True, all these people are better on HC.
Coincidentally Federer won the bulk of his grass and HC titles before they peaked,
Umm Fed's beaten peak Hewitt,Nalby,Roddick,Agassi to name a few very able HCers. It's funny you suggest HC given that it's the one surface which has been most competitive over the last decade.
As far as grass goes, he faced peak Roddick in Wimby finals who would've won against anyone else other than Fed, he also beat Sampras playing his OWN game, beaten Hewitt too a former Wimby champion and plenty of big servers on his way to his 7 Wimby crowns. So the grass field is still better than the joke clay field where the closest resemblance to a pure claycourter is freakin Nicholas Almagro who is a certified headcase.
and even managed to lose to a weak CC era GOAT on grass and HCs.
Ralph is the worst possible matchup for Fed and he's lost like 99% to him on slow surfaces(slow HC+ clay),Dubai 06 being the lone exception. Fed has schooled him on quicker surfaces and Ralph would've got beaten handily had they met at the USO in Fed's peak years. Why didn't Ralph hold up his end of the deal when Fed was showing up in virtually every clay court final? That H2H is misleading when scrutinised.
If there is no CC competition and Federer's managed to get to major finals, then that must be because he had no competition. Federer should be removed from all CC GOAT discussions.
Fed's never been in CC GOAT discussions in the first place so I have no hangups if you wanna exclude him,feel free to do so. Fed's legacy has never been built on clay anyway, he's happy he got his lone RG to complete the career slam and that's about it.
OTOH, Ralph's entire resume crumbles since 70-80% of his titles are on clay in an extremely weak clay era. Seriously the only true claycourter he beat was Coria in Rome 05 when Coria was a mentally broken player since that RG 04 loss and even then their match went to a tight 5 set finish.
See how that line of thinking doesn't work? If records are everything as Fed fans would have us believe (which incidentally I agree with), then don't adopt a separate standard for Nadal and then dismiss it when talking about Federer.
Records aren't everything, not in my book anyway so we have a fundamental difference of principle here. Fed is GOAT in my book not for his 17 slams or his plethora of records but because of the way he plays the game, the man is the most complete player I've ever seen and has beaten players at their own games as opposed to standing in the corner of the court and hitting 99% of shots to his opponent's BH,exploiting a broken game mechanic to the hilt. Commentators were calling him a potential GOAT when he had won only 5 slams, no other player has had that kindof praise showered on them in the current era.
I dare you to name a more versatile player than Fed whose game is relevant across all surfaces and across multiple eras. His game can nicely translate with a wooden racquet as well so he'd do fine in the 60 and 70s as well.
