Where Does Murray Stand On The Scale Of Greatness?

First topic message reminder :

Following the comments on the article by CAS "Can Murray become great without a slam"

https://www.606v2.com/t33050-can-murray-become-a-great-without-a-slam

It appears we are living in an era of greatness inflation. If we don't want to run out of positive adjectives to describe Roger and Rafa the scale needs to be re-calibrated. We need to get back to old fashioned and realistic definitions of greatness.

So if Nadal and Federer are "great". The likes of McEnroe and Becker are "very good" and Djokovic is "good". How can Murray be described?



(Obviously this scale is for professional tennis players. It's still OK for motivation reasons to describe five year old beginners as "great" if they get the ball over the net more than three times.)

He stands at the pinnacle of greatness in the history of British tennis.

oh hawkeye this must be a bitter, bitter pill to swallow...

There are much better days that lay ahead for him. That is what I look forward to. I would much prefer Andy to collect more Slam titles than one of 'Greatness' which has a title of perception.

Clearly, Andy M still has a way to go to be considered a tennis great. But, hey, a GS win is a good step on the road to possible greatness. As I wouldn't consider, at least yet, Djoko to be a tennis great even with five slams to his name, then obviously it's a bit early to "big up" Murray.
We should all return to this theme in a year or two, when, hopefully, the Scot will have added to his GS tally.

Well, in one sense he's lost a title of "greatest player never to have won a slam" - or should that be "best player never to have won a slam"?

Winning last night was a bad move for Andy in terms of legacy - he's lost his historic status of 'best never'

More seriously, he's now joined the ranks of single slam winners, which includes many outstanding players and also a handful of relatively ordinary ones (Thomas Johanson...). For me, he's one of the stronger players to have only the one slam title, based on how many GS finals he's reached and how many Masters Series titles he's won, plus the players he's had to compete against to achieve these results. Not a Great (yet?) but clearly an extremely good player.

Oh, and just as a more general comment regarding a British man winning a slam singles title, there are unconfirmed reports of the Devil seeking treatment for frost-bitten toes

He's a very strong "one-slam winner" - when you look at his other results the slam-winner status fits like a well-tailored suit.

In fact he's gone from the best player not to have a slam to one of the strongest players to have only one slam on his resume - he's in good company with the likes of Muster, Goran, Roddick, Moya, and Stich. Next targets are another slam and the #1 ranking and you feel that they are eminently reachable within the next 12-18 months.

What I'd like to see now he has got the gorilla off his back and he knows he can hit the heights in the biggest bo5 matches is greater consistency outside the slams. I feel that may have suffered somewhat at the expense of his concentration on breaking the duck.

barrystar wrote:What I'd like to see now he has got the gorilla off his back and he knows he can hit the heights in the biggest bo5 matches is greater consistency outside the slams. I feel that may have suffered somewhat at the expense of his concentration on breaking the duck.

Good observation. Outside of the Slams / Olympics and he's been terrible away from them. I'd wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't been this bad since around 2007. Mind you the back injury didn't help, which obviously was an issue in March and April

He usually does well in the Autumn so expect an improvement

Murray can be considered great in terms of British tennis players. He has a long way to go before being considered great in terms of the game overall. He has many milestones to achieve. If he wins multiple slams then he will be no 1 which I think is also something that is required to be considered 'great'.

It was a case of when he would win not 'if'. He is far too not to have won a slam. The question is will he be able to add to it. I think he can. Outside the top 4 there is no one who can really challenge them so this leaves the door open. However, remember this year he did not have to play Federer or Nadal. Would the situation have been different if Nadal was playing well as per usual? Probably. With Federer now on the verge of retiring and Nadal's knee problems and Djokovic not matching Fed/Nadal on consistency, now is the time Murray needs to take advantage of it.

This result would not have been possible last year as the others were pulling away far too easily. Make hay while the sun shines.

Can someone start a thread considering where Andy stands in the list of single-Slam winners? It will be so interesting moving on from v Nalbandian to v others.

I so look forward to that.

I would sooner no thread of the type be done as I would like to see where Murray goes from here.

FedsFan wrote:Murray can be considered great in terms of British tennis players. He has a long way to go before being considered great in terms of the game overall. He has many milestones to achieve. If he wins multiple slams then he will be no 1 which I think is also something that is required to be considered 'great'.

It was a case of when he would win not 'if'. He is far too not to have won a slam. The question is will he be able to add to it. I think he can. Outside the top 4 there is no one who can really challenge them so this leaves the door open. However, remember this year he did not have to play Federer or Nadal. Would the situation have been different if Nadal was playing well as per usual? Probably. With Federer now on the verge of retiring and Nadal's knee problems and Djokovic not matching Fed/Nadal on consistency, now is the time Murray needs to take advantage of it.

This result would not have been possible last year as the others were pulling away far too easily. Make hay while the sun shines.

I agree with the first paragraph. He would definitely need to win more slams to be considered as a global all time great.

I even agree with the last paragraph but we are talking about this year not last. I think Murray is a lot closer now as recent matches have shown (none this year against Nadal to compare). Actually if I remember correctly Murray and Federer never played each other last year so it would be hard to compare where they were against each other as Federer only started his great run from Basle onwards.

Thw middle paragraph though is back to fantasy tennis. Federer was in New York but got knocked out in an earlier round or Murray would have played him. Unfortunately Nadal was injured and couldn't compete (I wish him a speedy return to full fitness). However would Nadal have beaten Djokovic in the semi to even get to the final. If so how tired would he have been after a presumably very long match. You can only play whoever gets through. He did actually beat 5 seeds on his way to the title including the Number 2 and 6. So all in all not too shabby.

Calder106 wrote:

I agree with the first paragraph. He would definitely need to win more slams to be considered as a global all time great.

I even agree with the last paragraph but we are talking about this year not last. I think Murray is a lot closer now as recent matches have shown (none this year against Nadal to compare). Actually if I remember correctly Murray and Federer never played each other last year so it would be hard to compare where they were against each other as Federer only started his great run from Basle onwards.

Thw middle paragraph though is back to fantasy tennis. Federer was in New York but got knocked out in an earlier round or Murray would have played him. Unfortunately Nadal was injured and couldn't compete (I wish him a speedy return to full fitness). However would Nadal have beaten Djokovic in the semi to even get to the final. If so how tired would he have been after a presumably very long match. You can only play whoever gets through. He did actually beat 5 seeds on his way to the title including the Number 2 and 6. So all in all not too shabby.

With regard to the middle paragraph, I agree with you. You can only play who is in front of you and if the others fail to make it through the draw there is nothing you can do as was the case at Roland Garros 2009. It should not diminish an achievement. Makes you wonder though 'what if'. It is this 'what if' that makes me wonder about the result had we had the usual top 4 in the semis. We will never know. For now Murray should revel in the victory and people up here should not get carried away. I think the pressure is off now that he won one slam. However, the pressure will now be huge coming into Wimbledon as now he will be expected to win it.

Think he has been expected to win Wimbledon since at least 2009. So not sure if the pressure will be different. However, yes, lets not get carried away. He has finally achieved his goal of winning slam. I'm sure that along with Lendl and the rest of his team they will now plan how to use this towards more success in the future. That said though I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't do much else this year.

Yes, I think we can expect a dip from Andy for the remainder of thr rest of the season. Hoping for a big display at the WTF though - the atmosphere there for his matches will be amazing.