The GOAT phenomenon

[1stVolley]

Countless threads on this forum have been devoted to arguing about who is the real tennis GOAT (and related questions like who is the best of the big 3). Lately even a new twist has appeared: should we include a player's doubles record in determining the GOAT or the #1 of the big 3 status? The most common criterion used for GOAT is, of course, the # of slams won. Folks who don't think Federer is the GOAT simply dispute the simplicity of that measure by pointing out things like his H2H against some of his rivals. It does seem odd that a GOAT would not have a winning H2H record against his rivals, but there you go.

The obvious conclusion is that there is no real tennis GOAT just like there is no prettiest flower or best tennis racquet. It is easy to pick out a GOAT. Likely everyone reading this thread has his own choice or different reasons for agreeing with a particular choice. What is intractable is determining just what GOAT means in tennis. And here there is no universally accepted answer. I don't think this is an accident peculiar to tennis. It is in the very nature of the idea of "greatest." It is easy to be sloppy with determining who is really good. But 'greatest' does not allow of any fuzziness. There is only one 'greatest'.

So, given this situation, why don't we just adopt the idea that there are a very few, select players who stand out from their competitors? The dividing line for this selection is somewhat fuzzy of course but we don't have to abandon the idea of a select group just because of this. But, if you can't get universal agreement on what a tennis GOAT means then you should either drop the whole concept or admit that there are as many GOATS as different opinions about what a tennis GOAT is.

I suspect that the reason we don't deep six the concept of a tennis GOAT is that doing so is like saying there is something incomprehensible, even meaningless, about competition. After all, if you gather all kinds of match and career statistics and then hit a brick wall in the attempt to order these objectively from best to worst, it is like admitting that the apparently clean division between winning and losing in tennis isn't so clean at bottom. And this realization is something we don't seem able to live comfortably with. We abhor what can't be ordered or somehow grouped like nature abhors a vacuum.

 

[BeatlesFan]

Consider McEnroe (with Fleming) won 78 doubles titles, including 9 slams. Rosewall and Laver also won countless doubles titles.

But Mac seems judged solely on his singles results and 7 slams. If he had 8 slams and was tied with Lendl, Agassi and Connors, it's very doubtful his doubles results would vault him over any of the other three. Sad, but true.

 

[Deleted member 768841]

SinneGOAT

 

[1stVolley]

Consider McEnroe (with Fleming) won 78 doubles titles, including 9 slams. Rosewall and Laver also won countless doubles titles.

But Mac seems judged solely on his singles results and 7 slams. If he had 8 slams and was tied with Lendl, Agassi and Connors, it's very doubtful his doubles results would vault him over any of the other three. Sad, but true.

The only sense I can make of this treatment of doubles is that doubles isn't considered the same sport as singles. It's like the response that would come from most of us to including pickleball results with tennis results for players who do both sports.