Second Greatest individual year in tennis?

First topic message reminder :

Greetings, brethren, and ummm, sistren(?). My original thread was going to ask what was the single greatest year in the Open Era (males), but I had completely forgotten that Rod Laver had won the Calender GS in 1969. So, a bit like the PGA in Tiger Woods pomp, every other player has to compete for second.

As a Nadal fan, I would put his 2010 second. But I am naturally biased. That said though, it was a phenomenal year. He became the first player since Laver to win three consecutive Slams in a year, and the only one to win a Slam on three seperate surfaces.

My natural bias does not, however, blind me to the fact that there have been other great years in mens tennis. Djokovic had a storybook 2011, winning three slams himself, but also winning a tour record five Masters Series in a year, as well as beating El Rey del Clay TWICE, on clay, in straight sets.

Roger Federers 2006 was another golden individual year. Eleven titles, three Grand Slams. 92-5. Failed to reach only one final. Lost to exactly TWO players all year (Andy Murray & Nadal). While writing this I'm beginning to reconsider my choice. Federer ftw.

The other consideration is John McEnroe's 1984. He won 13 titles that year, including two Slams (he didnt enter AO that year.) but he only entered two clay titles that year, residue from the fact that the tour used to have two factions -the clay tour, and everyone else.

Thoughts, the greatest year in tennis? Nadal, Djokovic, Federer, McEnroe, or have I carelessly omitted a superior calender year?

Not a disagreement HMM, more an observation/comment.

I take the view that some injuries are in reality just part & parcel of professional sport, and that too much can be made of them in terms of what might - or might not - have happened "had (insert name) not been injured"

And there is often a very fine line between missing/withdrawing from a tournament because of injury - or because of the need for just a bit of rest.

Rafa has won many tournaments with very dodgy knees, as has Federer with a bad back ; and last week Lionel Messi came off the bench even with a hamstring injury, but was then instrumental in Barca edging a tight Champions League tie vs Paris St Germain.

Very true. Injuries are part & parcel of athletes lives. Whenever players change shoes or shirts, every second one has some strapping.

I put Djokovic's above any of Federer's as a I said because of the competition and just broadly speaking because he had to play Nadal and Federer at or near their peak so many times. Yes he didn't have a challenging AO final and Nadal played poorly in the Wimbledon final, but beating Federer 4-1 and Rafa 6-0 was impressive, not just at slams but dominating ALL the (compulsory) masters from Indian Wells through Miami and Rome and Madrid. Then I think he won 1 of the 2 US August/September masters and only lost the other 1 due to tiredness. Basically he dominated the whole season apart from losing one of the US masters because of tiredness, one loss to Federer at the French Open and other losses later in the season because he was burnt out.

Federer and Connors kept the streak going much better to over 90 wins, however I bet they didn't have to go through as many really physically challenging matches against top players.

And Nadal and Federer were at peak in 2011 in my opinion. Look at Nadal especially, he was consistently getting to finals and mostly only losing to Djokovic. If Djokovic had been, say, injured that year he might have ended up with a year as good as 2008 or 2010.

I am glad someone mentioned the women's players. Let me just chip in with Steffi Graf who has some amazing seasons and Navratilova maybe as well.

I think for the older players (1930s-1960s) they used to play each other so often on tours it would have been impossible to compile a season with only 2 or 5 defeats.

Steffi Graf

1987
Won 75, Lost 2 (97%).
Only won 1 slam.

1988
W 72, L 3 (96%)
Golden slam.

1989
W 86 L 2 (98%)
3 slams and lost FO final.

1990
W 72, L 5 (94%)
Only 1 slam again.

1995
47-2 (96%)
Won 3 out of 3 slams entered.

Steffi Graf had the following best winning %

1. 98%
2. 97%
3. 96%
4. 96%
5. 94%
6. 93%
7. 93%
8. 91%
9. 91%
10. 91%

91% in her 10th best year!

For Navratilova I was looking for 1983 and 1984.

1983: 3 out of 4 slams and 86-1 (98.8%). + 3/4 in doubles (did not enter French Open).

1984: 3 out of 4 slams 78-2 (97.5%). + Grand slam in doubles!

Henman Bill wrote:

Federer and Connors kept the streak going much better to over 90 wins, however I bet they didn't have to go through as many really physically challenging matches against top players.

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On the face of it, maybe they didn't HB.

But then again, this is always a bit of a conundrum, and a matter of subjective opinion/judgement : to what degree is it a case of needing to get through "physically challenging matches " and to what degree are certain players simply more efficient at getting the job done ..... ?

Perhaps Federer and Connors were just quicker at subduing their opponents - even many of the top quality ones - and dominating throughout the season.

Bjorn Borg once won at RG without dropping a set - and Rafa repeated the feat. I seem to remember Borg also won at least one of his Wimbledons without dropping a set. He could be awesome at his best

A difficult choice. Many great years but each of them has a chink in it so hard to pick one above them all. In the open era, I would pick these as the candidates (in the chronological order):

Laver 69 (all slams but otherwise not so dominant)
Connors 74 (won the slams he competed in but missed an important one)
McEnroe 84 (dominant overall but could not win FO so only two slams)
Federer 06 (dominant overall but well behind Rafa on clay)
Djokovic 11 (dominant overall but only SF at FO and a weak finish)

What would I pick as the best? That is a tough one. The OP excluded Laver from the consideration, so I will follow the suit to make my task easier. Connors is really before my time and I am not sure if there were any caveats around fractured tour or something like that, so I will admit I cannot judge that one either and will also exclude it from my consideration.

From among the remaining three, I would probably go with McEnroe. He amassed an amazing overall record, was dominant in many of his wins, and even at RG he came very close - he was a few games away from winning the final in straights.

But not much to choose between them, maybe on a different morning I would go with a different choice

The reasoning for excepting Lavers year is simple. Winning the calender slam is the Everest of tennis. He is the only guy to climb Everest. Djokovic, Fed, Nadal et al to use the mountaineering comparison, their years climbed more mountains, but unless some one climbs Everest again, the guy who did stands at one.

Bjorn Borg's best year - 1980?

1980 French Open - one of his most dominant wins in the final.
1980 Wimbledon - his most classic and important win in a 5-setter against Mcenroe - he knew it - you could see in his reaction after
1980 US Open - lost 6-4 to Mcenroe in the 5th, his closest ever to winning the US Open.

He also won the year end Championship finals and looking in Wikipedia career statistics looks like he had 9 tournament victories that year although that wasn't the most he won in a year, he had a couple of years slightly higher. 1979 won 13 tournaments.

OK Kingraf, but which is the better year?

A: Someone wins 4 slams but doesn't win another tournament including a lot of early round defeats.

B: Someone wins 3/4 slams but wins another 20 tournaments and only loses one match all year.

Still rank that below McEnroes 1984,

kingraf wrote:The reasoning for excepting Lavers year is simple. Winning the calender slam is the Everest of tennis.

I understand the reasoning; just do not quite agree with it.

HenmanBill- Well mate, I think the GS is a tougher preposition.
A 20-title, three slam, six Masters season is the 'better' season
But the calender grand slam one is the 'greater' season,

I like the mountain analogy. In terms of tennis achievements I would say mine would be the equivalent of scaling a ...... ladder be amazed be very amazed!

Re Borg's 1980. Obviously another excellent year but for me it is relatively obviously below John's 1984. To me, McEnroe's year is just a bit better on pretty much every important metric.

Note that in my list I did not necesserily pick what I think are 5 best years. I picked 5 years that I think can justifiably have a claim to be the best. So, Borg's 1980 could be better than some of those other years, but since - for me - it is definitely below McEnroe, it cannot be the best.

McEnroe '84.

Then Federer '06 followed by Djokovic '11. There may be others in 3rd (Borg, Connors spring to mind) but I haven't checked.


Djokovic '11 tailed off badly, which disqualifies it in my opinion. I can't be a mega-dominant year if he didn't make all the Slam finals and lost more matches / won less. Yes, the streak - but that was under half the year.

Good points bb. In football you should play for the 90+ minutes, not just 70.

Contradiction there though BB. You say it cant be mega dominant year if a player didn't make all slam finals - Mac didn't play AO in 84 (nor was he particularly successful at AO generally, never won it). On the same basis, Djokovic 'only' made SF at RG in 11.

For guys who reached all finals in a year that really only leaves Federer 2006 (05 was the same). Even for that peerless year he didn't win the all elusive RG-Wimb double. However...what is remarkable about 2006 is this.

He won the very first tournament of the year - Doha.
He won the very last tournament of the year - World Tour Finals.
He won the first and last slams - AO & USO.
He started and ended the year as No.1 - with no break Jan-Dec.
His W:L of 95.3% was 2nd all time behind Mac 84 (96.5%!)

So I'm happy to go with Fed 06 on the basis of year long domination - something Djokovic and Nadal haven't frankly pulled off. Another thing neither has pulled off is holding #1 rank through every week of a single year. Can Novak do that this year?

Yes, I forgot about McEnroe not showing up at the Australian, though he didn't lose there (and would probably have strolled it). He also didn't play so much clay. That tends to bring back a surfaces debate (nooooo!!!!) because in those days there was a bigger gulf and therefore much tougher to do what has been done in recent years.

I find it hard to rank McEnroes '84 below Federers '06 but the argument can be made. Now if we do a dominant 2 year spell, then '05 + '06 probably exceeds anything ever.

If you look at those same 3 slams played in 84 vs 06 - Mc lost 7 sets in total, Federer lost 8 sets. Yep, more divergence in those days admittedly which still makes the mind boggle at Borg's 3 RG-Wimb doubles.

Also, if you include 2004 and 2007, Federer only failed to make the final of a slam 3 times out of 16. Infact if you expand that from 2004 to 2009 he only failed to make the final 4 times out of 24...mind boggling.

By the way BB...McEnroe is in some shape for 54 year old.... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2296921/John-McEnroe-54-shows-toned-physique.html

I bet he's the best over 50 tennis player on the planet without doubt. Can you imagine facing the guy on a Sunday morning doubles match...not to forget the guy won an ATP Doubles title with Bjorkman in 2006 at San Jose - at the spritely age of 47!

Oh McEnroe will, health permitting, be an awesome player at 70. He simply is all about timing and technique and never about raw footspeed etc.

As for Fed's stats, probably the one that blows me away more than any other is the 18 finals in 19 events, with only the AO '08 semi-final preventing a 19-final streak. I think Lendl comes next with 6. I mean, that's just crazy.

The other thing is Mac's technique is really simple, doesn't have massive take backs or follow throughs so they don't suffer over time and of course that unreal timing at the net with his predator's instinct. Yep, wouldn't want to play the guy at any age.

Those Fed stats will be around for an awful long time to come. The list on here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_career_achievements_by_Roger_Federer is frankly ridiculous.

Not exactly a mountain of a man, but he is in better shape than my dad, whose about the same age. So good on J-Mac for staying in good shape post tennis. Although I must say, tennis players seem to retain shape longer than most other athletes (Navratilova, Evert, Borg, Lendl, Nastase. Sampras looks pretty much the same)

Back to the debate, I would actually rank '06-'07 as the most dominant in tennis. He made eight slam finals, won six, and got himself two WTFs plus in '07 he at least seemed to have an idea on how to beat Nadal. Also, the AO *07 demolition of Roddick is my favourite Fed demolition, closely followed by the JMDP demolition.
2007 record 68-9
2006 record 92-5
So combined, he went 160-14, in those two years. won six slams, six masters, 20 titles and two WTF.

'05-'06
05- 81-4
06- 92-5,
combined 173-9
23 titles, eight masters, five slams, one WTF.
I guess its a pick-em scenario.

Just to put Federer in context, we are considering Djokovic 11 (70-6) and Nadal 10 (71-10) as among the greatest seasons ever. These seasons were great players at the peak of their powers.

Now consider this FOUR year match record from Fed:
2004: 74-6
2005: 81-4
2006: 92-5
2007: 68-9

Purely on statistics, any one of those four can be seen as comparable to the other individual great seasons.

It's a ridiculous sequence of results.

Amazing stats indeed. The jump in Djokovic's 2011 stats are amazing too when you consider the years that preceded it:

2006: 40–18
2007: 68–19
2008: 64–17
2009: 78–19
2010: 61–18
2011: 70–6
2012: 75-12

Interesting how djoko's most successful season in terms of match wins was 09 when he changed his serve which didn't go well and had early defeats in slams.
I do remember him getting to almost every final of a masters and losing all but one in paris.

lydian wrote:2012: 75-12

And, among the frequent sentiment that Novak's 2012 was a bit disappointing, the W-L actually compares relatively well to Nadal's 2010 (71-10).

But of course it's what you win as much as how many wins!

e.g. ferrer winning more matches than anyone else last year.

Yep, good point re ND12 vs RN10. If the losses don't come in slams then its a great year! 2009 was a good year for Novak, 10 finals, 5 titles...most pros would be happy with that. He just didn't shine in slams (starting with THAT withdrawal at AO vs Roddick). The changes to his serve are somewhat over-egged, his racquet change in 2009 (Wilson --> HEAD) was a bigger deal but not that big a deal.

lydian wrote:Amazing stats indeed. The jump in Djokovic's 2011 stats are amazing too when you consider the years that preceded it:

2006: 40–18
2007: 68–19
2008: 64–17
2009: 78–19
2010: 61–18
2011: 70–6
2012: 75-12

The striking thing about 2011 is how few matches he played. It wasn't that he won that many, it was that he lost so few. Played 76 all year; he won more than that in 2009.

Odd, then, that his intense schedule was blamed for his late season injury (even allowing that partly accounted for the number).

I remember some saying he should have shut his season down after us open. His record after the US open was 6-4.

finishing at a 70-2 mark wowzer.

bogbrush wrote:Odd, then, that his intense schedule was blamed for his late season injury (even allowing that partly accounted for the number).

I heard Marian Vajda (his coach) say in an interview that the injury came about from Novak going a bit overboard in training i.e. not warming up properly and jumping straight to high intensity.

You're right though, 76 matches is pretty small total. Withdrawing from Monte Carlo, Paris and Shangai (? If I recall correctly) made the match total much smaller.

Yeah but LS a great season cant stop 3/4 way at USO...Mac's and Fed's didn't.

I dont really believe that from Vajda - the USO final burnt out Djoko and Nadal completely. Neither did much for the rest of the season.

LuvSports! wrote:I remember some saying he should have shut his season down after us open. His record after the US open was 6-4.

finishing at a 70-2 mark wowzer.

Would have been 64-2, but yes still big.

However I go with Lydian; a season is a season.

lydian wrote:Yeah but LS a great season cant stop 3/4 way at USO...Mac's and Fed's didn't.

I dont really believe that from Vajda - the USO final burnt out Djoko and Nadal completely. Neither did much for the rest of the season.

Yes, burn out played a part.

But don't forget that Novak retired from the Cincy final v Andy before the USO and had treatment on his shoulder in the final set of USO final. He also withdrew from the DC match against Del Potro, which (as recent history shows!) isn't something he would do lightly.

Injury was definitely a key factor.

Not that it means subsequent results should be given less weight when judging the season. I agree you have to take the whole year into account.

Fair point HMM about Cincy, I remember that. Doing these sorts of runs takes a lot out of a player in current conditions given the relative baseline ralley-festing grind we now have all year round. I think Andy Murray has seen Djoko and Nadal knock each other out so has smartly clipped his schedule for 2013 already.

Has any other top 5 player ever gone from something like 61–18 (77%) to 70–6 (92%) the following season?

lydian wrote:
Has any other top 5 player ever gone from something like 61–18 (77%) to 70–6 (92%) the following season?

Federer gone from 78-17 (2003) to 74-6 (2004).
Btw From 2004 to 2006 Federer lost only 15 matches in total. That is just ridiculous.

Just checked out a few lydian:

feds 03: 82% 04: 95%

lendl: 1984: 79% 1985: 92%

mcenroe: 1983: 85% 1984: 96%

connors: 1973: 85% '74: 95%


So in answer to your question, from these guys, no :P

Nice work LS...maybe Lendl is the nearest comparator then...was already top 5 (#1-3 in '84) and then jumped up 13%. Feds is a similarish too although he was still in his ascendancy then.
I guess with Lendl that win over Mac at RG84 maybe changed his mental resolve. Likewise Fed's Wimb03 win.
For Djokovic he puts it down to the diet but usually these jumps are linked to breakthrough results - maybe the Serbian DC win in Dec'10?

Got to also remember that Lendls rise coincided with McEnroes decline. Incredible to think there were no more Slams for John after that astonishing year.

bit like wilander, 3 slams one year then nothing again.

bogbrush wrote:Got to also remember that Lendls rise coincided with McEnroes decline. Incredible to think there were no more Slams for John after that astonishing year.

What actually happened with McEnroe? I know he took some time out of the game but for what reason? Did he just get fed up?

Henman Bill wrote:I put Djokovic's above any of Federer's as a I said because of the competition and just broadly speaking because he had to play Nadal and Federer at or near their peak so many times. Yes he didn't have a challenging AO final and Nadal played poorly in the Wimbledon final, but beating Federer 4-1 and Rafa 6-0 was impressive, not just at slams but dominating ALL the (compulsory) masters from Indian Wells through Miami and Rome and Madrid. Then I think he won 1 of the 2 US August/September masters and only lost the other 1 due to tiredness. Basically he dominated the whole season apart from losing one of the US masters because of tiredness, one loss to Federer at the French Open and other losses later in the season because he was burnt out.

Federer and Connors kept the streak going much better to over 90 wins, however I bet they didn't have to go through as many really physically challenging matches against top players.

And Nadal and Federer were at peak in 2011 in my opinion. Look at Nadal especially, he was consistently getting to finals and mostly only losing to Djokovic. If Djokovic had been, say, injured that year he might have ended up with a year as good as 2008 or 2010.

Federer peaking in 2011? Are you serious?

HM Murdoch wrote:

bogbrush wrote:Got to also remember that Lendls rise coincided with McEnroes decline. Incredible to think there were no more Slams for John after that astonishing year.

What actually happened with McEnroe? I know he took some time out of the game but for what reason? Did he just get fed up?

Many personally issues. Some chemical I think.

I blame Tatum O'Neal influence...