I appreciate the well reasoned post,
@rahulpawar. A few thoughts.
I am a passive reader of the forum and rarely post stuff.
I have tended to agree with Federberg when he has not bought El Dude's hypothesis that "historically tennis players don't do well after 30" so "Federer and Nadal won't do well after 30". Federberg has generally given two arguments against El dude's hypothesis
First of all, that isn't really my hypothesis. I just don't assume either way, and think it is far more complex than the common view that players are peaking later and lasting longer; there's a lot of noise muddling the signal, and I think we need a couple more years to have a better sense of things. As I've said before, my sense is that players
are indeed peaking later AND lasting longer, but I don't think it as extreme as some think.
a) The nutrition science and medical science has advanced which helps players to prolong their careers and even allow them to perform at a high level after 30. Federberg cites not only the performance of fedal for his argument but also of many other players such as Wawrinka, Lopez, Muller, karlovic etc. who have sort of gone against Dude's hypothesis and actually done well after 30 than before 30. I think this is a perfectly valid point. Maybe a proper case study could be done by someone to check if players are prolonging their careers in other sports also.
OK, but what about all of the players who are on more typical decline patterns that have the same access to nutritional and medical science?
And what has changed in the last ten years to make such a huge difference if more and more players are truly extending their careers? Notice that of Roger's peers--players born within three years of him, 1979-83--almost all of the better players have retired, and declined in their late 20s. Ferrer is still around, as is Youzhny, but Safin, Ferrero, Nalbandian, Roddick, Gonzalez, etc etc, are all gone. What did they miss out on?
b) "Federer" and "Nadal" are just different players compared to anyone else before and hence, predicting their careers is just not possible. I agree with this point of Federberg's as well. Many "experts" and "data-enthu fans" have written off both Federer and Nadal quite a few times and these people have had to show some amnesic behaviour after Fedal came back.
Again, I don't disagree with this. If anything, that is part of the problem: Federer and Nadal are so extraordinary that historical trajectories don't necessarily apply, but it also somewhat challenges your above point.
And just to be clear: I never "wrote off" either player entirely. I didn't think either would win another Slam but NOT only or even primarily because of their age, but because of their performance. Rafa was struggling for about two
years. Roger was clearly a shadow of his former self, then struggled with injury last year. And of course no one predicted what happened to Andy and Novak this year.
Now having won all 4 grand slams, there is actual "empirical" evidence to support Federberg's arguments.
When Dude says struggling Novak made it easier for Fedal, sure it did. But so did struggling Federer and Nadal make it easier for Djoker in 2015 and some part of 2016. No one can perform at 100% all the time.
Again, I don't think anyone thought Fedal would do what they did this year. Even the vast majority of Nadal fans were hoping for maybe one more RG; and the vast majority of Roger fans were hoping he'd somehow get a lucky draw and win Wimbledon. The fact that they split all four Slams is a surprise to everyone.
