Dr Mufasa wrote:That's the thing. I will probably go to my grave thinking prime Federer was the most impressive player I've ever watched, but his first 10 majors he got to play Philippoussis, Safin, Roddick, Hewitt, Roddick, Agassi, Baghdatis, 2006 Nadal, Roddick, Gonzalez in the Finals, before sh*t got real competition wise. How many more majors does 2007-2010 Djokovic get against that? It might be the difference between Novak sitting on 11 majors instead of 5 right now, at which point we'd be saying "Federer's GS record is kind of f*cked" We also don't know whether Federer is just a flat out more mentally weak player than Nadal and Djokovic, someone had a good quote in one of these threads about how Federer seems to be declining mentally more than physically, but maybe he was always like this and it just took until 2008 until the talent competition wise was enough to expose it. I would be afraid of watching 2011 Djokovic vs 2006 Federer if you gave me the option, I'd be afraid of the mystique being lost like when they made Ken Jennings play the tournament of champions finalists on Jeopardy and he lost
I'm not going to give a lot of weight to Djokovic having say 8-11 majors vs Federer's 16 if we're comparing them at the end of their career, the competition factor for 03-06 Federer vs 07-10 Djokovic makes it an unfair count IMO. With that said maybe we shouldn't count out Djokovic's chance to put up a Federer like GS number. At the French Open of the year he turned 25 Federer actually only had 7 majors. 2004 Federer was only a year younger than 2011 Djokovic! Maybe instead of "Early Federer was way more dominant than Djokovic" the reality of the situation is closer to "Early Djokovic was actually much better than early Federer, while mid career/prime Djokovic is now equalling mid career/prime Federer"
I think the points you bring up deserve to be brought up, and indeed, I think a Nola for peak GOAT argument needs to get strong discussion if he wins here, but I also think people overrate the competition thing, or perhaps underrate other factors.
In 2006, Federer went 92-5 and only lost to 2 players all year.
Rafa's never been anywhere near that kind of dominance, and Nola only got near that in 2011 (he's not close in 2012).
I want to emphasize the losing to only 2 players thing: I agree that the competition at the top got fiercer with the arrival of Nola & co, but that doesn't mean that all competition got fiercer. Having the possibility of facing extremely tough opponents at the end of a tournament is not an excuse for losing to pedestrian players who are no different from any other era.
Simply put then: Peak Federer showed a superior ability to consistently win matches than Rafa or Nola, or anyone else.
Now first, the obvious counter to this is "Who cares about minor tournaments?". I'll respond up front: It's not just minor tournaments. We've had years to see Rafa, and it's only in the last year that he's managed to actually achieve the kind of "finals every Slam" dominance Fed did for forever. Rafa's inability to win as often outside of slams has gone right along with his performances in slams, and so any talk for Rafa along these lines really needs to begin with "I understand Rafa wasn't as good as peak Fed before 2011, but I think it's different now..."
Regarding Nola on this front, we need to watch him more first. I'll say right now: If he goes on a 8 major win streak while going through a healthy Rafa, I'll be right on board the Nola = peak GOAT bandwagon.
Errani beat Kirilenko...
