DarthFed said:
If you are going by the general public it is probably Fed-Rafa. By any reasonable measure the greatest rivalry among the top 4 is Rafa-Nole and after that I'd say Fed-Nole and then Fed-Rafa. And note I'm talking historically what are the best rivalries. If we are talking present I'd rank them as follows:
1. Nole-Rafa
2. Nole-Murray
3. Nole-Fed
4. Fed-Murray
5. Rafa-Murray
6. Rafa-Fed
That's a good post, Darth. And I agree, the romantic says that it's Rafa v Roger, but practically speaking, Roger hasn't beaten Rafa at a slam since 2007 and so there's an inevitability to their big matches: Rafa wins them.
With Novak, it's hard to guess who'll win, even on clay, even on hards. The unpredictability is the attraction. And of course, now they're historical rivals, denying each other space on the podium and nicking wins that keep the other from slipping further up the greasy pole of greatness. If they met at Flushing Meadows, you wouldn't be shocked if either of them won.
The Novak-Roger rivalry probably has more GS matches than any other, but Nole was young when this begun and now Roger is getting on. They're not meeting in the middle so much. But even still, this one might carry most spite and Roger has beaten him on all four slams, and cruelly exposed him in Paris in 2011 and Wimbledon last year. Novak has those exhilarating US Open victories in the semis, which kind of scrubbed the memory of Roger's tweener in 2009.
With Murray, I think his rivalry with Nole is the only valid one: he's gotten results against Rafa and Roger, but Novak is his direct contemporary and they've written a few chapters in the slams which are taking glory off each other and developing into something big. It reminds me of the Becker-Edberg rivalry, in the sense that it was small town as opposed to the Big City rivalries of Lendl-Mac or Fedal...
cool:
