Roger should send Novak flowers

[brokenshoelace]

Kieran has new ammunition for "Folks benefiting from Nadal's injuries" now.

 

[britbox]

But less ammunition for awarding hypothetical slams for absent players....

As today demonstrates, nothing is a given.

 

[brokenshoelace]

But less ammunition for awarding hypothetical slams for absent players....

As today demonstrates, nothing is a given.

Well if said absent players would have played and gotten injured anyway then the result is the same.

 

[britbox]

But the hypothetical absent players never deal with adversity... it's given they are always 100%, on top of their game, never get upset and never deal with niggles, injuries etc... within a tournament.

Trust me, if Nadal had missed this tournament with an injury before it, he'd already have been hypothetically awarded it in some quarters.

 

[DarthFed]

Yea, as Fed has. Roger is getting punished for becoming Favre and Jordan at aged 40. Maybe he deserves it a little but winning % is overrated stat anyways. We all know tennis' "postseason" is the slams. I don't care about these guys beating up on people in worthless tourneys.

I'll tell you what:

Let's make Rafa right handed and give him terminal cancer at the age of 25, in this world Roger fans need no worries because his legacy would be secure.

So 4 tournaments it's all that matter in tennis? Send the memo to all top players not to waste time with meaningless Master events and WTF and Davis Cups and Olympics.

This is priceless

Just seeing this now. Yes there are more than 4 tournaments in the year but those 4 are largely what determines the best players' legacies. A hypothetical player with 100 MS wins and 0 major wins is worse than a guy with 3 GS wins IMO. The majors are tennis' "postseason", for the great players the other tournaments are mostly important for getting ready for the main events/keeping in good practice, keeping the ranking, etc. Those make up the "regular season"

Anyways winning % is not a very meaningful stat on its own, it is about WHAT you win. You can talk up Borg all you want but his % is completely inflated and he ain't Roger, Rafa, or even Pete Sampras career wise.

 

[brokenshoelace]

But the hypothetical absent players never deal with adversity... it's given they are always 100%, on top of their game, never get upset and never deal with niggles, injuries etc... within a tournament.

Trust me, if Nadal had missed this tournament with an injury before it, he'd already have been hypothetically awarded it in some quarters.

And if he hadn't gotten injured in the final, he might have been awarded it for real.

Regardless, what I do agree with you about, and that's one thing I've never agreed with Kieran on, is this whole "nobody ever steps up." Nadal, Federer, Djokovic and Murray don't win because nobody ever steps up and it's a generation of mental midgets. The margins are small. They're better than everyone else, but not by as much as we think (not in terms of accomplishments, but in terms of what goes on during a match).

For example, Wawrinka was striking the ball better against Novak last year than he did this year. And yet, a slight drop in level by Djokovic, coupled with bigger confidence and belief by Wawrinka, better serving, and clutch play, in addition to some awful volleying by Novak, and you've got a similar scoreline that goes the other way.

Then, all of a sudden, Wawrinka's in the final. Renewed confidence and all. He approaches it the right way, swings freely, and plays perhaps his best ever set of tennis, and he's a GS champion now.

Really, the margins are smaller than we think. Yeah, players like Wawrinka or Del Potro don't have the consistency of the top 4, but only 4 players are going to reach the semis anyway, you can't have a full top 20 of consistent players. Some players being extremely consistent means others won't be as much.