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.