What's all this prime, pre-prime, baby, old man crap?

[kragster]

First off, defining prime itself is an argument that can't be won. I can claim that Tsonga's prime was from Jan-Feb 08 and hence Nadal can never beat prime Tsonga!Whether Fed is a better player than Nole is defined a lot more by his 16 slams vs whatever Nole ends up with rather than by the fact that 'old man Fed almost beat prime Nole at USO' because then one could counter argue that' baby Nole almost beat prime Fed at USO 07 if not for choking away the leads in the first 2 set'

At the end of the day, irrespective of what phase a player is in, every player will go through all 3 phases - pre prime, prime and post prime. Thus if 2 players meet a fair number of times then at the end things will even out because the older player in his prime should initially win matches against the pre-prime younger player but as he gets older he will start to lose matches when the younger player enters his prime. Or you might have a case where there is only a little over lap (like post prime Sampras met pre prime Fed only once). Fed, Nadal and Djokovic have all won matches against each other right from the time they started meeting all the way until 2010-2011. This to me says that in terms of the matchup, prime Fed, prime Nole and prime Rafa are not very far off in level. I don't think any of them would have a more than 70% probability of beating the other. Of course in terms of overall greatness, that will be decided by slam tally, weeks at no 1, win loss % etc.

 

[jokinla]

Like almost every thread here, the prime debates are just something for people to debate endlessly, with everyone claiming they know that blah blah blah, it's all a big waste of cyberspace and time, but we have to pass the time somehow.

 

[FeroBango]

This thread from 2011 is an amazing showcase of people never changing. We've all been the same since forever. 39 years later, we'll continue to discuss Tennis with similar hyperbolic confidence and hypotheticals.

 

[Razer]

First off, defining prime itself is an argument that can't be won. I can claim that Tsonga's prime was from Jan-Feb 08 and hence Nadal can never beat prime Tsonga!Whether Fed is a better player than Nole is defined a lot more by his 16 slams vs whatever Nole ends up with rather than by the fact that 'old man Fed almost beat prime Nole at USO' because then one could counter argue that' baby Nole almost beat prime Fed at USO 07 if not for choking away the leads in the first 2 set'

At the end of the day, irrespective of what phase a player is in, every player will go through all 3 phases - pre prime, prime and post prime. Thus if 2 players meet a fair number of times then at the end things will even out because the older player in his prime should initially win matches against the pre-prime younger player but as he gets older he will start to lose matches when the younger player enters his prime. Or you might have a case where there is only a little over lap (like post prime Sampras met pre prime Fed only once). Fed, Nadal and Djokovic have all won matches against each other right from the time they started meeting all the way until 2010-2011. This to me says that in terms of the matchup, prime Fed, prime Nole and prime Rafa are not very far off in level. I don't think any of them would have a more than 70% probability of beating the other. Of course in terms of overall greatness, that will be decided by slam tally, weeks at no 1, win loss % etc.

This is what I always say as well.

Peaks/Primes/who is better will determined by who got more slams, not by subjective nonsense.

 

[mahatma]

This was quite a rational OP back in the day. No wonder it had near no responses lol

 

[Underdog]

This thread from 2011 is an amazing showcase of people never changing. We've all been the same since forever. 39 years later, we'll continue to discuss Tennis with similar hyperbolic confidence and hypotheticals.

We’ll be discussing whether Tsitsipas, Ruud or Zverev is the goat