NatF
Bionic Poster
If we compare top players of 2004 versus top players of 2015 on who made it deeper in the biggest events, who do you think is going to come out on top?
Murray went through Anderson, Thiem, Berdych and then would face Ferrer without Djokovic in Miami. That draw is easily stronger than Roddick's in 2003. Djokovic didn't play his best in 2015 Canada final, but certainly didn't play badly, and Murray played quite well on the other hand winning the backhand battle that day. And yea I don't see Henman beating Murray at Miami. He barely scraped by Roddick and got crushed by Federer.
How can Pete be the barometer for facing the top 10 when we know he didn't take events outside of Slams and WTF that seriously and only won 11 Masters events in his career? It also was a different time and era compared to the one Federer and then Djokovic played in and much more polarized.
2015 Thiem? Really? lol. Carlos Moya and Coria were better than anyone Murray faced in his draw IMO - even including Coria's injury part way through the match. No clearly about it. Roddick probably played as well in Canada in 2004 as Murray did BTW, he just came against Federer on top of his game Also Murray got crushed by Djokovic in IW and even won less games than Henman, I guess that's better than getting crushed by Federer? Also if you haven't watched the IW match between Henman/Roddick it's fine to admit it btw. Like I said it was a high quality match, you say scraping by Roddick as if it's a negative thing - he only dropped one set to a peak in-form Roddick and won the final set 6-3 anyway. Some of this is match-ups but I don't see Djokovic routing that Roddick in straights and certainly not 2&3, so it was a very good win for Henman and one that is missing from Murray's IW campaign.
You talk about polarisation and then ignore that the mid-00's were somewhat more polarised than the mid 10's...Do you think Fed took masters titles that seriously? To the same degree as Djokovic? I also don't agree that consistency of the top 10 is the only way to measure strength of a year anyway, declining Ferrer/Berdych/Tsonga sitting comfortably in the top 10 is not what I call a strong year.