. Nadal has had to beat Fed,Murrray, Djoker to win damn near ALL 14 of his slams. And Peak Djoker stopped him as well.

WHile Fed had a nice little vacation cream cakewalk by coming along at the perfect time during a transitional era with Old Sampras era holdover Agassi, and pre prime Nada/Djoker.
 
90's Clay said:
Two things separated Fed from Nadal.

1. Fed has been bless with near PERFECT health his entire career. While Nadal had to endure injuries and time away from the game at the peak of his Powers in 2009 and later on.

2. Nadal has had to beat Fed,Murrray, Djoker to win damn near ALL 14 of his slams.

WHile Fed had a nice little vocational cream cakewalk by coming along at the perfect time during a transitional era with Old Sampras era holdover Agassi, and pre prime Nada/Djoker
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What about Sampras? He had a black hole era where he could beat up on mugs and his biggest "rival" :lol: was off doing meth and shopping wigs :lol:
 
Guess it is that time of the month that you have to start the same topic again.

Why dont you give the breakup by surface if you have what it takes ?
 
tennisaddict said:
Guess it is that time of the month that you have to start the same topic again.

Why dont you give the breakup by surface if you have what it takes ?
Click to expand...

You need to understand that overall consistency includes all surfaces, which I already stated. Nadal is just way closer to Fed on grass and hard than Fed is to Nadal on clay.

And again, I have never made a thread about Nadal and Fed's consistency. Never seen this numbers before. Just came up with these numbers today.
 
Federer has played 1200 matches

Nadal has played 840 matches.

Can we look at how consistent Nadal is when he reaches 1200 ?
 
Mayonnaise said:
What about Sampras? He had a black hole era where he could beat up on mugs and his biggest "rival" :lol: was off doing meth and shopping wigs :lol:
Click to expand...



Does it matter? Its not like Agassi could handle Pete at Wimbledon and the USO anyways:shock: Never beat him at both.

Unlike The Fed/Nadal situation. Where it was imperative that Nadal was off the radar with injuries enabling him to win more slams.
 
Win-Loss Break up by surface

Federer :

Hard - 0.825
Clay - 0.764
Grass - 0.873
Carpet - 0.725

Nadal :
Hard - 0.781
Clay - 0.93
Grass - 0.779
Carpet - 0.250
 
The reason is that Fed accumulated quite a few losses for years till he hit his stride.
That brought his totals down for the complete career record.

It does count though and is in the books.
 
90's Clay said:
Does it matter? Its not like Agassi could handle Pete at Wimbledon and the USO anyways:shock: Never beat him at both.

Unlike The Fed/Nadal situation. Where it was imperative that Nadal was off the radar with injuries enabling him to win more slams.
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Sampras won his AOs with Agassi not even being in the draw. And it was great that he was losing to mugs in the 1st Round of French Open or he would be destroyed by Agassi at the French Open :lol: Some champion! He really did dominate his "rival"! By being a useless mug on Clay! :lol:
 
Mayonnaise said:
Sampras won his AOs with Agassi not even being in the draw. And it was great that he was losing to mugs in the 1st Round of French Open or he would be destroyed by Agassi at the French Open :lol: Some champion! He really did dominate his "rival"! By being a useless mug on Clay! :lol:
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Agassi wasn't beating 1994 or 1997 Sampras at the Australian. Pete was zoning at Both AO's. Hell, Agassi barely beat an injured Sampras in 2000 there and Pete was playing far better in '94 and '97 than he was in 2000
 
Wouldn't a better measurement be Rafa through age 28 and Fed through age 28? At this point, Fed has nearly five years on Rafa, and those five years are not exactly his peak level, so he's of course less consistent.

Maybe Rafa's numbers would be better still, but I think it would at least be a better comparison.
 
tennisaddict said:
Win-Loss Break up by surface

Federer :

Hard - 0.825
Clay - 0.764
Grass - 0.873
Carpet - 0.725

Nadal :
Hard - 0.781
Clay - 0.93
Grass - 0.779
Carpet - 0.250
Click to expand...

Federer beats Nadal on
- Hard
- Grass
- Carpet

Nadal beats Fed just on clay.

Nadal plays 42% of his matches on clay and wins 93% of them .

Whichever way you spin it , clay boy is clay boy.

Let us look for consistency outside of clay.
 
90's Clay said:
Agassi wasn't beating 1994 or 1997 Sampras at the Australian. Pete was zoning at Both AO's. Hell, Agassi barely beat an injured Sampras in 2000 there and Pete was playing far better in '94 and '97 than he was in 2000
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Sampras never beat Agassi on Rebound Ace. What makes you think he'd beat him? Oh yes, bias :lol:

Agassi wasn't even in the draw. And he was the best AO player of that era. Sampras lucked out with 2 of his Slams.
 
Edit post. The higher win-loss by Nadal. Can we get some figures of Federer and Nadal after their first slam wins?
 
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tennisaddict said:
Federer beats Nadal on
- Hard
- Grass
- Carpet

Nadal beats Fed just on clay.

Nadal plays 42% of his matches on clay and wins 93% of them .

Whichever way you spin it , clay boy is clay boy.

Let us look for consistency outside of clay.
Click to expand...

I'm not interested in consistency off of clay, I'm interested in overall consistecy.
 
RoddickAce said:
Edit post. The higher win-loss by Nadal. Can we get some figures of Federer and Nadal after their first slam wins?
Click to expand...

Then it wouldn't be an overall win-loss percentage.

All that does is discount the fact that Nadal matured earlier. That is a credit to him.
 
tennisaddict said:
Federer beats Nadal on
- Hard
- Grass
- Carpet

Nadal beats Fed just on clay.

Nadal plays 42% of his matches on clay and wins 93% of them .

Whichever way you spin it , clay boy is clay boy.

Let us look for consistency outside of clay.
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well carpet is irrelevant due to such a small sample size...as for the other surfaces.....yes Fed has a little higher on hard, a reasonable amount higher on grass and nadal has a massive amount higher on clay. So overall pretty close. Given Nadal has 5 slams off clay and has made 11 slam finals off clay it's a bit ridiculous to call him a clay specialist. he's an all surface player who is best at rg but still an all surface player. most of his finals at slams have been off clay. he's just bumped into Fed twice at wim in his prime and djoko 3 times during his peak 11-12 period.
 
According to the OP's definition of consistency, yes Nadal has been more consistent, but the following must be added: 'Because of clay'.
 
fed is awesome.. so glad to have watched him play..but fed was most consistent in losing to nadal..so glad they had each other to contrast their legacies.. very lucky are the fans of this game these last ten years
 
BigServer1 said:
Wouldn't a better measurement be Rafa through age 28 and Fed through age 28? At this point, Fed has nearly five years on Rafa, and those five years are not exactly his peak level, so he's of course less consistent.

Maybe Rafa's numbers would be better still, but I think it would at least be a better comparison.
Click to expand...


My thoughts exactly..

Strangely enough the OP seems to completely ignore this logical reasoning..
 
Federer has played in a lot more tournaments. Nearly 100 more.

So that skews the numbers and frankly for Roger to even be close on some of those comparisons is a knock on Nadal.


Then again, I doubt Nadal plays long enough to drop his numbers too much so he'll get the Borg comparisons but his significant breaks during his prime years didn't help his legacy.
 
jelle v said:
My thoughts exactly..

Strangely enough the OP seems to completely ignore this logical reasoning..
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Im only trying to talk about up to this point. I just found it interesting because its widely accepted that Fed is way more consistent. Just trying to show it could be closer than we thought.
 
drm025 said:
Im only trying to talk about up to this point. I just found it interesting because its widely accepted that Fed is way more consistent. Just trying to show it could be closer than we thought.
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Had Fed retired after winning GS 16, his numbers would be much better. He's chosen to keep on playing, hence his diminishing percentages.

Should Rafa continue to play plenty of tournaments a year, he'd start getting the diminishing returns as well.
 
jelle v said:
My thoughts exactly..

Strangely enough the OP seems to completely ignore this logical reasoning..
Click to expand...

This particular poster does this quite a bit. He seems a little obsessed with percentages, but doesn't realize or conveniently ignores (I'm betting on this one because it suits his argument) the massive pitfalls of using percentages as metrics for everything.

This thread is basically analogous to saying Fed is mentally stronger than Nadal because he bounces back better after tough losses depending on which way you want to measure mental strength. It may have some truth in it, but not many are going to buy it because Nadal keeps his focus better point in and point out.

And for the record, I don't think Fed is mentally stronger than Nadal although I do think Federer's mental strength is supremely underrated and I said as much a couple days or so ago.
 
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drm025 said:
Im only trying to talk about up to this point. I just found it interesting because its widely accepted that Fed is way more consistent. Just trying to show it could be closer than we thought.
Click to expand...

Nadal seems more consistent because he skips his worst parts of the season regularly and never misses his best. I ask again, what would Federer's consistency be like if he only played Wimbledon, Halle, and Basel? Skipping tournaments is not consistency, and you can't discount them :lol:
 
Mayonnaise said:
Nadal seems more consistent because he skips his worst parts of the season regularly and never misses his best. I ask again, what would Federer's consistency be like if he only played Wimbledon, Halle, and Basel? Skipping tournaments is not consistency, and you can't discount them :lol:
Click to expand...

Nadal does not skip parts of the season regularly, thats an over exaggeration. Why are you asking for Fed's consistency in 3 tournaments? I'm counting all tournaments for each of them.

And about missing tournaments, sorry, but if you can't win, you can't lose either. If missing tournaments provides any sort of advantage, you would think other players would catch on right? No, because its a major risk to sacrifice playing time and throw away opportunities to win major tournaments especially when you are chasing history. The notion of nadal skipping tournaments to preserve H2H and win percentage is absurd.

I am speaking of consistency when actually playing. No tennis does not equal inconsistent tennis. The fact is that Nadal has made the final at almost half of all tournaments he has played in his career. Sounds consistent to me.
 
TennisEnvy said:
Actually no, his play on grass and hard actually hurt his consistency. His overall consistency is so good because of clay only.
Click to expand...

Yet with grass and hard both hurting his consistency, he still beats Fed.... So clearly Fed isn't consistent enough on his good surfaces to overcome Nadal.
 
drm025 said:
Nadal does not skip parts of the season regularly, thats an over exaggeration. Why are you asking for Fed's consistency in 3 tournaments? I'm counting all tournaments for each of them.

And about missing tournaments, sorry, but if you can't win, you can't lose either. If missing tournaments provides any sort of advantage, you would think other players would catch on right? No, because its a major risk to sacrifice playing time and throw away opportunities to win major tournaments especially when you are chasing history. The notion of nadal skipping tournaments to preserve H2H and win percentage is absurd.

I am speaking of consistency when actually playing. No tennis does not equal inconsistent tennis. The fact is that Nadal has made the final at almost half of all tournaments he has played in his career. Sounds consistent to me.
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Ahhh... So then where's Nadal now, and where was Nadal in 2012? Seriously, Nadal is not more consistent than Federer. Stop trying to convince everyone where there is little to no evidence.
 
drm025 said:
Yet with grass and hard both hurting his consistency, he still beats Fed.... So clearly Fed isn't consistent enough on his good surfaces to overcome Nadal.
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Now you're just trying to make it into a fanboy war because no one is buying your argument.

That's lame. Even your fellow Nadal fan (bullfan) has refuted one of your points. That should tell you something.
 
Steve0904 said:
This particular poster does this quite a bit. He seems a little obsessed with percentages, but doesn't realize or conveniently ignores (I'm betting on this one because it suits his argument) the massive pitfalls of using percentages as metrics for everything.

This thread is basically analogous to saying Fed is mentally stronger than Nadal because he bounces back better after tough losses depending on which way you want to measure mental strength. It may have some truth in it, but not many are going to buy it because Nadal keeps his focus better point in and point out.

And for the record, I don't think Fed is mentally stronger than Nadal although I do think Federer's mental strength is supremely underrated and I said as much a couple days or so ago.
Click to expand...

Percentages are the only way to compare different players. Otherwise a longer career would always be superior. Of course Fed has made more finals and won more tournaments because he's played much longer but that doesn't tell us much.

I never said comparing them at similar ages isn't a better comparison. That's why my conclusion based on these numbers is not that Nadal is more consistent than Federer. I believe the opposite, in fact. I'm just saying that if you look at their careers so far, it may be a little closer than everyone thought if you look at from the perspective of making finals.
 
drm025 said:
Percentages are the only way to compare different players. Otherwise a longer career would always be superior. Of course Fed has made more finals and won more tournaments because he's played much longer but that doesn't tell us much.

I never said comparing them at similar ages isn't a better comparison. That's why my conclusion based on these numbers is not that Nadal is more consistent than Federer. I believe the opposite, in fact. I'm just saying that if you look at their careers so far, it may be a little closer than everyone thought if you look at from the perspective of making finals.
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Oh, if you only knew how wrong you really are.
 
bullfan said:
Had Fed retired after winning GS 16, his numbers would be much better. He's chosen to keep on playing, hence his diminishing percentages.

Should Rafa continue to play plenty of tournaments a year, he'd start getting the diminishing returns as well.
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I don't disagree. Of course this can change.

Fed chose to keep on playing because he still wants to win more. Unfortunately, the price is losing more. Maybe Nadal will continue to play when he is less successful, maybe he won't.

Just thought these numbers were interesting when looking at their careers so far, considering that Fed is considered to be far more consistent than Nadal.
 
Steve0904 said:
Now you're just trying to make it into a fanboy war because no one is buying your argument.

That's lame. Even your fellow Nadal fan (bullfan) has refuted one of your points. That should tell you something.
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Tell me what my argument is, because I don't think you understand it.
 
Mayonnaise said:
What if Federer only played Halle and Wimbledon? How consistent would he be then? :lol:

Get real. Nadal is not consistent, and skipping tournaments doesn't work in your favor in any way. It's worse than 1st Round losses.
Click to expand...

So Rafa only plays two tournaments a season? When healthy, he plays as many or more than other top players so your argument is quite ridiculous. A more reasonable argument would be that Fed is quite a bit older and Rafa's percentage will decrease.
 
drm025 said:
Tell me what my argument is, because I don't think you understand it.
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I know your argument is illogical. Seriously, I've seen you make enough of these threads. You make them on purpose so you can go around in circles arguing about nothing, and obsessing over 2 or 3 pct points when in reality they mean next to nothing in any valid comparison.

I'm out. I know what these threads turn into. Nobody concedes a point and then we get a fanboy war. Some things have to be conceded, like the fact that Federer is simply more consistent than Nadal in the grand scheme of things. Just like Nadal is mentally stronger than Federer. I have no problem admitting that.

For further proof of said fanboy wars, just look at the post immediately below mine. Or better yet just look at the one I quoted from you. If that's not just blatantly trying to provoke someone then I'm not a Federer fan.
 
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