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Hall of Fame
"Was it the greatest year ever in men’s tennis? Let’s repair to the parlor and play the game. John McEnroe had an incredible year in 1984, losing only three times and winning ninety-six per cent of his matches. But he avoided clay, his weakest surface, playing only two matches on the dirt and losing the French Open, devastatingly, after going up two sets against his arch-rival, Ivan Lendl. Jimmy Connors went 99-4 in 1974, but was barred from playing the French Open because of his involvement with World Team Tennis. Roger Federer reached all four Grand Slam finals in 2006, won twelve titles overall, and lost only five matches. Four of those losses were on clay to Rafael Nadal (the other was in Cincinnati to eighteen-year-old Andy Murray). A remarkable season, and most observers consider it the second-greatest in the modern history of the men’s game—second only to Rod Laver’s accomplishing the Grand Slam in 1969, something that no other Open-era men’s player has done. But neither Federer nine years ago nor Laver at the beginning of the Open era faced the competition or had to play the kind of grueling tennis Djokovic did to accomplish what he did this year. Of the Top Ten players in 2006 that Federer faced, only two had Grand Slam wins: Nadal, who dominated him, and Andy Roddick, who had won one Slam. Others who finished in the Top Ten that year included Ivan Ljubičić, Fernando González, and Mario Ančić (remember him?). The Golden Age had yet to arrive. And while Federer had some year, he accumulated only about half the A.T.P. point total Djokovic just amassed. To say that Laver also had an easier time of it in 1969 is, of course, to get more speculative. True, Laver played doubles as well as singles back then, and, because the tiebreak to settle a set tied at 6–6 was not yet part of most tournaments, he occasionally found himself grinding out sets 12–10 or 22–20. But men’s tennis then was serve and volley, with points usually over in three or four shots, if that. The game was not as physical and fast—as athletic—as today’s game. And the draws were not talent-deep: tennis was dominated by the Australians and the Americans and was not yet a truly global sport. This year, against much tougher competition, Djokovic—the son of a Serbian pizza-parlor owner—went 30–5 against Top Ten players, including 6–1 against the world No. 2 (Murray), and ended the season in London at the A.T.P. World Finals by beating Nadal in the semis and Federer in the finals, each in straight sets—something no player had ever done."
http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/no-athlete-had-a-better-2015-than-novak-djokovic
http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/no-athlete-had-a-better-2015-than-novak-djokovic
