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Wanting to learn more about Tennis, I'm seeing that Nole has the most weeks at #1 all-time on the Men's side of competition and (from what it seems) has the best resume when looking at level of play north of 30.

Am curious as to which NBA players you all see as having better longevity / meaningful prime play at an older age, relative to sport, than Nole does within Tennis.

Nobody.maybe if wilt would have done a comeback with 50 and then dominated.before the big three dominated for so long and at their age it was simply unheard of in Tennis.you reach 30 and that was it was common.joker is ahuge outlier.ofc king James is Close as he is in almost all comparisons.

CumberlandPosey wrote:Nobody.maybe if wilt would have done a comeback with 50 and then dominated.before the big three dominated for so long and at their age it was simply unheard of in Tennis.you reach 30 and that was it was common.joker is ahuge outlier.ofc king James is Close as he is in almost all comparisons.

Federer was #1 in the world at an older age with younger Djokoivc and Nadal as rivals. How is Djokovic a huge outlier?

True but Joker won 11 slams after age 30 while fedex "only" won 4.joker is simply more dominant at an older age imo.these Statements wont take away anything from federer as i know that these comparisons escalate into james-jordan territory rather quickly.to make it easier---Federer and djokovic are both huge outliers.

Djokovic’s longevity is insanely impressive, but it’s not some colossal outlier in tennis. He’s 36 right now - Federer won a grand slam in both his age 36 and age 37 seasons, Nadal last year in his age 36 season won 2 grand slams.

I would actually argue what LeBron did at 38 going on 39 in season 20 is more impressive.

CumberlandPosey wrote:True but Joker won 11 slams after age 30 while fedex "only" won 4.joker is simply more dominant at an older age imo.these Statements wont take away anything from federer as i know that these comparisons escalate into james-jordan territory rather quickly.to make it easier---Federer and djokovic are both huge outliers.

I don’t think you can just compare it straight up like that. A big difference is that post-30 Federer had to deal with two other younger GOAT contenders in their primes (Djokovic/Nadal). Whereas Djokovic post-30 faced a clearly past prime Fed, and Rafa picking up some injuries and aging a bit as well.

Also true.thats why i already said in my first post that the big three are martians and not human.with each year playing against each other they became so far ahead of the field.thats why alcaraz battling against old joker is so fascinating right now (french semis,wim final and cincy final all were epic)

CumberlandPosey wrote:Also true.thats why i already said in my first post that the big three are martians and not human.with each year playing against each other they became so far ahead of the field.thats why alcaraz battling against old joker is so fascinating right now (french semis,wim final and cincy final all were epic)

Hoping we get this again at the US Open.

This is basically a numbers based thing when talking about outliers. You'd need to choose 2-3 criteria for each sport then run numbers on around a 1000 athletes from both over the last 50 years or so and see how it comes out. At first glance though I'd say that Djokovic is knocking on the door of being the biggest outlier in both sports. True dominance past the age of 35 isn't something we've really seen yet. LeBron came close the last few years but I think missed too many games and didn't have a dominant playoff run to cement himself as truly dominant. Kareem came close in 85 but realistically speaking wasn't really close to being his prime self. Nole at 35/36 is at worst the 2nd best player on the regular tour and I think has a chance at winning 3/4 slams this year which is about as good as any man ever does since the 70's. So this season for him would be the equivalent of what Kareem did in 71 or 80.

Prez wrote:

CumberlandPosey wrote:True but Joker won 11 slams after age 30 while fedex "only" won 4.joker is simply more dominant at an older age imo.these Statements wont take away anything from federer as i know that these comparisons escalate into james-jordan territory rather quickly.to make it easier---Federer and djokovic are both huge outliers.

I don’t think you can just compare it straight up like that. A big difference is that post-30 Federer had to deal with two other younger GOAT contenders in their primes (Djokovic/Nadal). Whereas Djokovic post-30 faced a clearly past prime Fed, and Rafa picking up some injuries and aging a bit as well.

True and if you look at the history of the sport, older great players tend to lose younger great players at slams (looking at like 5+ year age difference or even like 3+). Take out the younger GoATs and Federer likely wins just as much post 30 if not more. As is he got back to #1 with Nadal and Djokovic in their early 30s.

rk2023 wrote:Wanting to learn more about Tennis, I'm seeing that Nole has the most weeks at #1 all-time on the Men's side of competition and (from what it seems) has the best resume when looking at level of play north of 30.

Am curious as to which NBA players you all see as having better longevity / meaningful prime play at an older age, relative to sport, than Nole does within Tennis.

So main thing I think about longevity here is that there's an era thing going on.

I don't think it's remotely a coincidence that Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Serena, LeBron, Brady, etc are all blowing past established rules for longevity at this time. I think it's about modern training methods.

Of course that doesn't mean that all modern athletes can do this - there are still injuries modern medicine can't really fix, there are body changes that can't be held back, etc - but for those who hit no major snags, have the money to invest in their training, have the motivation to keep grinding, and were just plain good enough that maintaining their prime is enough, they can keep it up longer than ever before.

I do think it's interesting to look at the big longevity guys from earlier eras.

In basketball, Kareem's the big guy. There I think what we're talking about is:
1. Good enough, healthy enough, etc.
2. A killer weapon that he didn't lose with age.
3. Landing in a place in his later years that he could see the value in continuing to grind in.

Over in tennis, 3 contemporaries come to mind: Pancho Gonzales, Ken Rosewall, Rod Laver.

With that trio, the most noteworthy thing is that they were the dominant pros of the last era before the Open era. Thing to understand there is that in the pro tours before the Open era, they made most of their money not from tournaments but from going from city to city playing against each other. And so while a modern Grand Slam lets 128 guys play the big tourney, and play against the best, back then, it was just a handful of guys playing against the very best on the regular, and everyone else on the outside looking in.

So these guys dominate the game due to situation and good health along with talent, and then the Open era begins...with basically all of the other guys still sucking in comparison, and allowing Rosewall & Laver (the two younger of the 3) to dominate for a while longer.

(Worth noting that with Gonzales, he said the thing that did him in was his diminishing eyesight, not his body. He still made the semis at the French as a 40 year old at the start of the open era despite this...and one can't help but wonder what modern ophthalmology could have done for him.

I'll also note that while I don't think Rosewall or Laver could really compete in the modern power game of tennis, Gonzales honestly seems like a taller more athletic Pete Sampras.)

homecourtloss wrote:
True and if you look at the history of the sport, older great players tend to lose younger great players at slams (looking at like 5+ year age difference or even like 3+). Take out the younger GoATs and Federer likely wins just as much post 30 if not more. As is he got back to #1 with Nadal and Djokovic in their early 30s.

As much as I like Federer(and he's been my favorite tennis player since about 2003) part of why I think he got back to #1 was injuries to Novak and Nadal. Nadal has had a lot of years where he missed 4-5 months since his late 20's and Novak has had a few years where he had injuries as well.

Doctor MJ wrote:
Over in tennis, 3 contemporaries come to mind: Pancho Gonzales, Ken Rosewall, Rod Laver.

With that trio, the most noteworthy thing is that they were the dominant pros of the last era before the Open era. Thing to understand there is that in the pro tours before the Open era, they made most of their money not from tournaments but from going from city to city playing against each other. And so while a modern Grand Slam lets 128 guys play the big tourney, and play against the best, back then, it was just a handful of guys playing against the very best on the regular, and everyone else on the outside looking in.

So these guys dominate the game due to situation and good health along with talent, and then the Open era begins...with basically all of the other guys still sucking in comparison, and allowing Rosewall & Laver (the two younger of the 3) to dominate for a while longer.

(Worth noting that with Gonzales, he said the thing that did him in was his diminishing eyesight, not his body. He still made the semis at the French as a 40 year old at the start of the open era despite this...and one can't help but wonder what modern ophthalmology could have done for him.

I'll also note that while I don't think Rosewall or Laver could really compete in the modern power game of tennis, Gonzales honestly seems like a taller more athletic Pete Sampras.)

I think Connors is worth a mention here also. Connors still being top 5 in the world In 86 or 87 I believe when he would have been 35 or 36 then making the us open semi's at age 39. I think part of what allowed Laver and Rosewall to have such great longevity as well is their style of play. Serve and volley makes for short points which makes endurance less of an issue in best of 5 tournaments and 3 of the 4 slams being on grass also helped them.

Cavsfansince84 wrote:

Doctor MJ wrote:
Over in tennis, 3 contemporaries come to mind: Pancho Gonzales, Ken Rosewall, Rod Laver.

With that trio, the most noteworthy thing is that they were the dominant pros of the last era before the Open era. Thing to understand there is that in the pro tours before the Open era, they made most of their money not from tournaments but from going from city to city playing against each other. And so while a modern Grand Slam lets 128 guys play the big tourney, and play against the best, back then, it was just a handful of guys playing against the very best on the regular, and everyone else on the outside looking in.

So these guys dominate the game due to situation and good health along with talent, and then the Open era begins...with basically all of the other guys still sucking in comparison, and allowing Rosewall & Laver (the two younger of the 3) to dominate for a while longer.

(Worth noting that with Gonzales, he said the thing that did him in was his diminishing eyesight, not his body. He still made the semis at the French as a 40 year old at the start of the open era despite this...and one can't help but wonder what modern ophthalmology could have done for him.

I'll also note that while I don't think Rosewall or Laver could really compete in the modern power game of tennis, Gonzales honestly seems like a taller more athletic Pete Sampras.)

I think Connors is worth a mention here also. Connors still being top 5 in the world In 86 or 87 I believe when he would have been 35 or 36 then making the us open semi's at age 39. I think part of what allowed Laver and Rosewall to have such great longevity as well is their style of play. Serve and volley makes for short points which makes endurance less of an issue in best of 5 tournaments and 3 of the 4 slams being on grass also helped them.

Definitely Connors deserves to be seen as a man with great longevity. This was a man who enjoyed the battle of elite competitive sport above all and just did not want to give it up. I can't help but admire that.

One thing I did want to point out is that Connors was excellent for a long time, but there's a difference between that and being a threat to win major tournaments. With that in mind I went and looked up the age each of these guys were with their last major title. It says what I was thinking about Connors, though I'll acknowledge I had thought Laver was closer in birth to Rosewall and so the truth is that Laver was probably on that same secondary elite tier that Connors was.

Oldest men's major winners:

1. Ken Rosewall (37)
2. Roger Federer (36)
3. Novak Djokovic (36)
4. Rafael Nadal (35)
5. Andres Gimeno (34)
6. Andre Agassi (32)
7. Arthur Ashe (31)
8. Stan Wawrinka (31)
9. Rod Laver (31)
10. Peter Sampras (31)
11. Jimmy Connors (30)

(Serena Williams is the oldest women's winner at 35)

Re: Laver & Rosewall, serve & volley, last longer. It's a worthy thought but a) Rosewall was all about outlasting rather than overpowering his opponents, and b) in more recent eras, I'd say serve & volley guys had something of a tendency to peak early and not have as great longevity.

Doctor MJ wrote:
Definitely Connors deserves to be seen as a man with great longevity. This was a man who enjoyed the battle of elite competitive sport above all and just did not want to give it up. I can't help but admire that.

One thing I did want to point out is that Connors was excellent for a long time, but there's a difference between that and being a threat to win major tournaments. With that in mind I went and looked up the age each of these guys were with their last major title. It says what I was thinking about Connors, though I'll acknowledge I had thought Laver was closer in birth to Rosewall and so the truth is that Laver was probably on that same secondary elite tier that Connors was.

(Serena Williams is the oldest women's winner at 35)

Re: Laver & Rosewall, serve & volley, last longer. It's a worthy thought but a) Rosewall was all about outlasting rather than overpowering his opponents, and b) in more recent eras, I'd say serve & volley guys had something of a tendency to peak early and not have as great longevity.

I agree with you to some degree. Which is why I said in my first post I think you'd need to use like at least a few different criteria per sport to measure it and then run the numbers on most of the players from the last 50 or so years. If true dominance is what we are looking for then slam wins would be part of it for tennis though that's harder to quantify for basketball.