- Ivan Lendl was as great as John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg, and even--gasp--Pete Sampras.
To be honest, I'm torn on this one. But every statistical angle I've taken has led me to the above conclusion. One could argue that he was better than Sampras, but less regarded because far fewer Slams. But this is largely because Lendl overlapped with the primes of more all-time greats than any other great player: Connors, Borg, McEnroe, Wilander, Edberg, Becker, and even early prime Sampras, Agassi, and peak Courier.
Disagree.
Lendl wasn't the killer in finals the way Pete was. Pete was alpha, on a par with anyone, but Lendl shrieked like a lady at times and lost how many slam finals? 11?
Of those four, it gets trickier with the 3 whose careers overlapped. Bjorn didn't play long enough - blame the tour - and Mac played too long, he was cooked after 1984, though I was shocked at the time he lost the USO final to Lendl in 1985. After this, he was struggling wehereas Lendl was much better equipped for oncoming power game. He fricking invented it, to a large extent. And I think that change there was almost as drastic as the change inflicted on the tour around 2000-ish that made it easier for the top players to accumulate titles than it ever had been before. We're still seeing the effect of that.
Still, Lendl was great, I just don't lump him anywhere near Pete, or Bjorn.
- Serena Williams is not the WTA GOAT.
I know this is the popular opinion, but is mainly based on recency bias. Navratilova and Graf were both more consistently dominant. Serena's career is patchy; she had two or three truly dominant years, but mostly she had "partially great" years in which she looked overpowering during Slams, but didn't back it up with many other titles. I think a better argument is whether she or Evert belongs at #3 (or Court, if you consider pre-Open Era).
Agree. Martina is.
- Andy Murray is in the same "greatness tier" as Wilander, Edberg, and Becker.
Meaning, he's well above the better 2-4 Slam winners like Vilas, Nastase, and Courier (not to mention Wawrinka, Kuerten, etc). He went deep in most Slams during his prime and won a ton of big titles - more than all three of those guys above. His 3-8 Slam final record is indicative of a great player who had the misfortune of mostly facing three GOATs. That's the same number of Slam finals as Wilander (7-4) and Edberg (6-5) and one more than Becker (6-4).
Kind of agree. But kind of don't, too.
"His 3-8 slam final record" is low compared to what was available for great players in his period, but Becker, Edberg and Wilander were bona fide number ones in a rat-race period for tennis, in the eighties and nineties. I don't think he had their tennis gifts either. Put it this way, had he come along during their era, I think they'd boss him more often than not.
And had they come along in his era, I think the same thing would happen...
