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OT - Tennis - Why Federer is the best (long)

Posted By: Steve Mellen
Date: Friday, 10 June 2011, at 4:03 p.m.

In Response To: OT - Tennis - Why Federer is the best (long) (Stick)

Federer is the best. 10 straight Grand Slam finals (and 18 out of 19!!!) is ridiculous. There's very little room for argument. The Nadal issue, no disrespect to Stick's arguments, is the only part that bugs me.

Part of it is that we don't know where Nadal himself ranks at the end of the day. If Federer retired tomorrow he'd be the best of all time, period. If Nadal retired tomorrow he'd be... where? I dunno. Only 3 players in the Open Era have more Grand Slam titles than Nadal, and Nadal had to compete against the greatest of all time to get every one of those titles. (7 of Nadal's 10 Grand Slams required him to beat Federer personally.) It's not just that Nadal is a tough matchup for Federer, although surely he is. Nadal is an incredible player in his own right.

Let's talk about MJ for a second. Greatest of all time, no question. From the day he finally got by the Pistons until the day he retired following his 6th title, there was not a single player in the league who consistently got the better of him. Time after time, in head-to-head matchups against the very best players of his era, he would dismantle them. I don't think it's weird to expect that kind of dominance from the guy who wears the mantle of "greatest of all time." Federer is almost there... except for the Nadal thing.

I can't really picture a world in which Charles Barkley or Karl Malone dominated Jordan in most of their head-to-head matchups and their teams beat Jordan's for the title more often than not. Even in that world, Jordan would probably still be the greatest of all time. Point is nothing like that ever happened, not even close.

Stick's points about the Federer-Nadal rivalry are all well-taken. I think he maybe discounts the clay factor a little too much. It's a much different surface, but it's still part of the game, and the fact that Federer is one of the very best even on clay is an important part of his resume as greatest of all time. If Federer were a clown on clay who routinely lost in the 2nd round of the French Open, it would be harder to say he's the absolute greatest. So those results do matter. Since 2007 Federer only has two wins against Nadal on ANY surface (one of those was clay, in fact).

One issue I don't think Stick discussed is age. Federer is nearly 5 years older than Nadal, which is a big deal in a sport where the window to be at the top of your game is often quite narrow. That's quite an advantage for Nadal and it makes the use of head-to-head results to judge their respective merits a tad unfair. But this just reinforces the point that we can't close the book on Nadal's place in the pantheon for a while yet.

This much I know - I feel very, very privileged to watch these two guys play tennis against one another. They are both artists in my book. It's a tragedy these things come to an end.

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