Federer's Schedule for 2017

[mrzz]

When did Fed have tussle with TD@Rome?

p.s. I would like it he gets WC at Rome. However, I think he will neither play in Rome nor skip RG.

In fact apparently it was the TD who had a tussle with him, probably after he withdraw. I only found it in Portuguese (http://tenisbrasil.uol.com.br/noticias/49206/Masters-italiano-minimiza-ausencia-de-Federer/ you can always automatic translate it) , but it seems legit.

 

[ftan]

If it was just a matter of fatigue then I think he'd play Rome. But given what he has said about the impact clay has on his knees, and that he might even skip Roland Garros, I think he's protecting his chances of winning Wimbledon and/or the US Open. His chances of winning one of them greatly increased after winning the AO, but not as much his chances of winning RG. He'll only play RG on the off chance the draw opens up for him and there are some lucky upsets, so that he gets to face someone like Nishikori in the SF and Thiem in the final.

While I personally value year-end #1 and would love to see him do it, I still maintain that his best chance of doing so is not worrying about it, and instead focus on optimizing his better tournaments: Wimbledon, US Open, WTF, and the faster Masters. If he's going to pop in at a surprise Masters, it might be Canada and not a clay one, depending upon how things went at RG and Wimby.

Just quoting Rafa and I think he does explain it quite well why Roger is not playing on clay

""Roger [Federer] is playing two to three shots, trying to play more aggressive than before," he said. "He probably knows that on clay, that is more difficult. I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it's much more difficult. I believe that he really does not want to change his mentality, and playing on clay probably makes you change something.

"So I think he is more focused on what he has to do, to be competitive, to be healthy and to keep playing that well. He is focused on doing what is working well for him.""

 

[Front242]

^ Iz the true, no? Makes sense though, yeah.

 

[El Dude]

Sure, that's part of the picture, but Rafa doesn't mention anything about Roger's knees, which I think is a huge component of why he isn't playing much on clay.

 

[Busted]

If it was just a matter of fatigue then I think he'd play Rome. But given what he has said about the impact clay has on his knees, and that he might even skip Roland Garros, I think he's protecting his chances of winning Wimbledon and/or the US Open. His chances of winning one of them greatly increased after winning the AO, but not as much his chances of winning RG. He'll only play RG on the off chance the draw opens up for him and there are some lucky upsets, so that he gets to face someone like Nishikori in the SF and Thiem in the final.

While I personally value year-end #1 and would love to see him do it, I still maintain that his best chance of doing so is not worrying about it, and instead focus on optimizing his better tournaments: Wimbledon, US Open, WTF, and the faster Masters. If he's going to pop in at a surprise Masters, it might be Canada and not a clay one, depending upon how things went at RG and Wimby.

Just quoting Rafa and I think he does explain it quite well why Roger is not playing on clay

""Roger [Federer] is playing two to three shots, trying to play more aggressive than before," he said. "He probably knows that on clay, that is more difficult. I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it's much more difficult. I believe that he really does not want to change his mentality, and playing on clay probably makes you change something.

"So I think he is more focused on what he has to do, to be competitive, to be healthy and to keep playing that well. He is focused on doing what is working well for him.""

Note to Nadal: You don't have to play slow, grinding, 40 stroke rallies on clay if you don't want to. The problem is the surface is so damned slow that it allows players like YOU to retrieve every shot - hence your 9 RG titles and 47 clay titles to only 22 on other surfaces. Not that I'm suggesting you're a one trick pony or anything like that. Tennis was NOT meant to be an endurance sport and that's what the modern game has turned into - especially on clay. In Borg's day he wasn't grinding away in 5 hour matches. Ditto for Guillermo Vilas. Thomas Muster was another story though. I had enough time to do 3-4 loads of laundry during some of his matches. :cry

 

[Kieran]

Of course you're not suggesting he's a one trick pony, how could he be? Along with Mats, he's the only player in the open era to win 2 slams on each of hards, grass and clay...

 

[Front242]

And he owes it all to Roger and Bomas Turdych.

 

[El Dude]

Could we say...

Greatest Clay Court Players of Open Era
1. Nadal
2. Borg
3. Lendl
4. Wilander
5. Vilas/Muster/Roger/Novak/?

Greatest Hard Court Players of Open Era
1. Djokovic
2. Federer
3. Sampras
4. Connors/Lendl/Agassi/Nadal?

Greatest Grass Court Players of Open Era
1. Federer
2. Sampras
3. Becker/Connors/Borg/McEnroe/Djokovic/Murray?


Greatest Carpet Players of Open Era
1. McEnroe
2. Connors
3. Lendl/Becker/Borg?

 

[Frode789]

Please don't derail this thread (again)

But anyway: HC Slams >>> HC masters.

 

[mrzz]

Federer has more hard court slams than Djokovic, so even if I understand the argument, they at least should be tied.

 

[Fiero425]

Federer has more hard court slams than Djokovic, so even if I understand the argument, they at least should be tied.

How many years of a lead are you going to give Roger to even make such a comparison? Mon Dieu, Roger was playing in the late 90's for Gawd-sake! I guess he would be ahead of NOLE who was a mere BOY when the old man was "tolling the field!" uzzled :nono :angel: :cover :laydownlaughing - - http://fiero4251.blogspot.com/2016/08/fan-page-novak-nole-djokovic.html - -

 

[El Dude]

My lists are a combo of peak level and accomplishments, by an emphasis on the former. I'd give a slight edge to peak Novak on HCs over peak Roger.

Oh and Frode, welcome to the internet. Threads get derailed. Some would say the most interesting conversations are the derailments.


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[El Dude]

But the point of the lists is as conversation starters, not as definitive or final. But maybe Frode is right and that should be another thread so that we can go back to endlessly speculating whether Roger will play Rome or RG or not


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[Frode789]

My lists are a combo of peak level and accomplishments, by an emphasis on the former. I'd give a slight edge to peak Novak on HCs over peak Roger.

Oh and Frode, welcome to the internet. Threads get derailed. Some would say the most interesting conversations are the derailments.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks for the snarky response. Yes, but it is tiresome to read page after page of derailed content. It has already been lots of posts in this thread about off-topic stuff. The moderator of a forum can split derailed posts into a separate thread.. If only we knew one.

 

[Busted]

Of course you're not suggesting he's a one trick pony, how could he be? Along with Mats, he's the only player in the open era to win 2 slams on each of hards, grass and clay...

That doesn't mean he's not a one trick pony. If he weren't he'd have won more often on other surfaces. 22 non-clay wins, 5 of which are Slams, means in 13 years on the ATP tour Nadal has only won 17 non-clay tournaments - and 8 of which are Masters 1000 events. That comes out to just over 1.3 tournaments non-clay events won per year. :eyepop I'm just saying...for someone that's considered a GOAT candidate - that ain't very impressive. :snicker

 

[mightyjeditribble]

Of course you're not suggesting he's a one trick pony, how could he be? Along with Mats, he's the only player in the open era to win 2 slams on each of hards, grass and clay...

That doesn't mean he's not a one trick pony. If he weren't he'd have won more often on other surfaces. 22 non-clay wins, 5 of which are Slams, means in 13 years on the ATP tour Nadal has only won 17 non-clay tournaments - and 8 of which are Masters 1000 events. That comes out to just over 1.3 tournaments non-clay events won per year. :eyepop I'm just saying...for someone that's considered a GOAT candidate - that ain't very impressive. :snicker

Yes it does. He's not a one-trick pony, he's just a LOT better on clay than anywhere else.

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[Fiero425]

Of course you're not suggesting he's a one trick pony, how could he be? Along with Mats, he's the only player in the open era to win 2 slams on each of hards, grass and clay...

That doesn't mean he's not a one trick pony. If he weren't he'd have won more often on other surfaces. 22 non-clay wins, 5 of which are Slams, means in 13 years on the ATP tour Nadal has only won 17 non-clay tournaments - and 8 of which are Masters 1000 events. That comes out to just over 1.3 tournaments non-clay events won per year. :eyepop I'm just saying...for someone that's considered a GOAT candidate - that ain't very impressive. :snicker

I know I've reiterated this enough over the years! It's one of many reasons why I have Rafa nowhere near GOATdom! His limitations are plentiful! He's not even on par with Borg who has 3 less FO's! Taking the Chan'l-Slam 3 straight years '78-80 and 1 match from a 4th is excellence Nadal has never been able to sustain; NOT EVEN CLOSE! Borg was just very unlucky at the USO, but has records held to this day; all with a wood racket playing from the baseline when attacking tennis was more prevalent! :angel: :dodgy: :clap - - - http://fiero4251.blogspot.com/2016/08/fan-page-novak-nole-djokovic.html - - -

 

[Busted]

Of course you're not suggesting he's a one trick pony, how could he be? Along with Mats, he's the only player in the open era to win 2 slams on each of hards, grass and clay...

That doesn't mean he's not a one trick pony. If he weren't he'd have won more often on other surfaces. 22 non-clay wins, 5 of which are Slams, means in 13 years on the ATP tour Nadal has only won 17 non-clay tournaments - and 8 of which are Masters 1000 events. That comes out to just over 1.3 tournaments non-clay events won per year. :eyepop I'm just saying...for someone that's considered a GOAT candidate - that ain't very impressive. :snicker

Yes it does. He's not a one-trick pony, he's just a LOT better on clay than anywhere else.

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Tomato, to-mah-to. I say he is. That's why they're called OPINIONS.

 

[Busted]

Of course you're not suggesting he's a one trick pony, how could he be? Along with Mats, he's the only player in the open era to win 2 slams on each of hards, grass and clay...

That doesn't mean he's not a one trick pony. If he weren't he'd have won more often on other surfaces. 22 non-clay wins, 5 of which are Slams, means in 13 years on the ATP tour Nadal has only won 17 non-clay tournaments - and 8 of which are Masters 1000 events. That comes out to just over 1.3 tournaments non-clay events won per year. :eyepop I'm just saying...for someone that's considered a GOAT candidate - that ain't very impressive. :snicker

I know I've reiterated this enough over the years! It's one of many reasons why I have Rafa nowhere near GOATdom! His limitations are plentiful! He's not even on par with Borg who has 3 less FO's! Taking the Chan'l-Slam 3 straight years '78-80 and 1 match from a 4th is excellence Nadal has never been able to sustain; NOT EVEN CLOSE! Borg was just very unlucky at the USO, but has records held to this day; all with a wood racket playing from the baseline when attacking tennis was more prevalent! :angel: :dodgy: :clap - - - http://fiero4251.blogspot.com/2016/08/fan-page-novak-nole-djokovic.html - - -

PREACH! Can you imagine Nadal playing in Borg's era with the wood rackets and gut strings? Heck to the no! Yet I have no problem imaging Federer, Djokovic or Murray playing back then. Just imagine all the years when both the US Open and Wimbledon were played on grass. Heck, for that matter, a lot of other tournaments were played on grass, too. And then there is the luxury Nadal has of Madrid being made a clay court event AFTER he started winning everything on clay. That's like if there was a Masters event in Switzerland and they switched it to grass so Roger could win it. Or a clay Masters even in Belgrade being switch to hard courts so Djokovic had a better chance of winning. Still scratching my head about why that nonsense was allowed. The ATP following the money, of course.

It's probably best to NOT let me get started on my never-ending side-eye to the Nadal as GOAT convo. Let's just say - I ain't buying it. If the overall Slam total is all that counts for the GOAT discussion, which is sadly the case with tennis professionals and experts, then I still say that even if Nadal gets to 18 - if 13 are the FO and only 5 on other surfaces? Then Roger's still the GOAT because he's won 3 of the Slams at least 5 times and been the in FO final 5 times. Oops...forgot about that pesky H2H thing the experts like to bring up. Like a Nadal hasn't got his own bad record against Djokovic - having lost 10 of their last 11 meetings and the last 7 in a row. In fact, Djokovic has twice beaten him 7 times in a row. Everybody's got their own personal kryptonite.

 

[El Dude]

Let's see...
*Rafa is the greatest player in tennis history on a specific surface type.
*Off that surface, he's still great but more of a "lesser great." In other words, if you look at Rafa as a non-clay player, he's probably about as good as someone like Becker or Edberg were overall.

I think the sum total of that still makes him one of the greatest players in history, and in the "herd of GOATs," if not one of the front-runners. As you say, every great player has their kryptonite, and every great record has one or two holes. As far as GOAT candidacy goes, the holes I see are:

*Roger: None really, except for maybe the H2H vs Rafa and, if we want to be picky, Olympic gold.
*Novak: Slam count, and that's pretty much it. Olympic gold, I guess - but it seems like less of a lack for Novak, perhaps because with Roger it is the only thing missing, so stands out more.
*Rafa: More weeks at #1, World Tour Finals, maybe another non-clay Slam or two.

Pete had his lack of a clay Slam and generally weak record on clay, Borg retired early and never won USO. Laver's was quite complete, except for the fact that most of it was before the Open Era and difficult to compare.

Rafa's holes are similar to Pete's, and perhaps more difficult to fill than Novak's - although Novak would need to resurge to fill his, obviously. For Rafa to be on equal footing with Roger as far as career records go, assuming Roger is done with major accomplishments, I think Rafa needs to get to 200+ weeks AND win at least one WTF AND another 2-3 Slams. If he does all of that, and Roger doesn't do anything more than win another Masters or two and a handful of minor titles, then I think their records will be comparable.