Federers match win at Slams record

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It's a great achievement, for sure, though once again Connors record is held back by the status of the Australian Open back then. The link here shows what an insane winning run Jimmy had at Wimbledon and the US;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATP_World_Tour_records#Match_wins_per_Grand_Slam_tournament

Against that, in the current era of ridiculous physicality, a player could not have the longevity that Connors enjoyed. It's gets me wondering whether Federer may set a record here that will be unbeatable by anyone, even further out than his Slam winning run. Remember that even at the French Open Rafa has only been edging him by one match a year, and should Federer win Roland garros this year he would actually become the record holder for most wins by anyone, ever, at the French!

I suppose this is an inevitable outcome of the ridiculous run of 18 finals in 19 events. That, I am confident, is something that will never be seen again.

socal1976 wrote:

Jeremy_Kyle wrote:Soc: who are those Fed's worshippers of whom you keep on talking nearly obsessively I feel: Tenez ain't here anymore, who I reckon was one always on your mind, Boggo's I bet is another, who else?

Just curious, really.

JK I really don't want to go public and draw lines and polarize the thing even further. I think everyone knows that the people I generally get into the biggest tussles with would logically be the ones that I consider fed worshippers and extremists.

Well I don't, I spend at least 1/2 an hour a day on this bloody tennis forum and I promise I haven't got the slightest clue of what are you talking about..........

Yes, yes lags, like i said he is a truely great player but he certainly padded his records quite a bit against the fat guy and dodgey hip.

socal1976 wrote:Yes, yes lags, like i said he is a truely great player but he certainly padded his records quite a bit against the fat guy and dodgey hip.

Is that the dodgy hip who, now virtually in a wheelchair, took a set off Djokovic at the Australian open THIS year?

Played at the craps table at The Venecian...didnt come away 5K up though!

Fat guys and dodgey hips? ...wow this discussion has moved on!
Is that what they call 'physicality'?

By the way Lags on a sidenote, Rafa was a pretty easy beat relatively speaking on hardcourts until the middle part of his career. Not really a threat to fed at the non-clay slams till probably 07 wimby where he took fed to 5 sets. Djokovic was a teenager and had serious respiratory and problems and till Miami of 07 really wasn't a threat to fed as teenage asthmatic. Murray started to develop into top top level even later.

Ok, socal you've convinced me (and no doubt many others ....!) that all these guys courteously waited for Federer to get old before they finally decided to start challenging him for real

So.... now we have

- Rafa no threat on hardcourts
- Novak's respiratory problems (and a teenager to boot)
- Murray the late developer

joining the ranks of

- Nalbandian, 'the fat guy'
- Hewitt, the dodgy hip, little Aussie
- Roddick, the big server

You've pretty much covered all bases I think.

And yet ..... while these respective personal tragedies and shortcomings have (allegedly) been a feature of the tennis scene, one guy (Federer) has somehow been winning Slams in all but one year (2011) during the careers to date of all those listed above.....

Socal, Rafa had never been an 'easy' beat on a hard court...or any court...in the general sense. By as early as 2005 (19 yrs old) he had got to finals of Miami Masters, won Canada Masters and indoor Madrid Masters...and finished the year with a HC win:loss of 82%. Stats any legend of the game would be happy with....and all by 18/19 yo, and even before the courts were slowed down further to the point they are now.

lydian wrote:Socal, Rafa had never been an 'easy' beat on a hard court...or any court...in the general sense. By as early as 2005 (19 yrs old) he had got to finals of Miami Masters, won Canada Masters and indoor Madrid Masters...and finished the year with a HC win:loss of 82%. Stats any legend of the game would be happy with....and all by 18/19 yo, and even before the courts were slowed down further to the point they are now.

Duly noted lydian but if you go back and read my post on the issue I stated that Rafa was "relatively" weak on hardcourt at that stage in his career. He could always play pretty well on the surface but if you compare Rafa of lets say 06 against Rafa nadal 2009,2010, and 2011 on hardcourt and compare objective results and records I think you would find that Rafa of today is a much stronger hardcourt player than Rafa 05 and 06 and early 07. Rafa back then could barely break 110 or 115 miles per hour on his serve and he did not have the flat forehand or volleys he has today. I think you know that yourself having observed his game.

Lags, I want you to understand that I don't doubt Roger's greatness, but I do think that early on in his run he did not face the most world beatingly consistent competition from his opponents. This allowed Roger to pad his numbers a little. Doesn't mean he isn't the greatest and couldn't dominate in any generation but it does mean that when you bandy about some of Roger's numbers you must remember that he didn't exactly have murder's row standing in front of him from 03 to 07.

It is like Wilt Chamberlain in basketball. Wilt chamberlain besides loving the ladies was a remarkable athlete. He ran was seven foot one and two seventy pounds. In high school at that height he was the state champ in the 400 yards running it in like 45 seconds. Any analysis of the best centers in the NBA would have wilt in the top 3 if not the greatest. Yet his stats are even more overboard than his greatness indicates. He scored 100 points in an NBA game had an entire season where he average 50 plus points a game twice. Michael Jordan's best scoring average was 37 points a game. Now here is the caveat Wilt chamberlain was being guarded by mainly white guys who were between six foot six and six foot eight and who gave up 50 pounds and six inches to him. Chamberlain was great no one denies it but he isn't putting up those kind of numbers as easily today. Now Roger doesn't have as much good timing and didn't face as poor a competition as wilt the stilt who was ahead of his time. But I think that many of his contemporaries for whatever reason failed to become truely great and it wasn't just because Roger held them back, others on tour stepped up to start beating them.

Oh dear, more guff.

The dodgy hip, now virtually immobile, took a set of Djokovic at the Australian. So obviously he must still be as good as he was back in 2002-5? I mean, if he's really half the player that would mean he'd have been shoulder to shoulder with Djokovic wouldn't it, and we mustn't have that because we all know the agenda behind every post is to promote Djokovic as some kind of best-ever player.

Sadly the logic fails to penerate some. That crop of players was starved of success because Federer was at his physical peak and the combination of speed, stamina and shot making was going to make anyone else look diminished.
The fact that Federer gave Djokovic the greatest pressure at Slams in 2011, when 30 and clearly more vulnerable to the field than in previous years, is evidence of this.

Is that why ljubi kept losing in the first couple of rounds of slams, wasn't that Gasquet and Murray the also rans of this generation knocking Roddick out of wimbeldon. Was Hewitt consistently fighting to the semis only to lose to Roger? No wrong again. Nalby, Hewitt, Ferrero, Safin, and Roddick were all easily displaced by a fleet of players most of whom were not named Roger. Weak competition, regardless of Roger's greatness, they just were not of the calibre of the players that came up immediately before or after. Even before the rise of Roger these players had difficulty putting together a consistent run at the top. Roger did a few victory laps, padded up his numbers and did what he could do and beat his lesser contemporaries to a pulp.

And yet Ferrer, Melzer, Youzhny, Fish, Lopez have all had their highest rankings on tour in the last couple of years.

Even Lubi won his one and only masters title in 2010.

You know you really do write a load of nonsense.. or maybe it's just you trying to be deliberately provocative. Either way it's pretty asinine.

So basically Fed won loads of slams against weak players, but failed when great players came along. So logically, he's not that great a player, because his achievements are all heavily asterisked.

Except that for Djokovic to be said to be great, he has to have been winning in a golden era, so Fed must therefore be great (despite the assertion in the first paragraph) This then makes Djoko look even better.

Very similar to Rafa fans a few years back saying that Fed wasn't great, until it was pointed out that if Rafa's main rival wasn't great, then Rafa was winning in a weak era, so they decided that Fed must really be great, but not as great as Rafa.

JuliusHMarx wrote:So basically Fed won loads of slams against weak players, but failed when great players came along. So logically, he's not that great a player, because his achievements are all heavily asterisked.

Except that for Djokovic to be said to be great, he has to have been winning in a golden era, so Fed must therefore be great (despite the assertion in the first paragraph) This then makes Djoko look even better.

Very similar to Rafa fans a few years back saying that Fed wasn't great, until it was pointed out that if Rafa's main rival wasn't great, then Rafa was winning in a weak era, so they decided that Fed must really be great, but not as great as Rafa.

When did I say fed wasn't great, I said he padded his numbers against weaker relative competition early on. To an extent Agassi padded his numbers against the same group of guys at the tail end of his career. Firstly, as usual you attach odd meanings to the plain language of my posts. Fed's numbers are not asteriked, just somewhat inflated. Federer probably would dominate any era. But that doesn't mean that i have to pretend that hewitt, safin, ferrero, nalby, and roddick are comparable in quality level to those that came before Agassi, Sampras, Courier, Edberg, Becker; or those that came afterwards Novak, Rafa, Murray. The proof is in the pudding and I have produced mountains of objective facts that snide comments from fed fans do not address.

emancipator wrote:And yet Ferrer, Melzer, Youzhny, Fish, Lopez have all had their highest rankings on tour in the last couple of years.

Even Lubi won his one and only masters title in 2010.

You know you really do write a load of nonsense.. or maybe it's just you trying to be deliberately provocative. Either way it's pretty asinine.

Fish, Melzer, Youzhny, and Lopez aren't exactly setting the world on fire they are staying relevant on tour. Ljubi good player deficient world #3 or 4. And my response to this is so what? The also rans and guys outside the leading pack rarely determine the winners of major trophies. Only one masters or slam has ever been won by Ljubi in his 15 year career, so in determing the strength of an era the ljubi and even consistent players like Ferrer really don't matter much. Nobody looks back on the 80s and says wow, Aaron Krickstein was number 9 in the world what a strong era of competition or weak or otherwise. Because of the nature of tournament tennis it is the top 3-5 guys at most that determine the strength of an era. When fed came up he was an incredibly strong lead horse, but the second, third, and fourth best guys of his era where significantly weaker than normal.

It can only be trolling; here's Federer a shadow of his former self threatening the #1 position and were supposed to believe its so strong now.

Add Ferrer, crippled Hewitt laughed at on this thread taking a set off Djokovic at the AO, etc. etc.

socal1976 wrote: Federer probably would dominate any era.

He's not dominating this one.

JuliusHMarx wrote:

socal1976 wrote: Federer probably would dominate any era.

He's not dominating this one.

Oops Julius, now you've put him in a dilemma, where does he go next

socal1976 wrote:
When did I say fed wasn't great, I said he padded his numbers against weaker relative competition early on. To an extent Agassi padded his numbers against the same group of guys at the tail end of his career. Firstly, as usual you attach odd meanings to the plain language of my posts. Fed's numbers are not asteriked, just somewhat inflated. Federer probably would dominate any era. But that doesn't mean that i have to pretend that hewitt, safin, ferrero, nalby, and roddick are comparable in quality level to those that came before Agassi, Sampras, Courier, Edberg, Becker; or those that came afterwards Novak, Rafa, Murray. The proof is in the pudding and I have produced mountains of objective facts that snide comments from fed fans do not address.

Same Roddick leads H2H against your Favourite golden era champ Nole , how many times did the useless oldie junk Roddick beat Nole in a GS , to say Roddick, Hewitt, Nalby ,Ferrero all are inferior to Djoko,Nadal, and Murray is a plain joke.

Its the same Ferrer who is dominating the current field barring the top 3 with ease, its the same Davy who had the better season in 2009,2010. Its the same Nalby who beat Fed n Rafa back to back in Back to back masters? did any of the current player capable of doing it [barring Djoko who took almost a million year to dominate].

To be more precise Djoko came to fore when Fed start to decline and not when Fed was at his prime.

The same Hewitt, Roddick, Safin and Fed hold better h2h against Sampras, so Sampras era should have been the weakest , and these weak era clown still dominating the current era means the current era weakest of weakest.