Re: The official Tennis thread

[El Gunner]

eh nothing bad with going out injury-ridden after you gave your all to the sport... like you said, it's very rare for athletes to go out on a high-level (performance and achievement-wise) like Messi or Kroos. Even the great Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods went out sad.

personally, i don't think Nadal should be classed on the same level as Federer and Djokovic. Hands down the best clay player of all-time, and it's not even close, but overall just a level below them.

[The Madrid One]

Ya, Nadal is below both in my books, especially below Djokovic. Nadal made a career out of his wild idiosyncrasies tailor made for clay and out of tearing apart Federer's backhand. Although putting it like that would be too reductive too, he's a great.



Problem I see with Federer is that beginning at age 26, from 2008 onwards, his performance timeline is also somewhat underwhelming considering his reputation, and when you contrast the competition he faced post Jan 2008 with the competition he faced 2004-2007... his achievements start looking particularly inflated.



There's of course, one final image that helps further contextualize all sorts of things.



As for Nole, really hope he retires at the end of next season with the 25th GS in his bag. All his performances this year point to motivation and body issues, he's breaking apart mentally and physically and that goes hand in hand, Roland Garros knee injury aside. His coaching staff seems limp and lame after letting go of most of it, and his latest press conferences show the blatant image of someone who has lost the eye of the tiger, and I don't blame him, there's nothing more other than that round number 25/surpassing Margaret Court's mickey mouse 24 singles GS tally.

He was a man on a mission for so long and he completed his mission, he must have felt empty this year, bar the Olympics. A spiritual process of sorts.

[El Gunner]

i don't think it was an opponent thing with Roger, i genuinely just think he peaked 2004 - 2008... after 26 he had to start adjusting his game because he wasn't a natural athlete/stamina machine like some of the guys that were coming up around that time

i genuinely think peak Federer beats peak Djokovic 6 times out of 10 on a hard court... Federer at his best just had a way of hitting all of the right spots with the right amount of power, that there was no way you could defend it, even for the master defender Djokovic himself.

Lest we forget Federer threw away Wimbledon in 2019... Federer had a way of finding a weak spot in Djokovic's game on the day and then minimising Djokovic's game like no other player, even during the mid to late 2010s

Nadal on the other hand brutalised Federer's backhand. If Nadal wasn't a left-hander, i think their overall H2H would have literally been the opposite.

And then Djokovic vs Nadal matches were mostly just slugfest marathon's without the art and beauty that Federer brought to the game.

It truly was a unique 3-way rivalry unlike any other of its sort we've ever seen in any sport.

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