OT: Djoker Becomes Undisputed GOAT

[Prez]

Comparing 04-07 Fed to 11-15 Novak or 08-13 Rafa without any context doesn't mean a whole lot to me personally. 06 Federer for example...his toughest competition was a 19 year old Nadal. Djokovic and Murray were 18 years old and at the midpoint of the year were ranked #63 and #45 respectively. There was not a single all-time great player in his prime in 2006 for Fed to contend with. Let's be real, a 2010 apex Nadal or 2011 or 2015 apex Novak is absolutely stomping the tour in 06 as well if you swapped them in for Federer.

Meanwhile Rafa had to contend basically the entirety of his prime against absolute prime Federer, prime Djokovic/Murray, or some combination of all 3. Novak, largely the same, although less so in the late 2010s/early 2020s.

[Doctor MJ]

I think you can find many different slices of competition that can be used to make arguments in opposing directions. People make an argument for peak Nadal over Fed on grass because he won that one Wimbledon finals over Fed, for example. In your specific case, you're saying Fed had a higher peak because he almost didn't lose more than he won against Djokovic while playing at an age that - as of Fed/Rafa/Djoker/Serena - isn't necessarily over the hill.

Honestly I'm not going to call you crazy for favoring Fed, but no, I'm afraid your argument doesn't really resonate with me.

Well help me understand the peak argument for Djokovic then. Nothing about his best year exceeds 2006 Federer’s. Importantly, Federer’s 2004-2007 sustained peak dominance easily clears any 3 or 4 year swathe of Djokovic’s career due to his underperformance from 2012-2014.

And why the H2H thing is important is that Federer had MPs on the best/second best US Open version of Djokovic and beat one of the best Roland Garros version of him that year too (2011), then beat him at Wimbledon in 2012 as well - this being a few years past his peak, and certainly declined from those heights as well.

Is Federer 2006 really the best peak compared to Djokovic, Nadal or other Federer seasons? Sure, his dominance was impressive. But his best opponents were 19/20 year old Nadal, Roddick and legends like Baghdatis, Kiefer, Nalbandian, Ljubičić or the corpse of Tim Henman.

So, this is good stuff to build on for the conversation.

One of the things that makes the debates so challenging is that they totally re-wrote expectations of prime and peak compared to earlier tennis norms. While the fundamental capacity for physical talent still peaks at the same time (your 20s for most people), better fitness knowledge allowed players to have a considerably more gradual decline in their physicality with time. You combine that with new instrument technology, and you start having the possibility of players not figuring out appropriate counter-strategies until after their physical peak.

And this is where the conversation of Federer gets so interesting. Federer developed a game that could beat everyone who came before him, and then was extremely reluctant to embrace newer cutting edge rackets, new strategies against actual rival threats, or give up his one-handed backhand. This allowed Nadal to have the head-to-head advantage generally which continued all the way until Federer was 34 years old which he finally changed his strategy and then boom, all of a sudden the superior overall player started winning the match up on non-clay surfaces.

Back to Fed outside of his rivalries, I think there's a good case to be made that post-peak dominance Fed was better in the absolute sense than peak dominance Fed because of the changes his rivalries eventually led him to make, and this makes it tricky to say when his peak truly came.

There's a similar thing going on with, say, LeBron. His peak impact dominance was '08-09, but when he went to Miami, he had to learn new things that he hadn't learned as of '10-11, so was '08-09 LeBron truly better than '12-13 LeBron, or '15-16 LeBron for that matter? Debatable.

There remains a question of whether Federer could have done the same thing to Djokovic if Federer had just made these changes sooner, but as it happened, making those changes in his 30s was only enough to topple Rafa, not Nole.

[Doctor MJ]

I think you can find many different slices of competition that can be used to make arguments in opposing directions. People make an argument for peak Nadal over Fed on grass because he won that one Wimbledon finals over Fed, for example. In your specific case, you're saying Fed had a higher peak because he almost didn't lose more than he won against Djokovic while playing at an age that - as of Fed/Rafa/Djoker/Serena - isn't necessarily over the hill.

Honestly I'm not going to call you crazy for favoring Fed, but no, I'm afraid your argument doesn't really resonate with me.

Well help me understand the peak argument for Djokovic then. Nothing about his best year exceeds 2006 Federer’s. Importantly, Federer’s 2004-2007 sustained peak dominance easily clears any 3 or 4 year swathe of Djokovic’s career due to his underperformance from 2012-2014.

And why the H2H thing is important is that Federer had MPs on the best/second best US Open version of Djokovic and beat one of the best Roland Garros version of him that year too (2011), then beat him at Wimbledon in 2012 as well - this being a few years past his peak, and certainly declined from those heights as well.

https://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/peakEloRatings

Djokovic has the highest elo rating of all time, higher than Fed's peak. elo takes into account the strength of your competition. 2007 Fed only comes in at #5 on that list. Nadal and Djokovic were barely even a thing in 2007. Your boy Fed made a name for himself beating up on the likes of Roddick and Hewitt before Nadal and Djokovic came around.

The ELO ratings are very helpful and worth everyone checking out. I wouldn't just say the peak ELOs are my GOAT Peak list, but I find them to be extremely helpful when considering players a tier down. How do you deal with a guy like Andy Murray whose slam wins are meh, but had to play through the teeth of the Big 3 era? Well, ELO gives you a way to do that with some confidence.

[Doctor MJ]

Comparing 04-07 Fed to 11-15 Novak or 08-13 Rafa without any context doesn't mean a whole lot to me personally. 06 Federer for example...his toughest competition was a 19 year old Nadal. Djokovic and Murray were 18 years old and at the midpoint of the year were ranked #63 and #45 respectively. There was not a single all-time great player in his prime in 2006 for Fed to contend with. Let's be real, a 2010 apex Nadal or 2011 or 2015 apex Novak is absolutely stomping the tour in 06 as well if you swapped them in for Federer.

Meanwhile Rafa had to contend basically the entirety of his prime against absolute prime Federer, prime Djokovic/Murray, or some combination of all 3. Novak, largely the same, although less so in the late 2010s/early 2020s.

So your thought process in general makes sense, but I will push back in one way:

Players like Boris Becker and Rafa Nadal got their man-bodies earlier than most, and that had everything to do with why they won slams as teenagers.

This then to say that I'd say it's a mistake to assume that Nadal's talent got considerably higher after his teenage years, the way that it does for most men.

[schnakenpopanz]

Some things are god given gifts some other things are hard work.
Same case with Messi and Ronaldo.
But if you ask me the Goat is Maradonna, because of what he has been through

[Rust_Cohle]

Even Federer/Nadal admit Djokovic is the goat, there really isn't any argument anymore against that. It's weird what the insane Fedal fans try to grab on to.

I'd just ask that people keep in mind that it's never all the fans of a particular players that have the most extreme position, just some of them.

Fed's my fave. Best at hitting the ball, best to watch, possibly the most able to dominate in all eras, but I would favor Nole for both peak and career over him.

Don’t see how you could possibly make a peak argument for Djokovic over Federer when, in Djokovic’s very own peak, 30 year old Fed was a MP away from going 3-2 against him in Slams.

Federer has always had a mental block against Djokovic. Time and time again. Probably the worst matchup ever. Djokovic was far more mentally tougher than federer and would’ve smoked 2006 Federer as well.

[Doctor MJ]

I'd just ask that people keep in mind that it's never all the fans of a particular players that have the most extreme position, just some of them.

Fed's my fave. Best at hitting the ball, best to watch, possibly the most able to dominate in all eras, but I would favor Nole for both peak and career over him.

Don’t see how you could possibly make a peak argument for Djokovic over Federer when, in Djokovic’s very own peak, 30 year old Fed was a MP away from going 3-2 against him in Slams.

Federer has always had a mental block against Djokovic. Time and time again. Probably the worst matchup ever. Djokovic was far more mentally tougher than federer and would’ve smoked 2006 Federer as well.

So, I'll grant a kernel of truth to the statement before pointing out that Djokovic only won 54% of his matches against Federer, so maybe we shouldn't talk as if this was a situation where things were all that one sided.

[Hook_Em]

I think the most significant gap between Federer and Djokovic is that Djokovic is far superior on clay. Everything else is pretty even.