The greatest tennis player of all time - Part III

The Rocket

Back in the 60s -well actually before 1968- professional tennis players couldn't compete in Grand Slam events. Professional tennis players would engage in a tour with several other tournaments without having the privilege of playing in the really big ones. However this little setback didn't prevent Rod Laver, a sharp and quick Australian known as "The Rocket", winning a total of eleven Grand Slams, eight of those hold a special distinction.

In 1962, when Rod Laver was still an amateur tennis player, he had nothing better to do in his agenda than to win all four Grand Slams. When he became a pro he couldn't compete again, so a lot of sources agree on the fact that he probably missed winning at least four or five more slams. Fortunately for him and like I mentioned before, the pro ban was lifted in 1968, so the following year -1969- Laver decided enough was enough and he once again repeated his achievement of winning all four slams during the same year.

Let's put this into perspective: out of Laver's 11 Slams, eight were won twice during the same year. Also, since turning pro, Laver also missed competing in about sixteen of those events. He became a dominant professional player around 1965 and held on to that spot for about four or five more years, so I think it is not a bold assumption to speculate that he may have won four more slams, maybe five or six, which would have brought his total to equal Federer's 16. However there is another consideration we have to make that some people miss. What if Grand Slam tournments would have allowed pros to play from the beginning: would have Laver still won those four titles in 1962 competing against pros? That would bring down the total from 16 to 12 or back to 11 again. Then we have to throw in the extra ingredient: back in the day, all Grand Slams except for Paris were played in grass, Laver's favorite surface. Would he have faced the same fate under today's condition? Well, I think that after winning Paris twice, he wouldn't have had a problem. We can spend all day dreaming about this scenario, but the reality is that none of them  happen.

The only other tennis player who has won all four Grand Slams in the same year

What we have is the fact that Laver won eleven grand slams, four of them in the same calendar year 1962, and he repeated that in 1969. Do you know how many tennis players have been able to achieve that? None. Don Budge is the only other tennis player who won four grand slams in the same year in 1938, but that's it, he didn't do it twice. Nobody else has done it... once or twice. Jimmy Connors came close but couldn't, Roger Federer came close but couldn't, Mats Wilander couldn't, and more recently Rafael Nadal in 2010 and Novak Djokovic last year couldn't. All of those men won three grand slams the same year in the open era.

Novak Djokovic wants to win Roland Garros in 2012. Will he also want to win the other two slams?

Moreover, there hasn't been a tennis player who has actually held all four grand slam titles at the same time -meaning say, he won the last two of a year and the first two of next year-. Rafa Nadal came close of doing so but couldn't when he lost at Australia, missing the chance of the "Rafa-Slam." Novak will have the chance of becoming the first in completing a "Novak-slam" if he wins this year's Roland Garros; still he would have to win Wimbledon and the US Open to equal Laver's achievement of winning all four the same year.

So let's talk about what Laver did against what he couldn't do. How can one balance which achievement is better or harder. Laver's four Grand Slams in the same year... twice? against Roger's total of sixteen Slams, against Pete ending as #1 player for six years in a row. The way I see it, it's impossible to come up with an answer. Think about it this way: it's hard already to win a Grand Slam, yet two, what about three? or.. anything above ten?  What about becoming #1 player in the world? Out of the tens of thousands of tennis players that have graced the ATP Tour, how many were ranked in the top spot? Less than twenty?

And yet we haven't discussed about the guy in the picture from my previous blog who is also worth mentioning in this conversation.

The man many referred as "God patrolling his personal heaven"

The greatest tennis player of all time - Part II

Two of my nominated GOTA

In my previous blog on the never ending subject of tennis' GOTA, I left what I think is an interesting balance of two very hard accomplishments made by Roger Federer and Pete Sampras: while Roger has 16 grand slam titles, Pete ended as #1 player of the world for six straight years; if we switch roles, Roger has been #1 player for five years (for of them straight), and Pete won 14 grand slams (but not the French Open).


So what's next? or should I say... who's next? Today I want to talk about one of the aspects I mentioned about changes in the game: the surface.

Argentina's greatest player
Guillermo Vilas won the 1977
US Open... on CLAY?? Yup!

As you may know today each Grand Slam has a different surface. Australia is played in a surface some players describe as a slow playing hard court. Paris and Wimbledon have always been loyal to their clay and grass respectively, and the US Open is played in a hard court that's a bit faster than Australia's. But things weren't like this. Australia was played on grass up until 1987 and the US Open was also played on grass until 1974, when it switched to clay/hard-tru until 1977 when it set to the current hard surface. Interestingly, Pete Sampras wrote in his book "A Champion's mind" that the Aussie surface was perhaps the toughest he ever played, because it seemed that every year it was different.

So what does this all mean?


All though tennis' history there have been players with a complete all around game that doesn't really change or have an extra intangible when you change the surface. Players like Jimmy Connors, Novak Djokovic, Mats Wilander and Roger Federer fall under this category. I think that all of them would win and have (or had in their time) the potential of beating anyone anywhere in any surface. However there are tennis players who have something more when it comes to one particular surface. These are the players that you can't imagine losing on their surface. Let me explain:

It is easier for a camel to go through
the eye of a needle than to Nadal to
lose at Roland Garros

If you take Rafa Nadal, what is the first thing that comes in your mind about him and a tennis surface? Clay. Nadal is no doubt a player who in clay has a plus. What happened with Nadal is that he grew and evolved enough to adapt his game to suit the other surfaces, grass, and slow and fast hard courts.Think about it this way: you can see Nadal losing in hard or grass; it would be an upset yes, but it can happen. But Nadal losing in clay? That's like the world coming to an end. Yes, he lost to Djokovic twice last year but kudos to Novak who was really in the zone and just impossible to beat. It was like Richard Krajicek when he took out Sampras in Wimbledon in 1996. Nobody could beat them that particular day. Rafa also lost to underdog Robin Soderling in Paris in 2009 in what most tennis pundits label as the upset of the century, and why not refer to it as that? Who would bet on Nadal losing to some unknown guy back then in Roland Garros? Regardless of those deafeats, it is a minor flaw in an impeccable resume of Nadal's dominance on clay.

Multiply that by seven...

Pete Sampras in Wimbledon is my second preferred example of a player who dominates the rest in a surface. After losing in early rounds the first couple of years, Pete became impossible to beat in Wimbledon: he won seven times. Not only he won, he erradicated and destroyed any player who happened to be considered a "grass court specialist" or a "potential Wimbledon winner", over and over again. He beat Boris Becker three times, he beat Goran Ivanisevic three times (twice in the finals), he beat Andre Agassi twice, Tim Henman twice, he beat Patrick Rafter, he took on everyone.

Meet Richard Krajicek:
The player who deafeated
Sampras in 1996.
He truly deserves that trophy.

It would take Richard Krajicek's inspiring/in the zone performance to beat Sampras in the quarterfinals of 1996, with Richard going on to win the tournament (which makes sense, because if you beat Sampras you can pretty much beat everyone else), and I'm quite sure that hadn't Pete lost that match, he probably would have won that tournament making it a total of eight Wimbledon titles, all of them straight from 1993 till 2000.

Soderling became the equivalent
of Krajicek in 2009's Roland Garros.
Unfortunately he couldn't pull
the whole thing as he lost in the
finals to Roger Federer

Eventually champions have to lose and in 2001, Roger Federer was the one to send Pete packing home after five close sets in their fourth round match. Back then, it wasn't as shocking as when Sampras lost to Krajicek in 1996. It was an upset, but it wasn't completely unexpected: Sampras had been struggling with his game early in the tournament and came close to being outsted in the second round by an unknown player called Barry Cowan (who would probably even be more unknown hadn't he gone five sets with Sampras that year). Something similar is happening to Federer recently, losing to Tsonga last year, and to Berdych the year before... meaning losing to players he probably wouldn't have lost in his prime. It will also happen to Nadal one year in Roland Garros, because you can't win forever. Anyway, let's move on to my point.

How would you say things would have turned if (and yes, that it is a huge IF), the Australian and the US Open were still played on grass? I'll tell you my opinion:

Pete Sampras probably would have won close to twenty Grand Slams (in an injury free scenario). I would stick to Sampras' seven Wimbledon titles and toss in seven more US Open, and thinking worse case scenario, four or five Austrailan titles. I just can't imagine Pete Sampras losing at the US Open on grass, and it's tough to picture him losing in Australia too. Who knows... with so many Slams under his belt, maybe he would have had the time to train more on clay and get a better shot at Roland Garros.

Bjorn Borg, who retired at 25 with
11 Grand Slams and who only
played the AUS Open once in his career.

Now let's look at another one: what woud have happen if the US Open stayed with clay as choice for surface? Well for starters, I think Bjorn Borg would have eventually won it, and had Borg won the US Open, he would have made the trip to play the Australian Open (back then the Aus Open was the last Slam of the year). For those of you who do not know, Bjorn Borg didn't play the Australian Open because he felt there was no purpose since he had lost at the US Open. If he would have won there, he would have been only the third tennis player in history to conquer all four Grand Slam titles the same year. I also think that Borg would have won the US Open on clay at least two or three times, adding his total of Slams somewhere around 13 or 14, and had he won in Australia he probably would have won 15 Grand Slams. That's for starters, but what about Lendl, Wilander, Kuerten and Nadal?

Ivan Lendl and Mats Wilander dominated most of the clay court tennis in the 80s

Well, if the US Open would have stick to clay, clay court players would have killed their rivals no question. Nadal could already be up somewhere around 14 Grand Slams. Of course that would imply that Federer would be three or four Grand Slams subtracted form his count. Crazy right? And the same reasoning would have applied to Pete too.

The bottom line I want to bring across is that by having this discussion, we find ourselves in a middle of a dilemma of neverending hypothetical scenarios. This means that it is futile to compare players that belong to different eras, because the conditions that took place were very different. Sampras played and won his titles during his time under a paritcular environment. Borg played and won under a different environment.

"AAAAAAAARRGGGG!!"
For about seven years it's been these guys doing the victory yelling

Today, it is Roger, Rafa and now Novak competing on a different environment... all of this when we talk about conditions of the court and time of the year of the event being played. But what happens if you weren't even allowed to play in a tournament because you were a professional tennis player?

Do you know this guy? Is he the GOTA? Check out my next blog and you'll see...

Tune in form my next blog to find more about what I think of the GOTA discussion and to come close to my final decision of who really is tennis' GOTA.

The greatest tennis player of all time - Part I

This weekend featured Roger Federer adding another title to his list of over sixty tournaments conquered in a marvelous career. I watched the match with some friends at my house and the never ending debate of the GOTA (Greatest of all time) rose with a few parties leaning towards the Swiss Maestro, others Laver, others Sampras and so on. When my turn came to speak I think I gave a reasonable answer that brought me here to blog about it and collect your comments.

Unlike football (soccer), basketball or baseball, tennis is a sport that remain unchanged and without any update for over a hundred years. Then recently it underwent a series of dramatic changes in its gear during a really short period of time, say ten years: the courts changed, the rackets changed, the clothing changed and even the scoring system changed with the introduction of the tie breaker. I would like to compile a list of players who are considered among the GOTA and as you will see, I will be able to come up with an interesting answer to this question, but first let's discuss a few of these changes that tennis suffered and their impact to the sport.

In my opinion there are three major aspects that have to be mentioned:

90sq inch head? 95? Yeah right !!

1. Rackets: from the first tournaments in the late 1800s until the early 1980s, every tennis player carried a weapon in the form of a wooden racket. Despite a few differences in design, almost all wooden rackets had similar appearance: they were heavy, they had similar strings and the head size was ridiculously small. By 1990 they were extinct and replaced by larger, more visually appealing and comfortable rackets. All credit to Rafa Nadal and his amazing topspin, but the reality is that it would have been very difficult to hit his shots with a wooden racket. Federer's whipping forehand would have probably suffered too.

2. The courts: Roland Garros is the only grand slam that remains faithful to its original surface, as the US Open and the Australian open were played on grass. Not only that, but Wimbledon has been known to work extensively on modifying their courts to make them slower in order to allow more baseline rallies and less serve and volley. I personally believe that Pete Sampras, Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg took the best out of the grass courts and that it would have been tough to see a baseliner winning Wimbledon in their prime.

Pancho Gonzales could have used the tie break
in 1969 Wimbledon. Then, we prolly wouldn't
have had the "Marathon Match"

3. Tie Break: while not a big change on the hardware of the game, I believe the introduction of the tie break in the game changed the approach and strategy when you step on a court. It has to be relieving to a certain extent to know that if you get to six games all against your rival, you may have a chance to win a set if you win seven out of twelve points. And let's face it: there are players who are better at tiebreaks than others.

So where does this take me?

When my friends asked me who I thought was the GOTA, my reply was straight: that term does not apply for tennis. The statistics and the way the sport is developed simply does not allow it to exist. Let me expand and I'll start with Roger Federer... just to bring interest and spice things up.

Is Roger Federer the GOTA? I don't think so.

Roger own sixteen grand slam titles, two more than his immediate follower Pete Sampras. These titles are distributed between a span of eight years, from 2003 until his most recent one in 2010. He owns all grand slams, with Roland Garros being the only single title; all the other ones he has multiple. One can say the Federer is the most prolific grand slam player of all time. Now about the GOTA, there are a few shadows: the major one is his rivalry against Rafa Nadal. While a candidate himself to be named GOTA, Rafa has clearly established that Federer may own more grand slam titles than anyone, but it is Rafa who owns Roger.  Then comes the dominance factor, and at this point I bring Pete Sampras.

Is Pete the GOTA?
He didn't win on clay, so...

Pete is second in the list of grand slam title holders with fourteen, with the big asterisk being not winning Roland Garros (or not even making it to the finals). However in my opinion, Sampras holds the really important record that matters in tennis when speaking about dominance of the sport: Sampras was number one of the world for six straight years; this feat is remarkable and believe it or not, it is a record that is almost impossible to break. Think about it this way: a player would have to end as number one player for six straight years just to share, the spot with Pete. He would still need to finish as #1 an additional seventh year to break the record and stand alone. You can also think about it this way: Roger Federer couldn't do it. He just made it to four years.

Do you see where I'm going? I will continue my argument in Part II...