abmk
Bionic Poster
I did mention playing level as well there as well . That is mainly why I put kuerten over lendl/wilander though lendl/wilander were factors for more years.
I just meant to say h2h is not a very good parameter by itself.
Who is the Third Best Clay Court Player Ever?
- Thread starter Nadalgaenger
- Start date
I did mention playing level as well there as well . That is mainly why I put kuerten over lendl/wilander though lendl/wilander were factors for more years.
I just meant to say h2h is not a very good parameter by itself.
abmk
Bionic Poster
RFederer/NDjokovic are certainly not the third best clay-court players in world history. They aren't even in the top 100.
I agree . RNadal has been very lucky that these 2 bums are his main competition on clay.
BBorg's competition >> RNadal's ...
therefore BBorg > RNadal on clay
Feddy Kruegerer
Banned
I think you are being too narrow minded because you are just looking at results and ignoring context. Federer lost 5 RG finals to the best clay court player in history. Federer was a powerhouse on clay 6 or 7 years ago. It's just he was a step (or two) below the best ever. Context is everything.
Feddy Kruegerer
Banned
Yeah, and Baghdatis, Philippousis, old man Agassi, and Roddick are formidable slam final contenders. Riiiiiiiight...
abmk
Bionic Poster
Yeah, and Baghdatis, Philippousis, old man Agassi, and Roddick are formidable slam final contenders. Riiiiiiiight...
Feddy Kruegerer
Banned
Uh... Oh... LOL
RFederer/NDjokovic are certainly not the third best clay-court players in world history. They aren't even in the top 100.
Then this era must be the weakest clay court era of all time by at least a factor of 10...so Nadal's Roland Garros titles don't mean anything, He has won it 0.7 times.
kiki
Banned
Vilas won as many RG titles as Muster
Mustard
Bionic Poster
Overrated, eh? Show me another clay-court player who's gone 65-2 on clay in a calendar year and 111-5 over 2 calendar years? Muster concentrated his very best clay-court form in the years 1995 and 1996. Before 1995, he was a solid clay-courter capable of winning the biggest tournaments, but was inconsistent. 1995 and 1996, he was a beast on the clay. Another thing, during those dominant years on clay, he came close to losing many tight matches, yet always pulled them out through force of will.
abmk, Head to head is yet a significant parameter. I realize you still are attacking EVERY of my statements.
Guess you are eagerly waiting the whole day (and night) for my posts in order to contradict every single word of mine and to find a weak spot in my argumentation even if there is not such a weak spot. That's your kind of satisfaction...;-)
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jean pierre
Professional
Vilas won 2 Grand Slams on clay (FO + USO). And he has the record of tournaments won on clay.
kiki
Banned
ABMK has little knowledge of the past greats and eras
He even does know little from his great fellow countryman Vijay Amritraj
He is crush Ferrer though
abmk
Bionic Poster
delusions galore. :lol:
no one has to wait to find spots in your arguments. they are plenty enough.
Like I've said, if it is mainly about peak level of play, kuerten is clearly above laver on clay. bruguera, federer, courier, muster, vilas , lendl, wilander, laver etc I'd put on a similar level peak level wise.
N
Nathaniel_Near
Guest
Sampras is definitely up there, he reached a semi-final once at Roland Garros in the hardest clay era in history. Imagine him *today* instead.
abmk
Bionic Poster
I know much more about the past players than you do.
regarding ferrer, LOL, I don't even think ferrer is amongst the top 15 players from 2003 onwards ... just that he's better than the likes of solomon, dibbs, ramirez etc whom you keep parroting as the golden generation guys, LOL !
here are players better than ferrer from 2003 onwards :
federer, nadal , djokovic, older agassi, roddick, safin, murray, hewitt, delpo, nalbandian, berdych,tsonga, soderling, davydenko,coria, gaudio,ferrero etc etc .
abmk, I always hope that you improve your posts but alas...
I give you 100 Dollars for every weak spot in my arguments!
Your post has many flaws, about as many holes as backhand shanks of your idol...
Kuerten stronger than Laver on clay is about the strangest statement I ever heard of!!!!!
Kuerten won a French final against Magnus Norman. Laver won his finals against Rosewall and Emerson.
You probably value Kuerten (conceded an excellent claycourter but erratic) so high because he beat Federer in 2004 at Paris. But Roger is not a top ten claycourter!
Kuerten won only 69.9 percent of his clay matches. and 14 clay tournaments in all.
In comparison Laver won 77.1 % in open era which is after his peak. He won two French, two Italian and at least 37 tournaments. He was best claycourter as an amateur in 1962 and several years as a pro: 1963; arguably 1964; 1967; 1969' arguably 1970, 1971 and 1972. His 1971 Italian win against Kodes is worthy of a French Open (he did not enter Paris after 1969), also his 1970 win against Rosewall at Louisville and his1972 Houston win against Rosewall.
Rosewall was in great form in 1969 French Open (demolished Roche in the SFs) and yet lost to Laver in straight sets. In 1964 Laver crushed Rosewall 6-1,6-1 at Knokke on clay...
Lendl has a 81.4 % and won 28 clay events, among them 3 French Open plus 2 finals.
Vilas won 46 events and keeps a 79.8%.
Wilander won 20 tournaments and has a 74.7 % even though he had several years of decline.
GOAT Federer has won 10 claycourt tournaments and has a 76.9 percentage.
You claim that you know more than kiki about older times! LOL. I concede that you are knowing a lot about current tennis though.
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President
Legend
Very debatable that Gaudio, Tsonga, and Berdych are actually better players than Ferrer...
Andres
G.O.A.T.
But also won USO on clay. Against Connors.
kiki
Banned
Your post just exposes your complete nudity on golden tennis.You are so clueless about guys like Ramirez and Amritraj that is is not even funny.
I´ll admit, as I already have done so, that I am not a big follower on current tennis and I´ll concede that you probably know most about...another think of course is judgement, maturity and knowledge, of course.
if I had your poor " copy and paste" knowledge of the Golden Era as you have, me probbaly would try to lame and duck instead .
But, of course, you are entitled to have your own way as you like as much as you´re entitled to carry on your own agenda, which is basically belittle past great ( or just good players as Dibbs or Solomon, I never said they were the ice on the cake).
kiki, I agree that Ramirez was more talented than Ferrer. In 1976 he beat even Connors in Davis Cup in the deciding match!
I'd say Nadal's clearly number one, but an argument could be made for Rosewall over Borg. He was unfortunate to play several years of his career without a clay pro major, or his clay resume would look even better than it already does (and it looks great).
J
JRAJ1988
Guest
Ferrero and Albert Costa, Jim Courier where also pretty dangerous clay courters in there day right?
forzamilan90
Legend
I put Borg above him because what he accomplishes by that ripe mid twenties age is phenomental. Rosewall's accomplishments span a much larger time frame. Peak level it's clearly Borg>Rosewall.
N
NadalAgassi
Guest
I agree with many others in this thread that it is debateable if Borg is really the 2nd best clay courter of all time. He might be, but a strong case could be made for Rosewall to be 2nd best over him as well. Nadal is a chasm above the rest, but Borg and Rosewall for 2nd place is a toss up. Obviously the other is third best, although I guess one could make a case for Cochet and LaCoste too.
forzamilan90
Legend
While we're at it, let's nominate Max Decugis as well
abmk
Bionic Poster
not surprised at at this since you "think" nadal and djoker to have a much higher peak than federer :lol: :lol:
your posts are just as good as your idol's performances vs connors in 74 wimbledon and USO
umm, do you even realise what you are talking about ?
in 97 RG, kuerten went through muster, bruguera, medvedev, kafelnikov to win his first FO. That's a brutal draw.
in 2000 RG, he beat kafelnikov, ferrero and norman. Norman at that time was becoming an excellent claycourter. Only injuries stalled him big time.
in 2001 RG, kuerten beat kafelnikov, ferrero and corretja
no, it has to do with his peak level of play as mentioned in some of the instances above. 2004 RG match vs federer was just another of those instances
yeah, he could be erratic, but we were talking about peak level of play there
I will make a slightly more detailed post on this with facts/records.
rosewall played poorly in the RG 69 final and you know it
If you could read well, I already said overall, I'd place lendl and wilander over federer overall. But peak level of play, I don't see that much of a difference.
Vilas is on a similar level as federer. he used to get crushed by borg quite a bit. fed-nadal in contrast has been quite a bit more competitive. that and federer's superior record at RG more than make up for vilas having more titles.
federer could have won a lot more clay court tournaments if he chose to play the smaller ones. But his main focus has been RG and the masters events. At RG, since 2005, he's had 1 win, 4 finals ,2 semis and a QF. Out of his 10 clay court titles, one of them was RG, 6 of them were masters series, 4 at hamburg and 2 at madrid.
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abmk
Bionic Poster
I'd say his clay court game is a bit under-rated.
His HC game is rated just fine - he's the best of all time on HCs ...
abmk
Bionic Poster
amritraj was talented, but was wayyyyy too inconsistent. He didn't even make a slam semi. its you who is clueless about how inconsistent he was.
regarding ramirez , I was only talking about singles play, not about doubles. as a singles player, he's inferior to ferrer
ferrer just surpassed him in terms of no of titles , has a better % of winning @ majors , has made more major semis than ramirez and made the final of the masters beating nadal, djokovic and roddick, something that ramirez didn't do.
I'm not out on an agenda to belittle the past players. I rate them just right. I am just exposing your blatant over-rating of the players of the past.
Feddy Kruegerer
Banned
Anybody who claims Borg is not (at least) the second best clay court player ever deserves a free admission to the Brookhaven State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
Humble forehand
New User
This is the problem when comparing different eras, you always fall into circular logic where the same argument (Nadal dominance and RG being second only to Nadal) can be used to support both opposing contentions.
- One says, "Nadal is best in history because of his overwhelming domination on the last 10 years", then someone comes around and says, by the same logic, "Federer is number three of all time because he reached 5 RG finals where he lost only to the best of all time but he managed to beat everybody else, he would ahve 6 RG if it weren't for Nadal".
- Then someone uses exactly the same argument to prove the opposite. "This is a weak era because Federer, who is a poor clay courter, was the main opposition to Nadal, thus Fererer´s finals are of little value therefore he cannot be number three"
Still, I honestly think Federer would beat the Rosewalls and Lavers of the golden era. Federer is the best player amongst the hundreds of millions of tennis practitioners that play today. Rosewall and Laver were the best amongst a far smaller number of players. Not taking anything away from greats of the past, they excelled at beating the opposition they had in front of them. But it is very unlikely, just based on maths, that the best of a group of 10 is better than the best out of a group of 1000.
Mustard
Bionic Poster
Decugis isn't on Wilding's level when it comes to all-time great status. The 8 French Championships that Decugis won was when the tournament was only open to amateur players who had a membership with a French tennis club. Wilding won 2 World Hard Court Championships on the Paris clay in 1913 and 1914, which was open to all international amateur players.
kiki
Banned
Yes, he did.Vilas is a great clay courter, but not better than Bruguera or Kodes.Kuerten,Lendl and Wilander were a bit better IMO.
kiki
Banned
kiki
Banned
Good, well said Lot of Borg belittelers/haters on TT. and growing up in numbers and cluelessness.
Check out the world population in 1900 and compare to the present.
Year millions
1900 1,650
1950 2,519
1955 2,756
1960 2,982
1965 3,335
1970 3,692
1975 4,068
1980 4,435
1985 4,831
1990 5,263
1995 5,674
2000 6,070
2005 6,454
2010 6,972
kiki
Banned
it´s amazing but it happens with tennis and international basketball.
Because there are international players in the NBA, most US people tend to thing that basketball is more internationally played than in the 70´s or 80´s, before the rest of the worlds players started playing in the NBA teams.
It is not, and in fact, there were bigger countries than now ( only Spain,Argentina and France have made a progress in regards the 80´s, while many important countries have just regressed)
Because USSR and Yugoslavia ( and Czeckoslovakia) just dispargaed and borke into 30 new countries, current era fans just believe that tennis is now more international, when it clearly is not.
It is like any statistic, it is not what you read, but what there is to it...
Because there are international players in the NBA, most US people tend to thing that basketball is more internationally played than in the 70´s or 80´s, before the rest of the worlds players started playing in the NBA teams.
It is not, and in fact, there were bigger countries than now ( only Spain,Argentina and France have made a progress in regards the 80´s, while many important countries have just regressed)
Because USSR and Yugoslavia ( and Czeckoslovakia) just dispargaed and borke into 30 new countries, current era fans just believe that tennis is now more international, when it clearly is not.
It is like any statistic, it is not what you read, but what there is to it...
Feddy Kruegerer
Banned
Not only that. It's about quality, not quantity. Sure there are more souls roaming this rock we call Earth now than in 1900. But the quality of the stock is not quite up to par. It suffices to observe human achievements in the sciences and the arts. The human race, at least in the Western hemisphere, has been embarked in a steady involution path for quite a while now. Obsession with trivial matters (such as Kardashian related foolishness) by the herds of brain dead morons is at an all time high. Simply speaking, we are not what we used to be, and I wouldn't blame whoever put us here to begin with to call the experiment a failure and drop the cosmic hammer on us to start with a clean slate.
kiki
Banned
I agree.Many human fields - like music, arts and politics- are clearly regressing...
There's a lot more players today than it was over a hundred years ago and no one can dispute it. More facilities/equipments available for anyone who wants to play tennis.
Feddy Kruegerer
Banned
Which makes the achievements of those who had to play in far worse conditions the more impressive. Look what Pancho Gonzalez achieved. And he was dirt poor, and not born with a silver spoon up his arse (which in the case of Federer is close to literally true, since his father deals with precious metals).
Talker
Hall of Fame
Back in those days we had the depression, world war II and after that people were just trying to get by in life.
What kind of environment is that for bringing out talent in tennis?
So many who could have a chance were trying to make ends meet, no time to drive kids to tennis facilities, next to no programs for tennis.
You don't think that talent was lost because of it?
Small pools, and no money to support promising players.
This carried on for a long time.
Feddy Kruegerer
Banned
Yes, that is correct. People had to contend with the Spanish Flu, Hitler, and all sorts of economic and social calamities. Definitely not the best environment to play tennis.
not surprised at at this since you "think" nadal and djoker to have a much higher peak than federer :lol: :lol:
your posts are just as good as your idol's performances vs connors in 74 wimbledon and USO
umm, do you even realise what you are talking about ?
in 97 RG, kuerten went through muster, bruguera, medvedev, kafelnikov to win his first FO. That's a brutal draw.
in 2000 RG, he beat kafelnikov, ferrero and norman. Norman at that time was becoming an excellent claycourter. Only injuries stalled him big time.
in 2001 RG, kuerten beat kafelnikov, ferrero and corretja
no, it has to do with his peak level of play as mentioned in some of the instances above. 2004 RG match vs federer was just another of those instances
yeah, he could be erratic, but we were talking about peak level of play there
I will make a slightly more detailed post on this with facts/records.
rosewall played poorly in the RG 69 final and you know it
If you could read well, I already said overall, I'd place lendl and wilander over federer overall. But peak level of play, I don't see that much of a difference.
Vilas is on a similar level as federer. he used to get crushed by borg quite a bit. fed-nadal in contrast has been quite a bit more competitive. that and federer's superior record at RG more than make up for vilas having more titles.
federer could have won a lot more clay court tournaments if he chose to play the smaller ones. But his main focus has been RG and the masters events. At RG, since 2005, he's had 1 win, 4 finals ,2 semis and a QF. Out of his 10 clay court titles, one of them was RG, 6 of them were masters series, 4 at hamburg and 2 at madrid.
Nasty abmk, Arrogant as always. Since months I know you as one of the top three (with Limpinhitter and ARFED) among the most arrogant posters.
Yes, I'm thinking about tennis issues. You also should use your brain a bit more...
I see you have not found any weak spot in my argumentation. So I can save my money...
As always you switch topics instead of answering seriously my arguments.
Rosewall was almost 40 when losing clearly to Connors. It will be interesting to see how your idol, The God, will performance at 40 against the then No.1 player. Considering his performance against Nadal at Rome at 31 I fear Roger will not gain many games when being 39 to 40...
Laver, as most experts say, was almost invincible when "on". In 1969 at Paris he beat Smith, Gimeno, Okker and Rosewall in a row, the latter three players of highest calibre on clay!
You are WRONG: Ther 1969 final was a great match. Well respected British magazine, Tennis World , then ranked the match as one of "the three matches of the year" because of the high level of both players and the quality of the match. Laver said it was his best claycourt match and yet Rosewall kept it competitive.
I consider "peak level" not at one match, rather at one year or several years.
But regardless how we define peak level, Laver is superior to Kuerten. Newcombe said that Rod was unplayable when "on".
You have ignored totally my list of Laver's achievements on clay, among them the fact that he was No.1 claycourter for arguable seven years!!!
You have "forgotten" that Vilas also won the 1977 US Open on clay thus being ahead of Federer. Guillermo did have something Roger never had: a great attacking backhand...
Your attitude of firstly attacking instead of answering is a sign of desperation!
I had been hoping that you would be ready to learn from someone who knows a bit about the older times. I have conceded that you know a lot about current tennis but you overrate your own knowledge about past players.
Be serious!
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kiki
Banned
ABMK´s knowledge of past players is based on his great " copy and paste" mastership...
Humble forehand,
Your argumentation is wrong. How do you come to your last statement? It's really not a ratio of 10:1000. In contrary, in Laver's time there were MORE top players around than today.
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