The Serbians can have a Happy Christmas then. Ooo, did I make a prediction there?
Djoko over Fed? Over Rosewall, Connors and Laver given longevity counts for a lot? Over Serena , Graf, Navratilova? Could be interesting ?!
Top male anyway for me. Sorry, I'll correct that.Top male on court tennis player. Where we can make the most direct comparison certainly ahead of Fed and Nadal in my book, the best of that recent great generation with his overall results and head to heads. Ahead of Connors yes. Not sure where Laver and Rosewall will come out since in particular I haven't studied the ELO info or indeed gone back over their careers.
I think re longlivity, my impression is short careers are disadvantageous in this exercise but I doubt extra years particularly add over decent length careers which Djokovic's certainly has been, and that would seem fair to me when trying to assess the best.
-- Edited by indiana on Thursday 3rd of November 2022 10:10:31 PM
emerson was 55th- he won lots of slams but didnt beat players
of real quality as he was in the amateurs when players like laver and Rosewall had turned pro. In modern parlance, he vultured but not deliberately ! A lot of his slams where weaker Aussie opens also .
So, here is my actual top 20 - which wont align with Jeff's as his algorithm is looking for specific things that I wont have factored in the same way. I am sure this is completely open to argument.
I have ten men and ten women, and deliberately put the men in even numbers as I felt men over history will have been rated higher as the sport was more competitive. In reality, they could go either way and it may well be that there arent even numbers of men and women. 2 of my 20 have already gone, so I know I wont get a full house!! I also have some lower than 20 that will still come up in the next few weeks, 6 names in fact and I know they will all appear.
My personal top 20
1. Borg (I know Jeff wont have him as number one!) 2. Navratilova 3. Rosewall 4. Graf 5. Laver 6. Serena Williams 7. Djokovic 8. Court 9. Federer 10. Lenglen 11. Nadal 12. Connolly 13. Pancho Gonzalez 14. Evert 15. Tilden 16. King (Jeff put her at 28th, I rated her higher than that) 17. Cochet (Jeff rated him at 77th, and I definitely over rated Cochet for what he achieved as opposed to who he beat! Bad call on my behalf) 18. Wills Moody 19. Sampras 20. Seles
The 6 I named who will appear are:
21. Lendl 23. Connors 26. Venus Williams 31. Budge 35. McEnroe (in retrospect I feel he should have been higher - Lendl, Connors, McEnroe and Borg where an era equal to todays big 4 IMO) 42. Marble (again, I was way out here and realise she will be much higher than I had her!)
-- Edited by JonH comes home on Friday 4th of November 2022 05:45:38 PM
Interesting that among the men there appears to be only one player left to come up born between 1960 ( Lendl ) and 1981 ( Federer ) and then 5 more years to 1986 ( Nadal ).
We have the Connors / Borg / McEnroe / Lendl era and really just Sampras (1971) of true note until the Federer / Nadal / Djokovic / Murray era. Such as Becker and Edberg were very good but have been put in their place.
So.I guess when looking at Sampras's successes the fact that his general contemporaries were part of a relatively crap era before the latest crap era has to be taken into account and no doubt his ELO figures will take this into account to a large extent. I guess Federer also got a wee bit of a start against that poorer era.
Ah, if Andy had been around a decade or two sooner just think what prizes he might have clocked up. So pleased though that Jeff's exercise has him as high as he is even wirh 'just' 3 Slam titles and ( not neing biased, honest ) think that that s a good reflection on his methodology.
Ii guess in the great, crap great etc rhere was also an earlier gap between Laver (1938) and Connors (1952) and some not so great olayers tyen too that picked up a few Slam titles. I do hope for our future tennis enjoyment that there will be a new great era to come along quite soon.