Federer actually leads Nadal 5-3 on non-clay, but is 2-11 on clay. The reason Nadal has such a winning record is because they have played so often on clay. The reason they have played so often on clay is because Federer is a much better clay court player than Nadal is a non-clay court player. On clay, Federer beats everyone else until he comes up against Nadal. On other surfaces, Nadal loses to a whole bunch of players, so doesn’t get to play Federer anywhere near as often.
Hence it is misleading to cite Nadal’s overall winning record and state that it proves that Federer is not even better than Nadal. If they met on hard/grass/indoor surfaces as frequently (given that there are many more of these tournaments than clay), and the 5-3 Federer edge held up, then their overall record would be very close to .500.
If you’re talking about Grand Slam titles, the record before Sampras was 12. Here are the top five:
1 Roger Federer 16 (last in 2010)
2 Pete Sampras 14 (last in 2002)
3 Roy Emerson 12 (last in 1967)
4 Rod Laver 11 (last in 1969)
4 Björn Borg 11 (last in 1981)
See the post before the one I quoted. It’s not completely clear to me but Ellis Dee was comparing Federer’s streak to the overall Grand Slam title record, and showing how far ahead he is of the competition in each.
In recent months, Federer lost to DelPotro and Soderling, so he’s beginning to lose to other players. And remember that in the span of about 9 months before he got injured, Nadal won the French Open, Wimbledon, the Olympic gold medal, the Davis Cup, the Australian Open, and made it to the semis of the US Open. That’s pretty good for a “clay court” player.
Most importantly, Nadal is only 23 (Happy Birthday, Rafa). If you go back to Federer’s record, when he was playing from ages 18-22, his record was spotty, too. He didn’t start to dominate until he was 24 or 25 years old. So one could argue that Nadal isn’t even fully cooked yet. So don’t underestimate Nadal.
If he stays healthy (and that’s admittedly a big “if”), Nadal has an excellent chance at winning a career Grand Slam, if not a calendar one, especially once Federer retires. (I can’t see Federer playing after he starts to routinely lose.) Will he dominate for years like Federer? I doubt it, because Roger’s style of play is much easier on his body (perhaps by design). But Nadal is still learning, while Federer has already peaked. If I were a player today, I honestly don’t know who would give me more of a stomach ache – Federer or Nadal. And that’s a compliment to both of them.
Oh, I certainly don’t mean to denigrate Nadal as being just a clay court player, and I do agree that Federer is probably on his way down now. Del Potro and Soderling have shown that Federer can be bludgeoned off the court. What is more, many players no longer fear Federer like they used to - his aura of invincibility has gone.
My point is just that over their careers so far, the fact that Federer was a better clay court player than Nadal was a non-clay court player over that time results in a distorted head-to-head record, because they end up mostly playing on Nadal’s best surface and Federer’s possibly worst.
Bjorn Borg was who got me interested in tennis. I was 12 years old and would get up at the crack of dawn to watch him at Wimbledon. And, I must say, he’s held up well.
He only played the Australian Open once, in 1974 when he was just 17 or 18 (depending on exactly when they played the tournament that year - they kept fiddling with the schedule). Given that it was played on grass in those days, just think how many extra grand slam titles Borg might have accumulated.
Yep you understood correctly, and based on Cicero’s last response he does as well.
If anyone’s confused, my main point is that Sampras’ record of 14 should not have been viewed as unbeatable (and I’m not convinced anyone actually thought it was) because it was a natural incremental improvement over the previous records, which (thanks again, Marley) went from 11 to 12 to 14.
Conversely, the consecutive slam semifinal streak went from 10 to 10 to 23. That’s not an incremental increase, but a massive, unthinkable leap. That’s why it’s more reasonable to say that Federer’s streak could very well stand for our lifetimes, as opposed to Sampras’ record which in the context of second place wasn’t particularly special. (Speaking strictily in the statistical outlier sense.)
In short, you can’t devalue the specialness of Federer’s semifinal streak by pointing out how quickly Sampras’ slam title record was broken.
Little side note: if you asked, I bet most people would assume the ‘11’ was Laver. He wasn’t. The record holders were Tilden, Emerson, Sampras, and Federer. Laver never held the record for most Grand Slam singles titles. Tilden had the record for almost 50 years, then Emerson broke it, and Sampras topped Emerson 33 years later. Laver tied Tilden, and Borg later matched them both, but he never had the record on his own.
I don’t want to make this into a thing, but this is why, pre-Sampras, the Grand Slam title record was sort of a piece of trivia and was not really considered an indicator of who was the best player ever. Emerson had the record but from what I can tell, very few people thought Emerson was better than Laver. From an ESPN, bar bet-ish point of view, it’s convenient for an individual sport to have a single statistic that shows who has the most championships ever. In golf, from what I can tell, that works. In tennis it doesn’t. The best players ever, until 1968, had to choose between making money as professionals or winning Grand Slam titles as amateurs. So they won some Slam titles and then went pro. On a lesser note there’s also the fact that tennis’ majors are spread out over three different continents, which is also not the case with golf. The Australian Open didn’t achieve its current level of prominence until maybe the '80s.
None of which should devalue the greatness of any one player. But the ultimate measure of these guys, in my opinion, is not statistical, it’s in how they played the game on the court.
The Williams sisters just won the women’s doubles championship, completing a non-calendar year Grand Slam. I think they’re going to become the #1 ranked team in the world next week, making Serena the first player in a long time to be #1 in singles and doubles at the same time. I’m not sure two players have ever been #1 and #2 at the same time while also being the top doubles team. That’s really crazy if you think about it.
Berdych has given Soderling a tougher test than I expected. Berdych has never made it this far in a major and it’s been years since he even had a shot at a final. But Soderling is now up 5-3 in the fifth set, with Berdych about to serve to extend the match. The winner is really going to need that day off tomorrow because of course he will probably get Nadal in the finals.
Yes Emerson wasn’t remotely as good as his grand slam record suggests. For example he was the French open champion in 1967 but in the next year, the first of the open era, he was beaten in the quarter final by Pancho Gonzales who was 8 years his senior at 40. The interesting thing is that Emerson is the only real anomaly at the top of the list; the other players were unquestionably greats though some of them won fewer grand slams than they should have. And of course there are errors of omission; all-time greats like Kramer and Gonzales who aren’t near the top because of their long professional careers.
Incidentally one aspect of the pre-1968 professional era which still amazes me is that a lot of the tennis was organized in the form of interminable head-to-head series between the top players. For example in 1958, Gonzales played Lew Hoad a whopping 87 times.
Women’s final spoiler ahead.
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That was a great, aggressive match. I wasn’t really surprised by the result because Schiavone had nothing to lose while Stosur had all the pressure.
I thought that Schiavone showed spunk and fearlessness and I loved how she could move seamlessly up to the net. I also thought that for all the negative comments about her looks, she looked absolutely beautiful when she smiled. (Though I do wonder if anyone has ever seen her and Apolo Anton Ohno in the same room? :dubious:)
I think Francesca is better looking than she is/was given credit for. I believe her attractiveness is made or broken by her hair style. It’s a very “boyish” type. Her smile was very nice though, the look you’d expect of sheer happiness of winning a major when it could reasonably be said that you’re time was up.
