History beckons Novak Djokovic

SystemicAnomaly said:
Shouting (CAPS) isn’t going to make your point any more valid.

The world is black & white for you isn’t it? Let’s ignore the details and what the AC/AO events of her era really were — small glorified local events with only a handful of international competitors.
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WRONG, AGAIN!
 
It’s nuts to compare the men and women records. Except for the rules everything else is different. In no other sport is this Fed vs Serena or Novak vs Serena even done. Some of the bums in the media started this crap for clicks and now it’s become mainstream. Court or Graf or Serena, take your pick are Goats on the women’s side.
 
nolefam_2024 said:
Court's domination is indeed brutal and probably better than Martina's who is most dominant of all time. Court definitely belongs at least in top 3 over Martina. Court graf Serena.
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Lol. Court appears in the GOAT of women's tennis debates in 4th or 5th place behind Navrátilová, Graf & Serena, and for good reasons. The first reason is that she played at the turn of the amateur and professional era, so her triumphs before 1968 is given a lower value, secondly, AO in her time had weak game fields, consisting of domestic tennis players with a few exceptions.
 
Enceladus said:
Lol. Court appears in the GOAT of women's tennis debates in 4th or 5th place behind Navrátilová, Graf & Serena, and for good reasons. The first reason is that she played at the turn of the amateur and professional era, so her triumphs before 1968 is given a lower value, secondly, AO in her time had weak game fields, consisting of domestic tennis players with a few exceptions.
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By that logic nobody from Court's time could ever be in GWOAT debate no matter how dominant. She could only beat who was in front of her and dominated like no other since then. BTW, during Nav and Evert times, depth was also nothing to write home about.
 
SystemicAnomaly said:
Shouting (CAPS) isn’t going to make your point any more valid.

The world is black & white for you isn’t it? Let’s ignore the details and what the AC/AO events of her era really were — small glorified local events with only a handful of international competitors.
Click to expand...

Problem is everybody eventually gets outdated with time.

Today's Nobel prize winners in physics know more about physics than Einstein.
Today's automobile engineering graduates know more about automobiles than Leonardo Da Vinci

Eventually that day will also come when engineering graduates know more than Einstein did in his time... So what ? .... One can only be as advanced as his/her time.

You are right in saying that Court's slams or the pre open era dinosaurs' slams on the men's tour are not comparable to the current ones level wise, but where do we draw the line ? Court is still alive, as long as she is alive and people who saw her are alive, probably her legacy should live.... If her name was listed on the Guinness book of records in 1990s as the women's slams record holder then the blame should go to the media for side-lining her and phasing her out so quickly.
 
Sport said:
In fact, Court did face the best players of her time at the AO. This is a list of multiple Grand Slam winners who participated at the Australian Open between 1960 and 1975:

1. Lesley Turner Bowrey (2 times Grand Slam winner): participated in 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1975.
2. Evonne Goolagong Cawley (14 times Grand Slam winner): participated in 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972 1973, 1974, and 1975.
3. Maria Bueno (7 times Grand Slam winner): participated in 1960 and 1965.
4. Billie Jean King (11 times Grand Slam winner): participated in 1965, 1968 and 1969.

This is Court's H2H at the Australian Open over other multiple Grand Slam winners of her time:

Court leads Bowrey 2-0.
Court leads Goolagong 4-0.
Court leads Bueno 2-0.
Court leads Jean-King 2-1.

Total= Court leads 10-1 the H2H over multiple Grand Slam winners.

In sum, the best players of Court's time did participate at the AO. Court never participated at the AO without having at least one multiple Grand Slam winner in the draw. Court leads the H2H over multiple Grand Slam winners 10-1. That's brutal domination and strongly suggests that is has nothing to do with a supposed "weak competition". Court was simply the best. I repeat, she leads 10-1 the H2H over multiple Grand Slam winners.

Logico-methodological conclusion: Court has 24 Grand Slams and is the women's GOAT.
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Bowrey and Goolagong are Aussies themselves, so to build on them the argument that AO in Marge Court' era didn't have a weak playing field is out the point. It is only natural that they participated in their home Grand Slam tournament.

Foreign female tennis players participated sporadically in the AO in the 1960s. This is an obvious fact when one goes through the draws of individual years of AO in the 1960s on Wikipedia. That alone devalues the value of the tournament at the time.
 
BorgTheGOAT said:
By that logic nobody from Court's time could ever be in GWOAT debate no matter how dominant. She could only beat who was in front of her and dominated like no other since then. BTW, during Nav and Evert times, depth was also nothing to write home about.
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It's cruel, but it's true. E.g. Helen Wills isn't mentioned at all in GOAT debates, even though she won 19 grandslams, that was a record for the women's game before Marge Court. Her achievements are seen as inferior, because she achieved them in conditions of amateur competition.
 
Enceladus said:
It's cruel, but it's true. E.g. Helen Wills isn't mentioned at all in GOAT debates, even though she won 19 grandslams, that was a record for the women's game before Marge Court. Her achievements are seen as inferior, because she achieved them in conditions of amateur competition.
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Where to draw the line then? You mentioned Navratilova. Well, there wasn't exactly depth during her time either and she nevertheless "only" managed 18 slams. This being said: for GOAT candidates and ATGs discussions, depth of the field is anyways a little overrated. The presence of other ATGs or even GWOAT candidates (like in Nav's case) is way tougher to battle than depth of the field. Fed would have rather had 3 or 4 more Roddick/Hewitt like opponents than Nadal. As for Court: She had to battle Bueno, Goolagong, King, Wade, Evert etc. Do not see that she had it much easier than others.
 
Whatever we think about the mixing of men's and women's records, at all subsequent Grand Slams (not only this year's AO) there is a possibility that the male record holder in the number of Grand Slam triumphs will have more titles than the Grand Slam leader of the women's game. And this is something that will happen in the history of tennis first time since 1925, when the French Open was promoted to the Grand Slam category and when Bill Tilden had 1 more title than Suzanne Lenglen and Molla Bjurstedt Mallory (record holders at the time). From 1929 to 2023, the women's Grand Slam record holder always had more triumphs than the men's Grand Slam record holder. Djokovic can thus rewrite history in this special way.
 
BorgTheGOAT said:
Where to draw the line then? You mentioned Navratilova. Well, there wasn't exactly depth during her time either and she nevertheless "only" managed 18 slams. This being said: for GOAT candidates and ATGs discussions, depth of the field is anyways a little overrated. The presence of other ATGs or even GWOAT candidates (like in Nav's case) is way tougher to battle than depth of the field. Fed would have rather had 3 or 4 more Roddick/Hewitt like opponents than Nadal. As for Court: She had to battle Bueno, Goolagong, King, Wade, Evert etc. Do not see that she had it much easier than others.
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The year 1968 is the demarcation line of tennis. All titles prior to this date are treated as inferior. That is the consensus of the tennis community, which I share.

As for Navratilova, she had a huge competitor in Evert, which they played 80 matches against each other, including 60 tournament finals and 22 meetings at majors. This is the greatest rivalry in women's tennis. In addition to Evert, Navratilova faced Graf, Mandlikova, Austin, with Goolagong in the early stage of her career and Seles or Sanchez Vicario in the later stage. Navratilova faced in her time tough competitors in a fully professional competition.
 
Sport said:
In fact, Court did face the best players of her time at the AO. This is a list of multiple Grand Slam winners who participated at the Australian Open between 1960 and 1975:

1. Lesley Turner Bowrey (2 times Grand Slam winner): participated in 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1975.
2. Evonne Goolagong Cawley (14 times Grand Slam winner): participated in 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972 1973, 1974, and 1975.
3. Maria Bueno (7 times Grand Slam winner): participated in 1960 and 1965.
4. Billie Jean King (11 times Grand Slam winner): participated in 1965, 1968 and 1969.

This is Court's H2H at the Australian Open over other multiple Grand Slam winners of her time:

Court leads Bowrey 2-0.
Court leads Goolagong 4-0.
Court leads Bueno 2-0.
Court leads Jean-King 2-1.

Total= Court leads 10-1 the H2H over multiple Grand Slam winners.

In sum, the best players of Court's time did participate at the AO. Court never participated at the AO without having at least one multiple Grand Slam winner in the draw. Court leads the H2H over multiple Grand Slam winners 10-1. That's brutal domination and strongly suggests that is has nothing to do with a supposed "weak competition". Court was simply the best. I repeat, she leads 10-1 the H2H over multiple Grand Slam winners.

Logico-methodological conclusion: Court has 24 Grand Slams and is the women's GOAT.
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Your number of slam counts are wrong, Sport!
 
Enceladus said:
Whatever we think about the mixing of men's and women's records, at all subsequent Grand Slams (not only this year's AO) there is a possibility that the male record holder in the number of Grand Slam triumphs will have more titles than the Grand Slam leader of the women's game. And this is something that will happen in the history of tennis first time since 1925, when the French Open was promoted to the Grand Slam category and when Bill Tilden had 1 more title than Suzanne Lenglen and Molla Bjurstedt Mallory (record holders at the time). From 1929 to 2023, the women's Grand Slam record holder always had more triumphs than the men's Grand Slam record holder. Djokovic can thus rewrite history in this special way.
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That is quite remarkable
 
Hope he does it so that the idiot feminists journalists at NPR don't think that Serena is the best tennis player to have ever played the game.
 
Gizo said:
Clearly men's and women's records should be viewed separetely to each other. I think that combined lists are utterly ridiculous - another reason I dislike them is that they result in a lower number of both male and female players actually being included and recognised.

Still it was previously always a given that pretty much all of the major records, i.e. most majors, most titles at individual major events, most weeks as world no. 1 on the ranking computer, most year end no. 1 finishes etc., would be numerically higher on the women's side than men's, given that men's tennis traditionally had significantly more depth in the field (understandably so as it had a big head start in many areas), and was more impacted by politics in terms of amateur vs. professional splits, bans, boycotts etc.

Previously, and strictly within the realms of singles, I definitely wasn't expecting to see any male players:

- Winning the same no. of majors overall as Graf (Nadal), let alone Court (Djokovic), with of course the latter having a great opportunity to end up with a higher total.
- Winning 4 more majors on clay than Evert did (Nadal).
- Winning more titles at an individual major than Navratilova won at Wimbledon (both Nadal and Djokovic), let alone 3 more titles than Court won at Kooyong (Nadal) with Djokovic also standing a good chance of equalling that mark this month.
- Spending at least 32 more weeks as the world no. 1 on the ATP ranking computer than Graf did on the WTA computer (Djokovic).
- Achieving the same number of ranking computer year end no. 1 finishes as Graf (Djokovic), and even if you look beyond the Seles stabbing, I’d say that Graf's year end no. 1 finish in 1994 (Sanchez clearly was the player of the year record-wise IMO), was ‘weaker' than any of Djokovic's.

It still feels surreal to me.
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IMO in the big picture there's nothing surreal about all that. At least if we only look at the era since 1968. Of course the split of tours was a factor before.

But after that it was rather surprising that women's numbers were higher, because there is no real reason for it. Dominance over the field is and always was a relative thing, so not related to either ATP or WTA as such. In hindsight it simply was a coincidence that the Court, Graf, Navratilova, Evert group came earlier in the timeline than Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.

And we shouldn't forget that if there was a Open Era in the 60s (when Court started), then Laver and Rosewall would both have close to 20 Slams either. So everything quite balanced.

It also seems like the top men rather tended to skip the Australian Open until the mid-80s than the top women. Then we have Borg who deliberately missed out on both longevity AND Australia. Otherwise he could have won 20 Slams either.

And last but not least there is the Best of 5 factor. It's simply easier to dominate there. For example I guess Serena would have easily beaten Vinci/Penetta and won the CYGS if not for the huge pressure of Best of 3.

So all in all the record until 2009 was surprisingly low, not the Big 3 records surprisingly high. Sampras' record was the first true mark at all in many ways, and one with extreme flaws and limits. IMO now after 50 years there's simply a big enough sample size to have ATP and WTA on somewhat equal terms in that regard. So if we might say so, the Big 3 simply HAD TO COME at some point. It was statistically expectable. Only that they all arrived almost at EXACTLY the same time was a coincidence.
 
Hitman said:
Court won her 24th slam in 1973, over 50 years ago, but retired in 1977. Regardless of her form, she would have always been playing for the 25th until she retired.

Now, 47 years later, another has risen to compete for the elusive 25th slam. History beckons Novak Djokovic every time he will step into a slam from now on.

The last time it was possible, Borg was Wimbledon champion during it's 100 year anniversary.

Djokovic will always now be on the verge of one the most iconic achievements in sporting history. The explosive climax and the final chapter of one of the greatest eras is about to begin. Next time on Dragonball Z.

Peugeot_BetterSensations16.jpg
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He is the ultimate champ. Probably the most versatile player in history . . . and probably the greatest as well. But he needs four more slams to overtake Ken Rosewall for most total majors.
 
Aussie Darcy said:
Disrespectful to Djokovic to compare his achievements to the troll that is Court. Almost half of her slams were when players didn't even bother coming to Australia and 3 of them she only played 4 matches... weak.

Nobody considers Court as relevant in the GOAT conversation. Just frankly mean to Graf and Serena.
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Court won 24 legitimate slams, 193 total tournaments, has the highest winning % of ANY other player since 1960, at least. She also has the highest winning % of slams entered. All major slam winners have won slams against less than than ATG players, especially Graf. There is no such thing as the GOAT, IMO, but Court is in the GOAT group along with: Graf, Evert, Navratilova, Serena and Lenglen,Wills and Connolly before them. To say otherwis is either due to personal hatred or ignorance.
 
Fedfans, who are you for, Alcaraz or Djokovic? Djokovic might get his 8th, but that might be his last!

Alcaraz will be there for who knows how many years! Even with a stout opponent, he might get 10 or more.
 
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