Federer wins Australian Open - maybe he can send some juju over to

[nevets88]

Over to you know who that is endorsed by the same company that stopped making equipment. Federer is 35. That is forking ancient in tennis land. And he hit 18 majors, at least someone tied Nicklaus in my lifetime. Nadal looks like he is exerting great effort to hit the ball compared to Federer. If Nadal:Federer::Jason Zuback:??? Ernie Els?

https://twitter.com/i/moments/824992487001427969

[Golfingdad]

Nadal always looks like he's going at 120% though.

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This is a GOAT argument that I would find quite fascinating.  Many parallels to Tiger/Jack with the added "bonus" that they played against each other, practically in their primes.  You mentioned already that Fed just got his 18th major. Additionally,

• Nadal has 14 majors.
• Fed has 89 total titles (3rd all time), Nadal has 69, which is 6th all time.
• They both have 1 career grand slam (Fed only has 1 French and Rafa only 1 Australian)
• Rafa has an Olympic Gold medal, while Federer has a silver
• Between July 2005 and August 2009 they held the 1 and 2 rankings for that entire time.
• And the biggest tick in Rafa's favor: in head-to-head matchups, he leads 23-12 overall and 9-3 in Grand Slam matches. (22 overall, and 9 of the 12 GS matches were in finals)

I'd give the edge of GOAT to Federer, but I wonder what others think?  (The cool part is that neither of them is finished yet, so maybe more can still be done by either)

[iacas]

I think since they've played against each other 18 > 14. Their head-to-head record does add a little weight on Nadal's side, but it seems more likely the case that Rafa's game just foiled Federer a bit.

[nevets88]

18 minutes ago, iacas said:

I think since they've played against each other 18 > 14. Their head-to-head record does add a little weight on Nadal's side, but it seems more likely the case that Rafa's game just foiled Federer a bit.

Agreed. The parallel to Woods/Nicklaus is a little less so because Woods and Nicklaus are separated by so much time whereas Nadal is only 5 years younger than Federer, but that the major totals match up for both cases is eerie.

The one big difference to me between the two rivalries is both Woods and Nicklaus won the career slam 3 times over whereas Nadal dominated in the French Open and Federer Wimbledon, so how you view clay court vs grass tennis, which is more "tennis" might sway your view although grass is not really serve and volley these days. Federer won the USO 3 times vs Nadal's one, USO in tennis like golf is hard to win, it's the least number of major wins for most great players overall, both tennis and golf so Federer gets an edge there.

Another similarity, this is not much of one, is we saw how Woods suffered during play with his injuries and I still remember Nadal during his press conference just after a match when his leg cramped up it was so painful he stopped mid sentence and was almost on the floor, it hurt so much he was crying. They both exposed on tv just how hard on the body professional sports is.

[Golfingdad]

4 minutes ago, iacas said:

I think since they've played against each other 18 > 14. Their head-to-head record does add a little weight on Nadal's side, but it seems more likely the case that Rafa's game just foiled Federer a bit.

Agreed.  That head-to-head record can also be spun in Federer's favor, IMO.  If you stipulate that Federer was the greatest on grass and indoors, and that Nadal was the greatest on outdoor hard courts and clay, then you can break down the record even more.  Federer leads in the first two categories by 7-2, and Nadal leads in the last two by 21-5.  Both are "blowouts" but one obviously has a much larger sample size than the other.  Why is that?  Perhaps it's because on surfaces that Nadal is superior, Federer is clearly the next best, whereas on the other surfaces, Nadal struggles to make it to the finals against Fed?  It can be a lot of other things too, though - perhaps those proportions match the percentages they play on each surface, or perhaps injuries are involved too.  But I'd still give the nod to Fed.

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A related thought experiment that interests me is what might each of their records look like if the other didn't exist?  Would Federer have 27 Grand Slams?  Would Nadal have 17?  Would they each have about the same?  Or would they actually have fewer grand slams to their name?  Perhaps the existence of the other is part of what drove them to work as hard as they did and without each other they wouldn't have each been as great as they turned out to be.