Kieran said:
Exactly. And if you hit more winners than your opponent and still lose, then you were weaker in the areas of play that decided the match. Hitting more winners, in other words, is not enough on its own to judge somebody as the "better player..."
This is obviously right in general, but there may be exceptions, triggered by lucky accidents (e.g. netcords), bad calls, injuries, sudden wind bursts (!) on decisive moments of a match, etc and etc. But you know this.
In the end is always the same discussion: if the notion of "better player" includes keeping calm and playing well at the decisive moments, and some player looses a match by failing to do so, in that case he hardly can be called the better player. If you exclude this, than yes, the "better player" can loose a lot of matches. Things can get too subjective in this case... so I would rather stick to the winner is (most of the times) the better (at that match).
But keep in mind that numbers, and black and white who won/who lost, also have their short comings. To give an example, If player A has a 5x2 H2H against player B, who has a 4X1 H2H against player C, who by its turn has a 5x1 H2H against player A, who is the "better"? I know there's a lot of things to take in to account... that is precisely the point. Sometimes objective analysis is not enough. If numbers (and who won, who lost) could tell the whole story why would we debate?
