Greatest Male Tennis Player of All Time?

[WC4Life]

Nuvendil said:

Puppyroach said:

Also, should the title be "Greatest male tennis player of all time"? Otherwise, I would like to throw in both Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graaf and Serena Williams :).

Well the Williams sisters will be the first to tell you that they couldn't keep up with any of the top five male tennis players currently in the game.  It's just a scientific reality.

I say Federer is the number greatest.  The lopsided Nadal matchup is a bit misleading since the vast majority of their meetings were on clay.  Nadal and Federer would very often be so seeded as to only meet if both reached the finals of a given major but then Nadal would go out early.  Or Nadal would abstain.  Just looking at their record at the finals now makes it clear for me.  Nadal is a straight up clay specialist.  He was number one on clay for a looong time.  But he only had a very brief period where you could even argue he was number one anywhere else.  Federer, on the other hand, spent the hay day of his career - several years - where he was the best on all courts but clay and on clay he was undoubtedly second only to Nadal.  In the words of Pete Sampras, in today's game you are either a clay court specialist, a hard court specialist, a grass court specialist, or Roger Federer.  And his consistency was unreal:  5 years straight of semifinals or better at all majors, 9 years straight of quarterfinals or better.  

More like Top 100 and that is still VERY generous.

 

Federer is top for sure but Nadal is more tricky. Nadal benefitted the most when balls and courts were changed, this happened slowly through the years. I believe Nadal would struggle in Sampras-era in hard/grass courts but Federer would achieve success.