for my part the slam I most want Rafa not to win is RG first(most psychologically damaging) and the AO (can't have him doing the double slam first of the big 3!) next. Rafa winning Wimbledon again is just another indictment of surface homogeneity in my head!
you are just stuttering, what single 'argument' can prove Nick's talent? or lack of? it's absolutely nothing to do with what you think are the deficiencies of his game. I'll repeat for you again, it's a different concept to talent. If I sink a level or two and attempt to put it in a low level thinking description, i'll just say this...…..Nick finds a way to lift his overall level that's enough to beat or come close to match the best players, most of the time, and the same can't be said of almost all the other players....it's irrelevant what you think of his serve, fh or bh, or even his mental, and certainly nothing to do with how he fares against lesser players in early rounds, in which he would continue to either not show up or blow up in future as well.
Good post for the most part but I can't help but laugh at the notion that Roger benefitted from slowing surfaces. It is a pretty narrow way of thinking because pretty much everything about his game is suited to fast courts. I also think that no matter what the surfaces were like now you'd have the vast majority of the tour as baseliners because of string technology making it tough to live at net even at the few remaining fast events on tour. BS was arguing that it helped him a lot against big servers/hitters. I find that to be debatable but even if that's the case then we have to admit it clearly hurts him against Nadal, Djoker, Murray and probably quite a few other good baseliners. So in essence it's like getting a 1% raise in a time of 10% inflation. I think Roger would prefer to have the edge vs the capable baseliners rather than one-dimensional trees.
I think it's arguable that Roger may have benefitted from homogeneity of the courts on a week-to-week basis since it makes for less adjustments tournament to tournament. Note that that relates more to the "other tournaments". Majors are different since they are prepping more for those events, and are best of 5. If the majors didn't slow down he'd have won more, particularly Wimbledon. Saying he's benefitted from slower and higher bouncing grass just pisses in the face of common sense. Roger is a dismal 16-7 since 2008 in the QF, SF and final, and that of course is when the conditions get even slower and higher. Yeah I know the competition is tougher those rounds too but we are talking the grass court GOAT barely winning 2 of 3 in later rounds of Wimbledon.
Kind of reminds me back in the day when Huntingyou would tell me Roger was as good on clay as he was on hardcourts
sorry but this just sounds like a lot of speculation without much substance. I would also love to understand how you come to the conclusion that Federer has benefited from slower surfaces...
I am not too sure if he is shaky or not ...maybe more like puzzled as certain balls are coming back to him that he does not usually see come back from players not named Rafa/Roger/Murray...
I disagree that Fed would have won less on fast grass. Look at how Federer played against the most dangerous servers on most fast courts in the past 12 years or so. You will see that he hardly had problems against big servers. His results at Halle are a testament of that.
