Ong_dynasty wrote:Oh I agree, without Nadal and for a few years Federer was unstoppable and probably could have reached 20 majors. But I also believe that his era before Nadal came and when Nadal was still young was a pretty weak era. I mean the best players he had to beat was Hewitt and Roddick. Now you can give me the whole well they won a slam and the likes of Murray, djokovic, Soderling, Del Potro, Tsonga and so forth have not (or only one one). But you can see from watching them who has more to their game. The only player who actually had the game to beat Federer was Safin, but he was never really able to put it together consistently. and I have not looked, but to highlight my point I bet you the current group have better records against Federer than the likes of Hewitt and Roddick.
The reason I brought up the Wimbledon and French double is because everybody knows thats the hardest double to win. I mean if he did win it 5x in a row (hypothetically speaking). he would have topped Borg at the age of 24 and outside of Borg and Federer (who won it by default as Nadal was not fit) no one has ever to do the double.
At the age of 24, Nadal is already dominating 2 surfaces and has a slam in the other. i mean that is more than Federer did at his age. and you are going to say "everybody knows that federer was a late bloomer". which is true. but who is to say that Nadal is not a late bloomer in hard court?! (can you even say that considering he already won a grand slam in it?). You can even make an argument that the way the grand slams are done skew federer's record and discredits Nadal's record. I mean imagine if there was only 1 grand slam for each surface or 2 grand slams for clay how different the record would be. I just find it so "2005" when people say Nadal is a clay court specialist when he was won grand slams on all surfaces already and regularly in the semi finals in hard courts (which people consider he is weak at).
I also think this highlights the differences between how people from America / Canada view greats in tennis and here in Europe. your ranking's (i remember reading them awhile back) weight significantly on number of majors, while we tend to put greater emphasis on the wimbledon and french double.
I think perceptions of strong & weak eras in tennis tend to be quite overblown. Consider that the "new, superior generation of talent" arose in 2007, and if you take out Nadal, Federer's slam record from 2007 through the 2010 Australian looks almost identical to what it was in the "weaker" era. And consider who the guys who Nadal loses to -, in 2008, his best year, other than Djokovic and Murray, he also lost to:
Youzhny
Tsonga
Seppi
Roddick
Davydenko
Ferrero
Simon
Whereas Federer in 2006 lost only to Nadal and Murray.
Nadal's not falling short of 4 & 5 loss seasons because of incredible competition that wasn't there 3 years before. He's just not as solid as Federer was at his peak.
Re: "Channel Slam" as they're now calling the French-Wimbledon double. Certainly winning it 5 times would be impressive. I'm not trying to diminish Nadal here - unless injuries derail him, I fully expect he and Federer to be the consensus picks for 1 & 2 among open era players by the time he's through (I don't think we'll ever get Laver out of the all-time discussion because of how people have wrongly fixated on his 2 Grand Slams).
In many way, what Nadal has already done is more impressive of a run than any who came before - except Federer, who at this point is still clearly above him in peak, prime, and longevity.
Re: "late bloomer". Late bloomer, in tennis, pretty much always means a mental change. Nadal's mental toughness was perfect from the beginning. He deserves much praise for this, but his gradual improvement on all surfaces has been of a man climbing toward his peak in a deliberate manner.
Re: "Nadal clay court specialist". I certainly wouldn't say this. He's developed far beyond this - an overall player for the ages. However he's still not the dominant 3 surface guy that basically only Federer has ever been. Until he does that, Fed's going to have the peak edge.
Re: "skewing of surfaces". This is a great point for discussion generally, and it's huge. So huge in fact that trying to boil it down just for Federer vs Nadal is dangerous.
Re: Weight on Wimbledon & French. Hmm, well, there's some arbitrariness to things, but I don't see how anyone can dismiss the US Open. Not saying I count it more than the other two (I consider Wimbledon greatest of all), but it's very clearly got a grand tradition. Beyond that, hard court is now the dominant surface on which tennis is played world wide. To give the bulk of the weight to two tournaments, neither of which are on the dominant surface, is kind of crazy imho.
