After today's easy win for Nadal, he now sits at 15 Grand Slam wins and only 3 behind Federer.
We all love the 'greatest of all time' debates in sport but in tennis being individual is a little more clean cut than team sports such as football... or is it?
How do we begin to compare the greatest tennis players of all time? I mean we would expect Nadal or Federer to easily defeat Bjorn Borg or Rod Laver if they used the physical tools of their respective eras. Sport evolves and to call out the greatest of all time is always a hypothetical or statistical argument, but something that can never be proven no matter how emotional the debate becomes.
In tennis circles, there is a rare concurrency in views that the greatest players in the history of the sport are still active.. very active based on the last two Grand Slam results. We usually wait until players finish out their careers so we can then apply our 'objectivity' to their careers in comparison to the other greats that went before.
What makes this rivalry so great, is that if we look at ingredients of greatness both players have overflowing quantities of all key elements of that 'greatness' recipe AND they've been in battle against each other for well over a decade.
Who has the most Grand Slam titles?
The statistics alone throw up some interesting seeds for any debate. The obvious one is 'who has won the most slams?'. Right now Federer is in the lead with 18 so end of debate obviously! Whilst only a fool would disregard Nadal's chances of adding a few more, the question is can he win 3 or 4? At the same time, Federer will feel he can add to his resume with his sights firmly set on SW19 as well as being one of the favourites in New York. His form on the Melbourne hard courts was a new aggressive Federer, almost providing the catalyst for what the next evolution of tennis may look like. Aggressive offense worked very well for Ostapenko in the Ladies Final at RG and had a sort of Federer-esque all-or-nothing flavour. It is a style that also works very well for the next big thing Dominic Thiem.. until he meets a true King of tennis. As a tennis fan, I like this style and I would guess I am not alone. Wawrinka is another proponent of this style and until today's defeat he had a 3 from 3 wins in Slam finals, not a bad return (no pun intended).
Head-to-head
Statistically we could look at head-to-head, where Nadal leads Federer 23 wins to 14 which is a 62% win ratio. That should settle the argument, shouldn't it?
Let's break that down further by looking at clay v other surfaces. 15 of the 37 matches they've contested took place on clay with Nadal winning a staggering 13. Federer managed just two victories on clay against Nadal and neither of these where at RG.
So if take the clay stats out of the equation we are looking at a 12-10 head-to-head lead in favour of the Fed-Express.
So conclusion: Nadal is the greatest clay court player of all time and Federer is the greatest player of all time? Not so fast..
If we use the head-to-head stats there is another player in the mix. Djokovic leads Federer 23 to 22 in wins and he leads Nadal 26-24. So now we have a player who has a winning head-to-head record against the two greatest of all time! Additionally, these wins were accrued over a significant period with a huge number of matches played. Djokovic has played Nadal 50 times, this is 13 more matches than Federer against Nadal. This may come as a shock as we always view the Nadal v Federer battles with fond wonder in terms of greatness but also the sheer number of times they dueled over many years. Djokovic has played Federer 45 times, again more times than Federer has played Nadal.
Impact on the Sport
If we look at their overall impact to tennis, Federer has arguably made the biggest impact. Arguably he inspired the likes of Nadal and Djokovic (and Murray) to take their games to his level and subsequently invite them to the debate. In terms of bringing tennis to those outside the hard core fans, the only other comparison to Federer is Bjorn Borg. Borg has been thanked by contemporaries like McEnroe as well as players in the generation that followed like Becker and Edberg for taking tennis mainstream and triggering a much bigger payday for winning at the major events as well as the endorsements that went hand in hand.
All of these players have a variety of different sorts of records to their credit but all of those extra stats will only add to the debate and complexity rather than justify who wins.
To conclude, I will finish by saying that if you declare a player as the greatest of all time, this will boil down to opinion. Whilst Federer's 18 Grand Slams puts him in a statistical stronghold to say the GOAT title is his, as we've seen even in an individual sport the water is easily muddied.
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| Nadal wins his 10th Roland Garros title, another record! |
How do we begin to compare the greatest tennis players of all time? I mean we would expect Nadal or Federer to easily defeat Bjorn Borg or Rod Laver if they used the physical tools of their respective eras. Sport evolves and to call out the greatest of all time is always a hypothetical or statistical argument, but something that can never be proven no matter how emotional the debate becomes.
In tennis circles, there is a rare concurrency in views that the greatest players in the history of the sport are still active.. very active based on the last two Grand Slam results. We usually wait until players finish out their careers so we can then apply our 'objectivity' to their careers in comparison to the other greats that went before.
What makes this rivalry so great, is that if we look at ingredients of greatness both players have overflowing quantities of all key elements of that 'greatness' recipe AND they've been in battle against each other for well over a decade.
Who has the most Grand Slam titles?
The statistics alone throw up some interesting seeds for any debate. The obvious one is 'who has won the most slams?'. Right now Federer is in the lead with 18 so end of debate obviously! Whilst only a fool would disregard Nadal's chances of adding a few more, the question is can he win 3 or 4? At the same time, Federer will feel he can add to his resume with his sights firmly set on SW19 as well as being one of the favourites in New York. His form on the Melbourne hard courts was a new aggressive Federer, almost providing the catalyst for what the next evolution of tennis may look like. Aggressive offense worked very well for Ostapenko in the Ladies Final at RG and had a sort of Federer-esque all-or-nothing flavour. It is a style that also works very well for the next big thing Dominic Thiem.. until he meets a true King of tennis. As a tennis fan, I like this style and I would guess I am not alone. Wawrinka is another proponent of this style and until today's defeat he had a 3 from 3 wins in Slam finals, not a bad return (no pun intended).
 |
| Federer on his own with 18 Grand Slam titles |
Head-to-head
Statistically we could look at head-to-head, where Nadal leads Federer 23 wins to 14 which is a 62% win ratio. That should settle the argument, shouldn't it?
Let's break that down further by looking at clay v other surfaces. 15 of the 37 matches they've contested took place on clay with Nadal winning a staggering 13. Federer managed just two victories on clay against Nadal and neither of these where at RG.
So if take the clay stats out of the equation we are looking at a 12-10 head-to-head lead in favour of the Fed-Express.
So conclusion: Nadal is the greatest clay court player of all time and Federer is the greatest player of all time? Not so fast..
If we use the head-to-head stats there is another player in the mix. Djokovic leads Federer 23 to 22 in wins and he leads Nadal 26-24. So now we have a player who has a winning head-to-head record against the two greatest of all time! Additionally, these wins were accrued over a significant period with a huge number of matches played. Djokovic has played Nadal 50 times, this is 13 more matches than Federer against Nadal. This may come as a shock as we always view the Nadal v Federer battles with fond wonder in terms of greatness but also the sheer number of times they dueled over many years. Djokovic has played Federer 45 times, again more times than Federer has played Nadal.
Impact on the Sport
If we look at their overall impact to tennis, Federer has arguably made the biggest impact. Arguably he inspired the likes of Nadal and Djokovic (and Murray) to take their games to his level and subsequently invite them to the debate. In terms of bringing tennis to those outside the hard core fans, the only other comparison to Federer is Bjorn Borg. Borg has been thanked by contemporaries like McEnroe as well as players in the generation that followed like Becker and Edberg for taking tennis mainstream and triggering a much bigger payday for winning at the major events as well as the endorsements that went hand in hand.
All of these players have a variety of different sorts of records to their credit but all of those extra stats will only add to the debate and complexity rather than justify who wins.
To conclude, I will finish by saying that if you declare a player as the greatest of all time, this will boil down to opinion. Whilst Federer's 18 Grand Slams puts him in a statistical stronghold to say the GOAT title is his, as we've seen even in an individual sport the water is easily muddied.
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