It’s kind of amazing when you look at it that way. In the 11 majors from 2005 French - 2007 US Open, Federer won 8 and lost three times to Nadal on clay. You can argue that without Nadal, Federer would have won 17 of the 18 majors from French 2005 through Wimbledon 2009.
Orr is different from Gretzky in that he changed the way his position was played. Gretzky was a first line center who scored an incredible number of points; he did was first line centers are supposed to do, he just did it to an incredible degree. Orr played defense in a way previously unseen.
Even then, though, Orr was playing with Phil Esposito, one of the greatest pure scorers of all time. Team players cannot dominate a sport, not any major sport I can think of. If you put Wayne Gretzky in 1983 on the Whalers, the Whalers would still have missed the playoffs by fifteen points. If you put Joe Montana in a team with a mediocre offensive line and shitty receivers there’s no Super Bowl ring for him. If Babe Ruth had played for the Phillies in the 20s they would have been a bad team with a really entertaining outfielder.
Secretariat. Yes. He was a horse, but an unbeatable machine, at anytime, in any era.
Sorry, but Gretzky changed the way in which his position was played too.
No one, pre-Gretzky, would ever have thought about setting up an offensive play from BEHIND the opponent’s net. That was pure Gretzky and there’s a reason why that area is still referred to as “Gretzky’s office.”
I’m getting a real weird feeling of déjà vu at this point…
Agreed
But he wasn’t unbeatable. He lost five times, including a Show finish at the Wood Memorial before the Kentucky Derby.
new Serena record. I guess this point rating says more about the lack of competition in women’s tennis than anything else. There’s nobody right now that can compete with her.
she’s third in number of grand slam singles titles.
http://news.yahoo.com/serena-hits-another-milestone-ranking-feat-210222393--ten.html
Leaffan - All right, there’s a little concept you need to learn called “yaocho”. This is one of those things that’s been ingrained in the sport for ages and long since been accepted, but there’s no official word on it and only EXTREMELY rarely will a competitor, even a retired one, publicly acknowledge its existence (unless he’s one of those pathetic has-been whiny loudmouths trying to get attention).
In a nutshell, it means not going at it 100%. It doesn’t have to mean outright taking a dive; maybe don’t thrust as hard, don’t drive aggressively after establishing a hold, don’t try to regain balance after getting tripped up, etc. Occasionally a coach or higher-up will give a wink-wink nudge-nudge to a certain sumotori (never an actual directive), but for the most part, the competitors decide for themselves who’s getting a break and when. You’ll see it most often at the end of tournaments, especially with the guys at 7-7 who just need that one more win.
Why do it? Because you have to give something to get something. If he’s, say, 8-6 and doesn’t need the win, and he’s matched up against someone who does need the win, it’s a very good bet that he’ll “give the belly” (I think that’s what they call it), because that means the guy owes him. So when the positions are reversed, the opponent remembers the favor he received and will repay it in kind. Keep in mind that there are 90 matches in a year, and the higher they go, the tougher the schedule gets. Men like Hakuho, Kakuryu, Terunofuji, they’re the best of the best of the best and have no trouble holding their lofty perches. For the great majority, the higher the climb, the longer the fall. So there’s just no reason to go full-bore every match and refuse to give an inch when all that means is that they’re going to end up right where they started and without any favors owed them.
Is yaocho ever demanded of anyone? No, of course not; like I said, it’s not even officially recognized. Can a rising star remain pure? Yes. Can he succeed? On occasion. Asahifuji was notable not only for his ability to beat anyone, but for his absolute, ironclad refusal to give anyone a break. Ever. Not a yokozuna needing a win to force a playoff, not a sekiwake struggling to hold onto sanyaku, not a 2-12 maegashira who just wants some hoshokin money to buy his wife an anniversary gift. And he had it hard. Really, really hard. He BARELY made it to yokozuna, after the greatest two-tournament stretch of his entire career. There’s been speculation that he would’ve gotten the rank three years sooner if he submitted to the system of give and take.
None of this should count anything against Hakuho, of course, since there’s is no evidence that he ever TOOK a favor from anyone. In fact, that’s the greatest mystery of his meteoric career, why he seemingly has to dish out favor after favor after favor for zero compensation…pretty much the complete opposite of how yaocho is supposed to work. And that brings us to another little concept that may be more familiar to you…xenophobia. Hakuho is a Mongolian. His challengers at the top are, for the most part, Mongolians. Foreigners are dominating the national sport of Japan to an unheard-of degree, and attendance has been suffering as a result. Japan simply does not want to watch a sport where their own has no chance of succeeding. Is it so farfetched, then, that Hakuho and his contemporaries…while certainly under no obligation to do so…would ease up, just a tiny bit, to ensure that they’re still drawing paychecks at the end of the day?
That is, of course, if there’s any truth to these allegations, which frankly I have no idea. You can go to sumonews.com if you’re interested (which I’m guessing you’re not).
Whew! All right, this is the only time I’ll talk about this incredibly boring subject on SDMB, promise! 
Thanks. That was informative. It does sound to me though that sumo is no different from wrestling matches; it’s all entertainment but not real.
I can’t imagine golfers, curlers, tennis players, baseball players, etc. cutting the opponents some slack and letting them win because of some unwritten fairness rule. It just isn’t going to happen: ever.
The only thing that bothered me about the coverage of Serena’s impressive dominance was on Monday when Mike & Mike were going on and on about how she’s not just a great female athlete, she’s a great athlete. And that she isn’t just impressive “for a girl”, she’s genuinely impressive for either gender.
What bugged me is that they seemed to be pretending that Serena wouldn’t get absolutely destroyed by pretty much anyone on the men’s tour. Not just “not win a game” destroyed, she’d struggle to string two points together. And not just against the top contenders; the 300th ranked man would wipe the floor with her.
Serena’s greatness is pretty much by definition good “for a girl” in two ways: 1) She couldn’t compete with men, and 2) She’s only so dominant because unlike the men’s game, the women’s field is super thin.
I prefer women’s tennis to men’s, and watched maybe half a dozen matches last week. A few times I switched over to watch a few points of the men’s matches. It’s ridiculous how night and day the difference is between them; the women appear to hit the ball and run in slow motion by comparison.
That said, Serena’s dominance is historic, impressive, well earned, and deserving of great respect. Just don’t get too crazy with it.
It has faded in the minds of many Americans, but I don’t think it has faded in the mind of the world. It’s very popular. The decline of American men(the rise of the World) may have affected it quite a bit.
Australia is not on clay. France is.
Yeah, she is good for female. I believe John McEnroe has suggested that she could never win a set against a top 100 ranked man. Top 300? I doubt it.
Like, déjà vu man.
Billie Jean King:
How do you define the women’s field as being super thin right now? It seems to me there’s lots of fine players around.
I mean, if your definition is that Serena Williams is kicking everyone’s ass, well, then, by definition the field will always be thin when a dominant competitor comes around. So how is the field thin? By what measure?
Well, I see no reason why special categories should be off the table, and in that vein, I’d like to nominate her.
Pretty much the last word on Japanese Olympic dominance, nicknamed after a famous manga character, and honored in two second-tier fighting games. That’s a pretty outstanding run in my book.
I would argue that the very reason there is MUCH less competition in women’s tennis is BECAUSE Serena is so great, not vice versa.
The record shows Serena is up there with the greatest of all time.
As to whether the competition is particularly good right now, well, how do we ever really know?
It sure LOOKS like she’s squaring off against some very big, strong, fast athletes and beating them. But even if the competition isn’t as good as it appears to me, how can we hold it against Serena? All Serena can do is play and beat the competition that shows up. That’s all any athlete can do. It wasn’t the fault of Babe Ruth or Red Grange that they never faced black players, and it wouldn’t be Serena’s fault IF it were true that she lacks top-notch rivals. You show up and play whoever you draw.
P.S. Think she’s juicing? (Ducking and running)
Look ather career progression.
She has won 21 slams, with the first in 1999 (US Open).
I think you can agree that an athlete tends to have get better as the get more experienced and then at a certain age there is regression as they, age, injuries catch up with them, younger players get better, people figure out their game. Sure they might still have success and periods of dominance, but they reduce in overall and ultimate success. Look at Federer for instance. Or Sampras. Or Graf. Or Navratilova.
In Serena’s case she began winning in the late 1990’s (she won the last Slam of that decade). She began a domination in the early to mid 2000 (when she won her first "Serena Slam)… She began declining in the mid part of tat decade as Henin and Clijsters began to dominate the circuit…basically par for the course for an athlete. She went two years without a Slam. She had a bit of a resurgance in the late 2000’s (again, like many great players) then again began to regularly not do well in Slams as she approached 30.
However from about 2012 onwards she has again started winning, at an age beyond 30 and not just winning dominating at a level that has not occured at any other time in her career…she has won 8 of 12. She has also faced 7 players in those finals (she beat Sharapova twice). This era coincides with the final retirement of the Belgian, Mauresmo and the general reduction of Venus.
She has had the most successful time of her career, at a very late stage in it. When she has been playing for a decade and a half. Its not a case of being a late bloomer either, and she has a standard regression of her results until just a few years ago.
She is an all time great. But, her career has certainly been helped by the fact she has played a part of it during a time of fairly weak players and that has flattered her record
There’s something vaguely emasculating about knowing that there’s a seriously tiny woman weighing under a hundred pounds out there who can effortlessly tie me into a series of tight, secure knots. Then win a national election in her spare time.
You shouldn’t feel bad. She might weigh as much as 105 lbs. 