Quote:
Originally Posted by spiteface
He was seeded #1 four times due to the fact that he has suffered the most time off out of all the "big four" players on tour prior to last year. Don't forget he has ended as year-end world #1 four times. The argument that he can't even be seeded #1 at RG is senseless and baseless... it's grasping for straws. And then you say the H2H argument is weak..??  It definitely is not gonna give Rafa the edge now but if he catches Roger's 20, you and I both know that stat will tip the scale in Rafa's favor.
Roger has 11 slams on hard courts, so take those away and you're left with what.. 9 slams with only 1 on clay, there is definitely no variety in that statistic. Further to that, 2 of the 4 grand slams a year are being held on hard courts. What would Roger fans be saying if there were 2 clay grand slams per year?
The GOAT debate is without a doubt between Roger and Rafa, and at the moment Roger is the GOAT, but if Rafa were to catch him and surpass him regardless of where he does that, Rafa will be just as deserving as the title as Roger. |
Help us all if the ATP ever pushes for more clay court events.....no thanks. There's a reason there are so many hard court events on the calendar and that is simply because it provides for the best, most consistent level of play across the board. After a month of clay I'm counting the days until it is done each and every year.
Even if Rafa hits 20 slams and Roger retires tomorrow, there are still many asterisks, that for me, would disqualify him for the greatest of all time claim.
For starters, Rogers run from 2004-2006 where he basically won everything (90%+ win rate) will never be touched again in any sport. The fact that he's also made 30 slam finals, winning 20 of them is down right insane....Even when he wasn't winning the big titles for a couple years, he was still dominant against the likes of Rafa, Djokovic, Murray, Stan etc. Rafa has also spent 177 weeks at number 1 compared to staggering 309 (or nearly a cumulative 6 years) by Roger.
I don't intend to beat down on Rafa here as he is very deserved of being in the conversation, but for me, Roger has just been far more dominant across the entire ATP calendar, year after year after year. The fact he pre-dates many of the current greats and is still beating them just goes to further reinforce his dominance on the sport. If both had not overlapped their careers, imagine the insane numbers we'd be looking at on both parts. Maybe 25 slams a piece?