Quote:
Originally Posted by Nadal Fan
It's so hard to rank Roger and Novak on clay IMO. They each so far have one French Open BUT they were playing the same time as the clay GOAT which hurts their number of titles won. Borg is clearly #2 clay court player but after that we got Lendl, Wilander and Kuerten with 3 french opens each. Had Nadal not played tennis, you could make a case that Roger and Novak would each have 5 RG titles so do you put them ahead of the likes of Lendl, Wilander and Kuerten? Also what about Stanimal he also has a title and another finals apperance. Novak beat Nadal at the French which means a lot, but he lost that finals to Stanimal. To me they are top 10 for sure maybe top 5. I also probably put Roger slightly ahead of Novak on clay.
On the flip side, Nadal has had to play in an era with the Wimbledon and Australian Open GOATS. If Roger never played tennis, you could make an argument that Nadal would have 4 Wimbledon titles which would be 4th most all time. As well, in Australia he lost to Novak in 2 finals and some guy named Roger in the other so he could have multiple titles there as well. He's played in 5 Australian Open finals (1 title), 5 Wimbledon finals (2 titles) and 4 US Open Finals (3 titles). It's not like he is regularly getting knocked out in the first week, he is always going deep in all Grand Slams, and who knows I think he could win another US Open/Wimbledon/Australian Open if things go his way.
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That's exactly why you have to take into account things like weeks at number 1 and consecutive weeks at number 1 as well. Djokovic and Federer blow Nadal out of the water in that regard and it has to carry serious weight beyond major titles.
Again though, if Nadal wins 2-3 more majors and one or two of those is on a different surface, I think this conversation gets much more difficult.