There are several player who but for being in an era with one of the best of all time; would have had more success then they did.
Now the player who kept them down should be have been an all time great;not just someone who was better then them. Seconly said player must have been someone who was very good and possibly great in potential, not just any Tom Dick or Harry.
Stuart MacGill would have had a hell of a career had there been no such thing as the present Mr Liz Hurly.
Andy Roddick would have won many more slams if Roger Federar had not been around or even if he was born a couple of years early and thus was at the level in 2001 what he was in 2003 historically.
Tiger Woods prevented Earnie Else from being considered in the same league as Gary Player; he would have won two majors in 2000 for instance sans Tiger.
Not quite in the same category, but from back in the days when I followed the NBA closely ( I don’t now ), I always have felt bad for the Utah Jazz team that lost to the Chicago Bulls in 1997 and 1998. I really enjoyed watching Jerry Sloan’s system with Stockton-Malone-Hornacek. But the Bulls behind Michael Jordan were simply too overpowering.
I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with the whole premise - or at least with some of the examples you give.
Andy Roddick? are you KIDDING me? He was injury-prone and gets his ass handed to him by no- and low-ranked opponents on a regular basis (when he doesn’t pull out altogether due to aforementioned injuries). He was world #1 for only a few months and while yes Federer was the one who dethroned him, a lot was due to Roddick self-destructing all the time. He would NOT have won “many” more tournaments if Federer (or Nadal or Djokovic now) had been around - someone else would have taken him out - if he didn’t take himself out first.
Ernie Els? He was already on the downslope when Tiger came around - heck his first Major came two full years before Tiger turned pro, one came the same year TW won his first Masters (1997) and several years before the “Tiger Slam”. Ernie turned pro in '89 while Tiger turned pro in '96 - 7 years difference. He had plenty of time to be as dominant a player as Tiger before Tiger showed up and didn’t do it.
Muhammad Ali’s trainer, Angelo Dundee often said that, if Ali hadn’t been around, Joe Frazier would merit serious consideration as the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time.
And, if we think of teams rather than individuals, if the Yankees hadn’t been so strong in the 40s and 50s, the Brooklyn Dodgers might be regarded as one of the all-time great baseball dynasties, rather than as lovable losers and gritty underdogs.
Federer. Without Nadal, Federer would have 22 majors, with at least 5 wins in each. He would have won 10 straight majors from '05 Wimbledon through the '07 US Open, including two consecutive calendar-year grand slams.
The first New York Yankee to win the league HR title was Wally Pipp,
who hit a dead-ball era 12 in 1916. Pipp made it titles two in a row
with 9HR in 1917.
The conversion of Babe Ruth from pitcher to outfielder put an end to
Pipp’s HR titles, but he continued to perform credibly as a hitter,
highlighted by 300+BA and 100+RBI seasons in 1923-24. In 1920-25
he started 755/770 games for the Yankees at 1B.
In 1925, however, he was benched in favor of the young Lou Gehrig,
and never started another game in New York.
I have to give you the “are you KIDDING me?” right back, because it sounds like you’ve missed much of the last decade in tennis.
To recap Roddick’s real world career: he reached #1 in the world at 21 and he spent almost the entire period from late 2002 to early 2011 ranked inside the top ten. For most of the early and middle part of the 2000s, he was a top five guy. He spent a long time as #2 behind Federer and then a lot of time as #3 after Federer and Nadal. He won one major, six Masters series events, and a total of 30 career titles (including one every year since 2001, just like Federer). He’s never been injury prone, although not surprisingly he’s breaking down more often as he gets older. That happens to everyone who isn’t Federer. Roddick has suffered some upset losses over the years, but so does everyone. It is true he’s getting dumped in the early rounds of big tournaments pretty regularly these days. Federer and Nadal sometimes give you the impression they never have a bad loss, although it does happen now and then. Roddick has shown some mental weakness, primarily against Federer. That’s because he really can’t beat the guy no matter what he does.
Roddick’s real-life results include losing to Federer in four Grand Slam finals (three Wimbledons and a U.S. Open) and a goodly number of other quarterfinal and semifinal losses. I think I counted them once.
So if you can pretend there was a world where everything stayed the same but Federer didn’t exist - admitting that cause and effect is always more complex than we pretend it is in games like this - I think it’s very probably Roddick would have won something like six majors and spent some more time at #1 until Nadal ascended in early 2005. It is extremely easy to see him winning three or four Wimbledons based on that serve. That’s a pretty modest prediction since he did lose in the finals to Federer three times. I can see him winning another U.S. Open and/or Australian Open or two along the way. In the early years he did tend to play well in New York. And the other thing I think people tend to forget is that there wasn’t a dominant player in 2001-'02. If there’s no Federer, you can picture Roddick taking advantage of that to become the guy.
So an elseworlds Roddick wouldn’t get the praise Andre Agassi does, but he’d be on the next tier after that - someone who won a lot of big events, spent some time at #1, and was a contender for a long time because of that serve.
The evidence says he would have. Like I said, he was a top five player for years and a ten player for almost 10 years and his record against Federer is 2-16. You can’t win them all, but what else was going to get in his way?
Jordan played two guard almost exclusively while with da Bulls. Scottie Pippen was their small forward, with guys like Horace Grant in the power forward slot and BJ Armstrong and Steve Kerr at point guard. And for that matter, I seem to recall Clyde the Glide spending most of his time at shooting guard as well, but I could be misremembering that – I didn’t follow the Trail Blazers too closely during the height of his game. In any event, if he was playing three, he was also in the shadow of James Worthy, who may or may not have been deserving of casting that big a shadow, depending on your point of view.
Could you count the SF defeats again please (I know one, 2003 Wimbledon).
Anyway if Fed did not exist;then I can say easily that Andy Roddick would have dominated for some time. In real life he was World no 2 from about 2003 to 2006/7.
There was no real great player between 1998 to 2003, Sampras and Agassi were old, Becker was gone and Rafter, Kuerten and Kafelnikov were not really in the top grade. If Roddick had arrived at the level he did in real life in 2003 by the simple virtue of being a bit older; I think he could have won a lot more. The only real competition he would have faced was Hewitt and as he showed historically; he is a much better player then Hewitt and I think he would have beaten him (Safin still has his mental issues).
He could easily have won both Wimbledon and the US Open in 2001 (he lost to Ivanisivich historically) and most likely another Wimbledon in 2002 with an Australian Open (Agassi won this) and US Open in 2003. I can easily see him losing to Federar in the 2003 Wimbledon final and then losing the World No 1 ranking as happened in real life after Fed wins the Australian Open 2004 (Roddick lost to Safin who lost to Fed).