Revised Top 10 For Men All Time

[Federberg]

^I'm no Rafa-fan... but Rafa the weakest of the Top 4?? Seriously? Andy Murray anyone...

 

[Fiero425]

^I'm no Rafa-fan... but Rafa the weakest of the Top 4?? Seriously? Andy Murray anyone...

Speaking of the overall time spent on and off the court guy! No top player I know has been as absent from the tour! To this day Rafa's been unable to defend a title off the clay surface! I'm not being a TROLL just to be negative; these are facts along with his woeful tenure at #1! He barely competes with Borg in that respect who played half as long and didn't go "down under" but maybe once early on as a teen! I don't need to go to the record books to point out his shortcomings! Murray's done the best he could seeing as Fedalovic just happened to be standing in his way since the beginning! He's truly been the "Vitas Gerulaitis" of this era in most people's opinion, but playing that defensive game, he maxed it out and has a few majors for his troubles! He's done more than most with the kinds of obstacles in his way! Lendl, like Djokovic was the perennial #3 behind Borg/McEnroe & McEnroe/Connors even though he accomplished about the same if not more! Ivan still got a couple Wimbledons and a USO out of the guy!

 

[GameSetAndMath]

Laver eventually became successful on the professional tour. That was not the case to begin with. It's not clear to me he would have won that first calendar slam, and how you start often has a huge impact on the whole thing. My main point is that people assume a larger number of slams to Laver if he had competed for them in the lost years. The whole thing is just nuts to me. Quite apart from the entire field, pros and amateurs being not particularly deep, but worse still it was segmented, so even less deep. And people try to suggest there's some sort of equivalence to what guys in this era face? It's utterly absurd

Take away the extra credit given to Laver by virtue of the mystique of CYGS . I have no problem with that.

However, the estimate of 21 sounds reasonable as he was successful in the amateur cirucuit (till 1962), in the pro circuit (63-67) and in the open circuit (68 onwards). If he can win CYGS both in the amateur (1962) and open circuits (1969) , is it not reasonable to assume that he would have won half of the slams if he competed for them during 63 to 67.

Actually, in some place Dude has a listing of GS titles where even the pro slams are included. I can't find out where it is quickly. But, IIRC, if you add both, then Rosewall is #1 with 23 titles and not Laver. So, you may have some point there.

 

[Federberg]

Speaking of the overall time spent on and off the court guy! No top player I know has been as absent from the tour! To this day Rafa's been unable to defend a title off the clay surface! I'm not being a TROLL just to be negative; these are facts along with his woeful tenure at #1! He barely competes with Borg in that respect who played half as long and didn't go "down under" but maybe once early on as a teen! I don't need to go to the record books to point out his shortcomings! Murray's done the best he could seeing as Fedalovic just happened to be standing in his way since the beginning! He's truly been the "Vitas Gerulaitis" of this era in most people's opinion, but playing that defensive game, he maxed it out and has a few majors for his troubles! He's done more than most with the kinds of obstacles in his way! Lendl, like Djokovic was the perennial #3 behind Borg/McEnroe & McEnroe/Connors even though he accomplished about the same if not more! Ivan still got a couple Wimbledons and a USO out of the guy!

I just don't see how you get from there to Rafa being weaker than Murray. I just can't see it. Also I have to say.... clay's a tennis surface so even if he's only able to successfully defend there it's still tennis. I do agree that the dominance of clay might raise questions. But still...

 

[Federberg]

Take away the extra credit given to Laver by virtue of the mystique of CYGS . I have no problem with that.

However, the estimate of 21 sounds reasonable as he was successful in the amateur cirucuit (till 1962), in the pro circuit (63-67) and in the open circuit (68 onwards). If he can win CYGS both in the amateur (1962) and open circuits (1969) , is it not reasonable to assume that he would have won half of the slams if he competed for them during 63 to 67.

Actually, in some place Dude has a listing of GS titles where even the pro slams are included. I can't find out where it is quickly. But, IIRC, if you add both, then Rosewall is #1 with 23 titles and not Laver. So, you may have some point there.

I'm never going to be comfortable with those kind of speculations. It's one thing to speculate about what Laver would have done in the amateur circuit. It's quite another to have to face the combination of the amateur and professional circuits. Then you get a bit more depth and who knows what happens? I'm not going to crown the guy without any proof. That's just fantasy land stuff to me..

 

[GameSetAndMath]

I'm never going to be comfortable with those kind of speculations. It's one thing to speculate about what Laver would have done in the amateur circuit. It's quite another to have to face the combination of the amateur and professional circuits. Then you get a bit more depth and who knows what happens? I'm not going to crown the guy without any proof. That's just fantasy land stuff to me..

The last five slams he won were in the opens (the combination of the amateur and professional circuits). That is why it is not unreasonable to assume he might have won half of the 20 slams during 63-67.

It is of course fantasy stuff, as we cannot do anything other than speculate. We just have to make sure the speculations are reasonable.

 

[Federberg]

^Fair.. no one tackled my Sampras point..

 

[GameSetAndMath]

^Fair.. no one tackled my Sampras point..

Forget Sampras. How many slams Rafa would have won if three of the four slams were on clay?

 

[Federberg]

Forget Sampras. How many slams Rafa would have won if three of the four slams were on clay?

There is that! My point is that those are woulda coulda as valid as this whole if "pigs did ballet, they'd be artists" nonsense we get all the time about Laver. It's pointless speculation and the same stories could be said of Borg and any number of other greats. Laver got what he did, and that's that. To give him anymore diminishes a lot of greats, not least these 3 titans we're watching now

 

[GameSetAndMath]

Actually, I found an even better objection to simply adding pro slam count to regular slam count (like Dude was doing). That method basically adds 8 slams (to the count of somebody or other) each year. That is grossly unfair. Assuming pro tour was more difficult than amateur tour, then one should simply add 2/3 of pro tour slams to open slams and only 1/3rd of amateur slams to open slams. Laver won 9 pro slams. 2/3rd of that is 6. So, we could assign an adjusted slam count of 17 for Laver. ElDude was doing straight addition.

Edit: There were only three pro slams. So, first we have to adjust the raw 9 pro slams to 9*4/3= 12 Slams. Then we need to do 2/3rd of that, which gives an 8. Adding that to 11, it gives Laver an adjusted slam count of 19 to Laver.

 

[Moxie]

Speaking of the overall time spent on and off the court guy! No top player I know has been as absent from the tour! To this day Rafa's been unable to defend a title off the clay surface! I'm not being a TROLL just to be negative; these are facts along with his woeful tenure at #1! He barely competes with Borg in that respect who played half as long and didn't go "down under" but maybe once early on as a teen! I don't need to go to the record books to point out his shortcomings! Murray's done the best he could seeing as Fedalovic just happened to be standing in his way since the beginning! He's truly been the "Vitas Gerulaitis" of this era in most people's opinion, but playing that defensive game, he maxed it out and has a few majors for his troubles! He's done more than most with the kinds of obstacles in his way! Lendl, like Djokovic was the perennial #3 behind Borg/McEnroe & McEnroe/Connors even though he accomplished about the same if not more! Ivan still got a couple Wimbledons and a USO out of the guy!

I don't know why you're counting being injured and off the tour as a fault against him, which, btw, is the reason he failed to defend '08 Wimbledon and '14 Canada, Cincy and USO, off the top of my head. He's won IW and Canada multiple times. You and a few others like to chant this about failing to defend a title off of clay, but I think it's a straw man device. Doesn't mean anything. And I'm not sure what you find so "woeful" about his several tenures as #1. He's taken it twice from Roger and 1 x from Novak. I appreciate your kind defense of Murray, but if you want to look at a miserable time at #1, I'd offer you his. And I have defended him as having injury and illness plaguing him almost the whole time. You may not feel like you're "trolling just to be negative," but I would ask you to examine your prejudices, then.

 

[Fiero425]

I don't know why you're counting being injured and off the tour as a fault against him, which, btw, is the reason he failed to defend '08 Wimbledon and '14 Canada, Cincy and USO, off the top of my head. He's won IW and Canada multiple times. You and a few others like to chant this about failing to defend a title off of clay, but I think it's a straw man device. Doesn't mean anything. And I'm not sure what you find so "woeful" about his several tenures as #1. He's taken it twice from Roger and 1 x from Novak. I appreciate your kind defense of Murray, but if you want to look at a miserable time at #1, I'd offer you his. And I have defended him as having injury and illness plaguing him almost the whole time. You may not feel like you're "trolling just to be negative," but I would ask you to examine your prejudices, then.

I don't particularly care for either Murray or Rafa; the really defensive play, the total act on court, stalling, and questioning of every call as if it isn't possible they missed or their opponent hit a winner on them! It may not be a fault of Rafa his absences from the tour, but it's still a fact! No one's been more consistent than Nole getting his arse out there season after season with no true breaks like the other "Big 4!" The crash had to happen; hence this period since completing his Nole-Slam last June! I say after the USO, he should pack it in and take a break! He certainly has the seniority to do so without repercussions! He can come back fresh and start another run "down under!" :sleep:

 

[Moxie]

I don't particularly care for either Murray or Rafa; the really defensive play, the total act on court, stalling, and questioning of every call as if it isn't possible they missed or their opponent hit a winner on them! It may not be a fault of Rafa his absences from the tour, but it's still a fact! No one's been more consistent than Nole getting his arse out there season after season with no true breaks like the other "Big 4!" The crash had to happen; hence this period since completing his Nole-Slam last June! I say after the USO, he should pack it in and take a break! He certainly has the seniority to do so without repercussions! He can come back fresh and start another run "down under!" :sleep:

Actually, no one has been more consistent than Roger, who has yet to even retire out of a match. Not so Novak. As to the complaining about calls, you've seen more from Roger than Rafa...who for the longest time, and occasionally even now doesn't believe Hawkeye. Again, I think your memory has anti-Rafa and anti-Murray goggles on it. It may be a fact that Rafa has spent more time absent from the tour than some of the greats. (I've never tried to compare.) But I still don't see why you see that as a failing in him as a champion. Injuries happen. If anything, you could consider how many Slams he's won compared to how many he's missed. He has a higher winning percentage at Majors than either Roger or Nole. Just imagine if he'd never had injuries. You should actually prefer that he's spent time away and stop mentioning it, or your favorite players would probably have done worse.

Personally, I think Djokovic should start his break now, and skip the US Open. Physically/mentally, he needs a break, and it's not going to get better without a break, IMO. Playing the USO will just prolong the pain.

 

[mrzz]

if "pigs did ballet, they'd be artists"

They already did:

 

[El Dude]

Looks like I've been missing a fun conversation. I'm recovering from jet lag so don't have the mental power to offer my usual debate-ending analysis, but a couple things to throw in the mix (and yes, I am being facetious).

The main thing is this: I think the biggest confusion about the whole GOAT is a conflation of "greatest" and "best." Some, like Federberg in this thread, seems to equate the two, so when he sees the term "GOAT" he's literally thinking "the best player to ever play the game" (correct me if I'm wrong, Federberg). If GOAT was BOAT, I'd agree 100% with Federberg. Just about all forms of athletics tend to evolve so that generally speaking, in any given sport the best players now are the best to ever play. In pure athletics, sprinters beat the records of their predecessors (or in some cases, like Usain Bolt, themselves). In more complex sports like baseball or tennis, there is tiny but continual evolution over time - or at least I think there's good reason to think that's the case, even if we cannot definitively prove it.

If we plopped peak Rod Laver into the ATP tour today, even giving him a year to adjust to the rackets and court conditions, I'm guessing he'd be a pretty good player, but I wouldn't be surprised if he struggled to hold his own in the top 10, even top 20. I just think players are bigger, stronger, and faster these days. Maybe best case scenario and he's peak Hewitt, so a top 5 player but not as good as the Big Four. Of course, there's no way to know. Just speculating a bit. Regardless, I just don't think he'd be the same caliber of player as the Big Four (maybe someone like Pancho Gonzales would have translated better).

But the thing is, that's not what "greatness" or "greatest" means - at least to me. Greatness has more to do with how good you were relative to the context you played in. It is the degree to which a player makes his mark on the sport in the time and place he played. When considering the greatness of Babe Ruth, we do so by looking at how well he played at the time he played, against his peers, not through imagining how he might play today. Ruth is considered baseball's GOAT for a variety of reasons, but never because people think if he were grabbed from his time and put into today's game that he'd dominate, but because of how dominant in the time that he actually played. There were great players before and after Ruth, but no player took up as much real estate during his tenure as Ruth did.

I like the basic point of the article, even if I quibble with some of the details and hypotheticals. But even that article seems to equate greatest and best, as if the real test of the GOAT is to take every great tennis player out of time and transport them to the tennis version of Marvel comics Secret Wars to duke it out in a neutral context. We can imagine this scenario, but it is purely speculative (in fact, didn't some website do that and came up wit Sampras winning the whole thing?). And it misses the point, in my view.

 

[britbox]

Actually, I found an even better objection to simply adding pro slam count to regular slam count (like Dude was doing). That method basically adds 8 slams (to the count of somebody or other) each year. That is grossly unfair. Assuming pro tour was more difficult than amateur tour, then one should simply add 2/3 of pro tour slams to open slams and only 1/3rd of amateur slams to open slams. Laver won 9 pro slams. 2/3rd of that is 6. So, we could assign an adjusted slam count of 17 for Laver. ElDude was doing straight addition.

Edit: There were only three pro slams. So, first we have to adjust the raw 9 pro slams to 9*4/3= 12 Slams. Then we need to do 2/3rd of that, which gives an 8. Adding that to 11, it gives Laver an adjusted slam count of 19 to Laver.

Agreed, and another big factor is the draw size. Those pro slams generally had between 8 and 16 people in the entire draw. I don't see how these should carry the same weight as a modern day draw with 128 entrants... and that's after qualifiers...

 

[El Dude]

Agreed, and another big factor is the draw size. Those pro slams generally had between 8 and 16 people in the entire draw. I don't see how these should carry the same weight as a modern day draw with 128 entrants... and that's after qualifiers...

They don't carry the same weight, but that's not the point in including them in the conversation. They were still the top tournaments of the pro tour, and the pro tour generally included the best players - so if we want to get a sense of how the best payers stacked up against each other, we have to look at Pro Slams. I think at the least they were comparable to the amateur Slams, which had much larger draws and involved more rounds, but with lower competition level.

I've compared the Pro Slams to the WTF, or to the second week of an Open Era Slam. To win a Pro Slam you had to beat either three or four of the best players in a row (a WTF requires at least four wins, 2+ in the Round Robin, the SF, and Final).

That said, I think looking at total Slam counts is more accurate an assessment of a player's greatness than amateur + Open Era alone. The easiest way to express this is by comparing two players: Pancho Gonzales and Roy Emerson. Emerson dominated the amateur tour of the 60s after Rosewall and then Laver went pro, winning 12 amateur Slams, but his level fell off drastically when the Open Era started, presumably because he couldn't hold muster to the pro players. Pancho Gonzales won only 2 amateur Slams, then became the most dominant pro player of the 50s, winning 12 Pro Slams and 14 majors overall (some say 15, if you count the Tournament of Champions as a major).

So what is a better comparison of their greatness, 12 and 2 or 12 and 14 (or 15)? Actually, even the latter numbers aren't really that representative as Gonzales was a truly great player, the Pete Sampras of the 50s; Emerson was more of a lesser great, like a Stefan Edberg. Similarly, I think Laver's total major count of 19 is more true to his greatness level than his 11 amateur + Open Era Slam count.

I see Pro Slam counts as more of a symbolic representation of a player's relative greatness than a literal one. We don't need to try to determine how much weight they carry relative to Open Era Slams, because the point is what they represent. Three times a year, the very best professional players would gather and duke it out. The players who won those tournaments were the best players in the world.

Or to put this in today's context, imagine if a dozen or so of the top 20 players, including the three or four very best players, didn't play any Grand Slams but instead met three times a year for a four round tournament. We would quibble with comparing them to the depth and length of Grand Slams, but few would doubt that the winners of those "pro" tournaments were the best in the sport. No one would say that Pablo Carreno Busta was a better clay player than Rafa Nadal because Busta won the French Open and Rafa merely won the "French Pro." Or when John Isner snuck in and won Wimbledon while Roger Federer won Wembley. Or Tomas Berdych winning the US Open, while Novak won the US Pro. And no one would scratch their heads and ask why talented young Alex Zverev moved over to the pro circuit as soon as he won his first amateur Slam. Those sorts of comparisons are kind of what the amateur/pro split was like.

 

[Federberg]

Lol! Now I've heard it all. Thank you for trying to assist but permit me to shake off your metaphorical helping hand. I very well know the difference between greatest and best Thank you..

Now we're talking Isner winning fantasy majors? What world is this? Last I checked the Beyonder isn't real so this is still the real world! (nice Secret Wars reference though). How can you not realise it's not a satisfactory comparison? We are talking about completely different sports. Back in those days you're talking about a sport where I doubt even 10 different nationalities participated. You keep trying to manufacture some sort of equivalence to what we see today. It makes no sense to me whatsoever. The very fact that you're trying to compare the pro slams to a WTF Finals says it all. Unfortunately the players in the WTF are the distillation of a deep global pool of professional tennis professionals, while the pro slams are a group of guys that are in reality no more than an amalgam of club house and circus. We say they're the best because we CAN'T know any better. Look if you want to call them great that's your opinion, but please let's not for one second pretend your numbers of fantasy slams have any meaning

Now about athletics, you can have a really substantive debate about BOAT vs GOAT. I'm sure there are disciplines where athletes dominated their eras but whose records have been overwritten.

 

[El Dude]

Federberg, first of all, you're clearly taking offense where none was intended. I was saying that if it was the "BOAT," then I agree 100% with what you're saying, meaning you are correct in my view. But where we disagree is in what "GOAT" means or should mean.

You also say you know the difference between greatest and best (as I'm defining it), but then go on to conflate the two again, seemingly missing what I'm saying and then going down a different path. I am not doing at all what you think I'm doing, which is trying to say that the players of the 60s (or whenever) were comparable to now in terms of what I mean by "best." What I am saying is that greatness is not some absolute, but relative. If you disagree with that, fine, but that's not what you're saying above, which is that players today are better than they were in the 60s - which I agree with! So stop arguing that point with me, because I'm not disagreeing with you (read again my speculation about Laver, Hewitt, etc).

One of the reasons that Laver is considered so great, or at least one of the reasons why I consider him to be so great--and arguably the GOAT--is that he mastered every context he played in. He mastered the amateur tour, then the pro tour, then the consolidated Open tour. In fact, we couldn't ask for Laver to do much more than he did. He was as great as he possibly could be - perhaps more so than any other player in tennis history. I mean I guess he could have won more Open Era Slams, but he wasn't really playing on that tour much after 1970, mainly for political reasons. He was focusing on WCT and other tournaments.

So I guess you could say another way to look at what I mean by greatness, is the degree to which a player comes close to "maxing out" the context of his time. Laver came as close to maxing out as any player ever has. It doesn't mean he was as good as Federer or Nadal are now - not at all. I believe those two and Djokovic are the best players who have ever played the game. But greatness, as I see it, is more contextual.

OK, one more example of what I mean by great vs best. Let's saying that a player plays 100 matches in 1957 and wins every single one of them, including all four amateur Slams. In my view, this would probably be the "greatest" season ever. That doesn't mean the player was, in that year, the best player ever - because, for one, we cannot know that, and secondly, because I believe that players have evolved in the last 60 years. But going 100-0 would be the greatest season ever because it would be the most dominant ever. That player couldn't have been any better!

Hopefully that clarifies what I mean by great vs. best, and why I think what you are talking about is the best. If you think that is what the GOAT should mean, then OK - there's no official definition. But I would give you a very different list than I would for what I consider GOAT to mean.

 

[Federberg]

Lol! I wasn't offended at all. I think it's fairly obvious when I'm upset about a post. I was genuinely amused. Now as to your contention that I'm still conflating. I'm not. Mate, you simply cannot assign greatness to the pro/amateur era. I think I've attempted to express why. I thought it was obvious without spelling it out in a patronising way. I'm not just saying that the players now are better than in that era, I'm saying it's an entirely different sport. While you can port greatness through time, at the very least lets do apples versus apples. What you're trying to do is really Marvel comics stuff (loved the Secret Wars stuff!).

But thank you. You've perfectly described why I think your definition of greatness leaves a lot to be desired. Your example of a player winning 100 out of 100 matches in 1957 is a great example of why I disagree. That scenario you described is effectively a closed system (you can't go back in time, 1957 is done, so it's closed). Do you realise that you can have exactly the same scenario right now? You can have another closed system right now in 2017 that torpedoes this fantasy of comparability once and for all. Imagine instead that you have a tennis club in... Cameroon. They have their own club league, but have no desire to interact with the outside world. They don't give a hoot about Fedal, and just play because of the love of the game and their own internal rivalries. There are 20 players in this Cameroon club and one guy wins 100 matches out of 100 matches in 2017.

Are we supposed to assign greatness to that player? Really?? It's absurd. And so is the comparison of the pro/amateur era to what we have today. Different sport, different depth, professionalism, technology, you name it. Only the name of the sport is the same really. It's all very well paying due respect to what went on before, but please.... enough with the comparisons, it makes no sense.

Yes, greatness is not an absolute, we all get that. But let's at least try to make reasonable comparisons!