The GOAT conversation will reboot...

This Eman is even worse...

luvsports! wrote:This Eman is even worse...

It's like Djokovic's transformation from 2010 to 2011... better than ever before. Emancipator v2

I wouldn’t get your hopes up Amrit, I think you’re being played with.

Ok so we wait for Emanci v.3, clearly he is on kool-aid today, or someone hacked his account 

In my opinion there is no debate about the goat

Federer is the best

Now naxroy at v.2. Whats going on today????  

Next NITB will be coming on here and saying the earth isn't flat... what the hell is going on

Hahha, well nitb is on v2, biggest Fed fan ever, overtaking everyone here... 

I never said the contrary

bogbrush wrote:Eh? 20 is still well ahead of 17, and when 11 of those 17 are on the most specialist surface it reads to me like clay goat plus involved in others...

What's funny is that a year and a half ago....Federer was on 17! Today they'd be tied. Luckily Fed found a second breath!

in 2013 I already thought that federer slam count would not increase anymore

same for nadal after 2016

I believe nobody could have expected this in december 2016

naxroy wrote:in 2013 I already thought that federer slam count would not increase anymore

same for nadal after 2016

I believe nobody could have expected this in december 2016

Let's not forget that Djoko and Murray being injured has helped their success considerably...especially Nadal's.

Yeah thank goodness for Cecchinato, if not for him Nadal would have had to face Djokovic in the final... and maybe Djokovic would get his game tally into double digits unlike Thiem.

Clearly this isn’t a particularly strong era with the exception of Fedal.
But Djokovic’s display can’t just be put down to injury. He couldn’t keep up the mentality of a champion for long enough, which is why he’s miles behind Nadal and even more behind Fed in Slams. His press conference after losing this week was pathetic, never seen that from Fedal and they’ve also been through terrible periods.

DECIMA wrote:Clearly this isn’t a particularly strong era with the exception of Fedal.
But Djokovic’s display can’t just be put down to injury. He couldn’t keep up the mentality of a champion for long enough, which is why he’s miles behind Nadal and even more behind Fed in Slams. His press conference after losing this week was pathetic, never seen that from Fedal and they’ve also been through terrible periods.

Djoko is still a better player than Nadal. The slam count is another matter. Nadal is a clay courter, Djoko is a tennis player.

Make sure you have a soft cushion to sit on Tenez, cos you’re sounding quite butthurt

DECIMA wrote:Make sure you have a soft cushion to sit on Tenez, cos you’re sounding quite butthurt

Its ok. cheats find their way everywhere but tennis fans know that Nadal never won a single within the tennis rule. So yeah referee let him take the time he needs so he can implement his gruelling tennis which only works where talent is not rewarded.

11 RGs....that's getting embarrassing actually.

I’ve heard if you apply some ice in that region it could ease some of the pain.
I would have said wrap the ice with some tissue paper too, but I’m guessing you’ve run out of monthly Kleenex supply.

11 FO.....and 10 000 crowd wanted him to lose...when federer plays in spite of having even more slams they are still cheering up for him.

I am not the one pinching my pants! You must be mistaking with someone else!

DECIMA wrote:I’ve heard if you apply some ice in that region it could ease some of the pain.
I would have said wrap the ice with some tissue paper too, but I’m guessing you’ve run out of monthly Kleenex supply.

Whenever I see posts like this, I am reminded that you must be a genius.  On one hand you are in the 2nd (or 3rd?) year uni. On the other hand, you cannot be older than 14.

It's Amri's time for 15 minutes of fame....in his own shoebox.
He may have had a non-alchocolic beer to celebrate Nadal's win and it's gone to his head, bless 'im!

Enjoy, Amri, one day you'll remember this moment and think, Gosh wasn't I silly at the time...

Nadal of course will be stripped off all his trophies explaining to Ophra how it was all Toni's fault...

Tenez wrote:11 FO.....and 10 000 crowd wanted him to lose...when federer plays in spite of having even more slams they are still cheering up for him.

I am not the one pinching my pants! You must be mistaking with someone else!

Maybe you had the TV on mute and mistook your screaming for the crowds voice
He had more cheers when walking out into court, obviously as the match was so one sided they wanted to encourage Thiem so he doesn’t fold.
Also an amazing moment at the end with the crowd giving Nadal a standing ovation and he got very emotional.
https://mobile.twitter.com/rolandgarros/status/1005848023744696320/video/1

The number of slams is only 1 parameter for measuring GOAT. Even before Fed got ahead of Pete's 14 slams, he was regarded as GOAT. 
Even before Nadal wasn't ahead of Pete's 14 he was gardened as 2nd best. 

And even at 3rd position in slam count, Pete would not be 3rd in GOAT list.

So...

I'm a bit like BB, Federer will always be the one for me because of the virtuosity of his game, but it's pretty obvious that the general consensus in the press and most of the public will be that whichever of them ends up with the most slams is the GOAT.

To that end I'm not sure I agree with rotla: if Federer was regarded as GOAT generally when he had less than Sampras I think it was more to do with people anticipating that he'd end up with a slam tally of >14 as he raced towards it.  I think that these feelings properly crystallised only after Wimbledon 2009 when he had both the career slam and the 15.  At that stage Nadal was not even in the calculation on 7 slams - he's always been playing catch-up vs. someone who many have regarded as GOAT for 10 years, which changes the way people see Nadal.

Each year I find myself re-setting the target for Federer as Nadal continues to defy attempts to write off his time as a slam winner.  One has to assume that barring injury Nadal has one or more RG wins in him, but I don't think he can overhaul Fed's tally just by winning more RG's - so either Fed needs this year's Wimbledon or Nadal needs to be beaten at this year's USO and then surely it will have been put to bed......?

Tenez wrote:

DECIMA wrote:Clearly this isn’t a particularly strong era with the exception of Fedal.
But Djokovic’s display can’t just be put down to injury. He couldn’t keep up the mentality of a champion for long enough, which is why he’s miles behind Nadal and even more behind Fed in Slams. His press conference after losing this week was pathetic, never seen that from Fedal and they’ve also been through terrible periods.

Djoko is still a better player than Nadal. The slam count is another matter. Nadal is a clay courter, Djoko is a tennis player.

Nadal is a clay courter with 3 UOpen, 2 wimbledon and 1 Ausopen

exactly the 7th record in atp history (off clay)

But they are not USO and Wimbledon as we knew them. They have made them slower, so it doesn;t mean much. He doesn't change his game to win there. He plays the same game cause he can. When Wimbledon, the AO and USO were fast clay courters had no chance there. Adding sand to the paint and bigging the balls made him win where he could never have.

That's the beauty of marketing. They can make Nadal look like he is grass specialist...to sell more tickets..when everybody knows he is not.

but if nadal's wimbledon and usopen titles dont count, and he won them since 2008

does that mean federer´s usopen and wimbledon titles dont count either since 2008?

At this very point in time (June 2018), both Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic exactly match Roger Federer tennis achievements at age 32 and 31 respectively:
http://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/rankingsChart?players=Roger%20Federer,%20Novak%20Djokovic,%20Rafael%20Nadal&rankType=GOAT_POINTS&timeSpan=CR&byAge=true

Question is, whether they will have the same longevity?

naxroy wrote:but if nadal's wimbledon and usopen titles dont count, and he won them since 2008

does that mean federer´s usopen and wimbledon titles dont count either since 2008?

He won them before so he has nothing to prove. It is fair to say that he won less of them when they slowed them down!

However he was able to win the FO and reach many finals with his game...only to lose cause he was still playing with a 1990s tool.

Rafa is one GS title away to claim that his collections of Grand Slam titles weights more then the Roger's collection:
http://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/record?recordId=GrandSlamTitlesDifficultyAdjusted

More about Title Difficulty Factor at: http://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/about

• Title Difficulty - Factor of difficulty to win the title compared to a difficulty for an average title winner to win an average tournament event of the same tournament level (first, probabilities to win the title for an average title winner of the same tournament level are calculated based on average Elo Rating of the title winners as well as Elo Ratings of the opponents actual winner has faced (P = 1 / (1 + 10 ^ ((AvgWinnerElo - ActualOpponentElo) / 400)); second, difficulty to win the title is calculated as the sum of inverse probabilities from the first step; third, title difficulty is normalized so that average difficulty of the same tournament level is 1)
  
  

Nadal can't be the goat because he is nowhere near Federer in 4 of the 5 biggest majors and never will be.  Having 100 french opens doesn't make him a better overall player.

Tenez wrote:

naxroy wrote:but if nadal's wimbledon and usopen titles dont count, and he won them since 2008

does that mean federer´s usopen and wimbledon titles dont count either since 2008?

He won them before so he has nothing to prove. It is fair to say that he won less of them when they slowed them down!

However he was able to win the FO and reach many finals with his game...only to lose cause he was still playing with a 1990s tool.

Interesting, he won them before, but we shall not count them after 2007 as we are not counting nadals since 2008, ok with that?

so federer has 12 instead of 20 slams (I discounted ausopens too as they are so slow that nadal managed to win in 2009 and reached 3 more finals, all due to surface ultra slow)

and nadal has only 11, all of them RG, or shall we disccount some RG for some other reason?

mcekovic wrote:Rafa is one GS title away to claim that his collections of Grand Slam titles weights more then the Roger's collection:
http://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/record?recordId=GrandSlamTitlesDifficultyAdjusted

More about Title Difficulty Factor at: http://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/about

• Title Difficulty - Factor of difficulty to win the title compared to a difficulty for an average title winner to win an average tournament event of the same tournament level (first, probabilities to win the title for an average title winner of the same tournament level are calculated based on average Elo Rating of the title winners as well as Elo Ratings of the opponents actual winner has faced (P = 1 / (1 + 10 ^ ((AvgWinnerElo - ActualOpponentElo) / 400)); second, difficulty to win the title is calculated as the sum of inverse probabilities from the first step; third, title difficulty is normalized so that average difficulty of the same tournament level is 1)
  
  

Do you count as difficulty the fact that most players tournaments are on HC and therefore HC is harder to win as less specialised than clay? This to me means Nadal is like the king of curling but not the best at skying!

naxroy wrote:

Tenez wrote:

naxroy wrote:but if nadal's wimbledon and usopen titles dont count, and he won them since 2008

does that mean federer´s usopen and wimbledon titles dont count either since 2008?

He won them before so he has nothing to prove. It is fair to say that he won less of them when they slowed them down!

However he was able to win the FO and reach many finals with his game...only to lose cause he was still playing with a 1990s tool.

Interesting, he won them before, but we shall not count them after 2007 as we are not counting nadals since 2008, ok with that?

so federer has 12 instead of 20 slams (I discounted ausopens too as they are so slow that nadal managed to win in 2009 and reached 3 more finals, all due to surface ultra slow)

and nadal has only 11, all of them RG, or shall we disccount some RG for some other reason?

You don't get the point. We don;t have to discount them. They were won by Nadal cause tehy were made slowed enough for him to be a contender. he was no contender at the USO for instance before they increased the balls size for men in 2010 (check the facts!).

And he won many less of them cause though they slowed them down, sometime they were not as slow as teh FO and also the fact that the regular bounce helped those who take the ball earlier.

ok, so its only nadal´s slams that have to be disccounted

I get it

those tournaments were slowed down in the very moment nadal started winning them, this is wimbledon in 2008, australian open in 2009 and usopen in 2010

I just dont understand why they are not discounted to djokovic, murray, cilic, wawrinka and federer

Here's the facts

6-1-8-5
1-11-2-3

There's the reality.   And he only won this year's FO cause of a rain delay and the US last year was easiest draw in last 30 years.

Daniel wrote: And he only won this year's FO cause of a rain delay

He dropped only one set all tournament, bit of a stretch to say he only won the tournament due to a rain delay.

mcekovic wrote:At this very point in time (June 2018), both Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic exactly match Roger Federer tennis achievements at age 32 and 31 respectively:
http://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/rankingsChart?players=Roger%20Federer,%20Novak%20Djokovic,%20Rafael%20Nadal&rankType=GOAT_POINTS&timeSpan=CR&byAge=true

Question is, whether they will have the same longevity?

Aye - but there's more to the question than the way you put it.  Federer won Wimbledon just before his 31st birthday in 2012, and he did not win another slam until AO 2017 when he was 35.  Federer faced Djoko/Nadal/Murray/Wawrinka taking it in turn to hit some pretty high peaks during that period.  Provided he stays fit Nadal has much less competition.  It's pretty likely that Nadal will do better than Fed's 0 score between 32-35, the questions are:

(a) how much better than Federer will Nadal do between 32-35?
(b) will Fed win any more from now?
(c) will Nadal be shot from 35 onwards so that he needs to catch up before then?

(I think Djoko is way too far behind now)

I dont think nadal has more than 1-2 more slams in him

I wish I was wrong, but I even see this one as his last one, or at least consider that no more is easier to happen than 3 more

barrystar wrote:

mcekovic wrote:At this very point in time (June 2018), both Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic exactly match Roger Federer tennis achievements at age 32 and 31 respectively:
http://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/rankingsChart?players=Roger%20Federer,%20Novak%20Djokovic,%20Rafael%20Nadal&rankType=GOAT_POINTS&timeSpan=CR&byAge=true

Question is, whether they will have the same longevity?

Aye - but there's more to the question than the way you put it.  Federer won Wimbledon just before his 31st birthday in 2012, and he did not win another slam until AO 2017 when he was 35.  Federer faced Djoko/Nadal/Murray/Wawrinka taking it in turn to hit some pretty high peaks during that period.  Provided he stays fit Nadal has much less competition.  It's pretty likely that Nadal will do better than Fed's 0 score between 32-35

Likely indeed. Especially now they have given him a second clay-ish slam (actually even slower than that) and he's facing a competition at RG which is comparable with the Croation open in Umag.

Emancipator wrote:The race is back on for total slam count and final GOAT status.

Federer is definitely not safe. 

Even if Rafa gets to within 1 or 2 most people will consider GOAT to be very debatable.

 

Emancipator

Not sure it is entirely back on, especially if Fed defends Wimbledon. Now what would put the cats amongst the pigeons (which I don't see happening) is if Nadal won Wimbledon. That would really get the fires stoked. 

20-17 I still think is a big gap. I think Fed would need to get to 22 to ensure the record is truly safe. 

Depends really on how long Nadal stays in the game beyond Federer. That's really where he will make any gains. More so if Murray, Djokovic and Stan are done for.

that final of australia 2017 is gold for federer

and it was such a nice final

naxroy wrote:that final of australia 2017 is gold for federer

and it was such a nice final

Absolutely - in footballing terms it was the ultimate 6-pointer - if he stays ahead he'll look back at that match.  

I agree it was a great match and, although their respective form went up and down in the course of the match, they both played at a high level in the fifth set and Federer won it, rather than take advantage of Nadal collapsing.

DEC1M7 wrote:Next NITB will be coming on here and saying the earth isn't flat... what the hell is going on

Thanks, you just made me laugh out loud at a screen and give the game away! Top comment!!

Daniel wrote:Here's the facts

6-1-8-5
1-11-2-3

There's the reality.   And he only won this year's FO cause of a rain delay and the US last year was easiest draw in last 30 years.

I take a slightly different stance.

To me that record shows the 2nd guy to be a clay mega-great who turned out handy elsewhere too, whereas it tells me the top guy was spanking it everywhere except where the other guy owned.

In terms of assessment that would tell me the 2nd guy is the specialist, the first is the best generally.

mcekovic wrote:Rafa is one GS title away to claim that his collections of Grand Slam titles weights more then the Roger's collection:
http://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/record?recordId=GrandSlamTitlesDifficultyAdjusted

More about Title Difficulty Factor at: http://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/about

• Title Difficulty - Factor of difficulty to win the title compared to a difficulty for an average title winner to win an average tournament event of the same tournament level (first, probabilities to win the title for an average title winner of the same tournament level are calculated based on average Elo Rating of the title winners as well as Elo Ratings of the opponents actual winner has faced (P = 1 / (1 + 10 ^ ((AvgWinnerElo - ActualOpponentElo) / 400)); second, difficulty to win the title is calculated as the sum of inverse probabilities from the first step; third, title difficulty is normalized so that average difficulty of the same tournament level is 1)
  
  

And there was me thinking 128 guys entered each of them, and if anything the most specialised surface (clay) has been largely abandoned by specialists. Leaving one (plus Thiem).

I'll work on a formula for that if it makes you feel better.

mcekovic wrote:Rafa is one GS title away to claim that his collections of Grand Slam titles weights more then the Roger's collection:
http://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/record?recordId=GrandSlamTitlesDifficultyAdjusted

More about Title Difficulty Factor at: http://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/about

• Title Difficulty - Factor of difficulty to win the title compared to a difficulty for an average title winner to win an average tournament event of the same tournament level (first, probabilities to win the title for an average title winner of the same tournament level are calculated based on average Elo Rating of the title winners as well as Elo Ratings of the opponents actual winner has faced (P = 1 / (1 + 10 ^ ((AvgWinnerElo - ActualOpponentElo) / 400)); second, difficulty to win the title is calculated as the sum of inverse probabilities from the first step; third, title difficulty is normalized so that average difficulty of the same tournament level is 1)
  
  

I have to say this is akin to when me and my brother once tried to determine who was the Street Fighter 2 GOAT in our household. Despite me running through it at a difficulty rating of 7 stars with Ken, my brother would argue doing it at 6 stars with Dhalsim was more impressive.

bogbrush wrote:

DEC1M7 wrote:Next NITB will be coming on here and saying the earth isn't flat... what the hell is going on

Thanks, you just made me laugh out loud at a screen and give the game away! Top comment!!

bogbrush wrote:

mcekovic wrote:Rafa is one GS title away to claim that his collections of Grand Slam titles weights more then the Roger's collection:
http://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/record?recordId=GrandSlamTitlesDifficultyAdjusted

More about Title Difficulty Factor at: http://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com/about

• Title Difficulty - Factor of difficulty to win the title compared to a difficulty for an average title winner to win an average tournament event of the same tournament level (first, probabilities to win the title for an average title winner of the same tournament level are calculated based on average Elo Rating of the title winners as well as Elo Ratings of the opponents actual winner has faced (P = 1 / (1 + 10 ^ ((AvgWinnerElo - ActualOpponentElo) / 400)); second, difficulty to win the title is calculated as the sum of inverse probabilities from the first step; third, title difficulty is normalized so that average difficulty of the same tournament level is 1)
  
  

And there was me thinking 128 guys entered each of them, and if anything the most specialised surface (clay) has been largely abandoned by specialists. Leaving one (plus Thiem).

I'll work on a formula for that if it makes you feel better.

The formula does not take into account all 128 players (that would not be good, IMHO), but only players the title winner has met on the path to the title. Elo is the best know way (w/o too much complicated calculations) to quantify players strengths at a point in time. You could argue about using surface or overall Elo though (here overall Elo is used). Overall, this is as good formula as you can get from such kind of formula .
There are other attempts (with different formula:

https://www.economist.com/game-theory/2017/09/13/sorry-roger-rafael-nadal-is-not-just-the-king-of-clay

with very similar outcome

Total bollocks, ignores the factor of a specialised surface (ie, meeting a top 10 player on grass who only volleys with his kids in the back garden is not recognised.

Most hilariously, it will doubtless be crediting Nadal with extra value when he beat Federer on the basis that Federer is better than him, in order to prove he isn't.

Why do people feel the need to find a substitute in cod analysis for expertise and a grasp of the subject? Oops, I think I just answered my question. 

Totally unsurprised to find the Economist cited. I always thought when I was choosing a degree course that it was important not to do something where there was a risk of the knowledge becoming less valuable later on. For that reason an Economics degree is a great idea because how could it be?