FEDERER v NADAL V DJOKOVIC (etc) - MOD NOTE 1ST POST

Girly Gal · 12-06-2023 9:07am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120703640#Comment_120703640

At least you're not discriminating against any of the 3 and accusing all three equally, which is fair. I think the main reason of their longevity is that they are clearly 3 great players, but, the following generations have proven to be exceptionally poor; Alcaraz looks to be the first genuine challenger to emerge and he is about 15 years younger than Djokovic, in the past, every 7/8 years there was a new generation of players dominating. There hasn't even been a player after Djokovic and before Alcaraz who would be of a similar level to the likes of Wawrinka in his prime. Even now if Federer and Nadal were somehow able to get back to the required fitness level, they would be Djokovic's main challengers, Nadal winning last years AO is proof of this.

Djokovic is not playing as well as he was in his prime, but, be doesn't have to, he will continue to win slams until his body let's him down as the opposition apart from possibly Alcaraz are extremely poor.

josip · 12-06-2023 9:14am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120703640#Comment_120703640

Quoting this to preserve it in case you decide to remove it in the cold light of day 😀

Jack Daw · 12-06-2023 9:25am

josip · 12-06-2023 10:28am

Although people lament the end of Federer and Nadal, I think we're still in for a couple of very interesting years where Djokovic will be competing directly with the pretender to his throne. In the same way that Federer and Nadal eked out a few more slams each at the end of their careers and set a tougher target for Djokovic to surpass, Djokovic now has to do the same with Alcaraz. At the time Federer and Nadal were trying to fend off Djokovic, he was in their rear view mirrors, blowing the horn and flashing the lights trying to overtake. So there was a lot of intensity in what was obviously a 3 way race at the time. Alcaraz has only just joined the motorway and isn't even in sight yet. But if he can maintain his current speed, he'll overtake Djokovic unless Djokovic can get further up the road and set him a night impossible target. Alcaraz is running at high revs and his physique/game doesn't seem as geared towards longevity as the more wiry Djokovic or the effortlessly fluid style of Federer. I suspect that he'll be more prone to injuries and will need to reinvent his game if wants to play deep into his thirties like the big 3.

Girly Gal · 12-06-2023 3:00pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120704171#Comment_120704171

A lot depends on the quality of the opposition Alcaraz will face in his career. At the moment he's a long way off, until he gets into double figures I wouldn't even consider him yet. If the standard of player coming through remains similar to the last 10 years, then he has a great chance to rack up the numbers, as outside of Djokovic there really isn't any great threats there and Djokovic is already in decline (still too good for the opposition). So Alcaraz if he really is the real deal has no excuse not to get the numbers as it looks like he will have a clear road once Djokovic departs, which will happen in the next few years. Would like to see Alcaraz overcome Djokovic before Djokovic departs, rather than taking over when Djokovic is gone.

josip · 11-09-2023 12:49am

Level with Margaret Court now. And will be #1 again later today.

john9876 · 11-09-2023 10:01pm

What figure will Djokovic get to?

28 is my guess.

josip · 11-09-2023 11:44pm

27 Slams, 102 atp titles, 414 weeks @#1

eagle eye · 11-09-2023 11:46pm

All three have serious question marks hanging over them.

Usain Bolt was the fastest man on earth by some distance but his speed started to wane by the time he reached 28. If you look at the sprinters who went into the mid-thirties they had all been banned for drug use at some stage. So here we have a 36 year old man who hasn't lost his speed. How does that happen?

josip · 11-09-2023 11:56pm

Totally different physionomy between tennis players and 100/200m sprinters. Also he is slower now at 36; 2015 Djockovic would beat the 2023 version.

ahnowbrowncow · 12-09-2023 12:52am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121099418#Comment_121099418

Why did his speed start to wane at 28? His 3 Jamaican teammates, Powell, Blake and Carter were all banned. So I wouldn't be using him as a benchmark for normal, clean athletes because he has plenty of his own question marks.

eagle eye · 12-09-2023 1:46am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121099523#Comment_121099523

He smashed records as a boy all the way through the ranks. People were talking about him with excitement when he was 12 years old.

What made him so good was that he had the same movement and elasticity in his body as guys 10 inches smaller than him which is extremely unusual and drugs can't do that. He didn't need drugs to be that good.

And all those athletes you mentioned along with Linford Christie, Justin Gatlin and others still had speed in their early thirties whereas known clean athletes like Obabele Thompson and Ato Bolden were done at world level by thirty just like Usain Bolt.

Your reactions and speed start to decline in your late twenties.

eagle eye · 12-09-2023 1:47am

Mistake

walshb · 12-09-2023 12:44pm

Comparing tennis players to sprinters is beyond stupid here. 10 seconds of sprinting hard. That is it. Tennis matches have far more to consider: Roger and Nole and Rafa are all just exceptionally brilliant tennis players. None of them have ever tested positive for PEDs. Why? Because there was never illegal PEDs taken

Nole at 36 is absolutely not as good/strong as we was at 30, for example. It’s just that he is still good enough to be at and near the top against not so great opposition

SlickRic · 12-09-2023 5:43pm

the debate is over.

i was a Nadal guy. loved how he stopped Federer from being the only guy on a certain level, and then ultimately beat him at Wimbledon. once that Wimbledon victory happened, I was in his corner.

but by any reasonable objective metric, Novak is the best to ever do it. and I would honestly go as far to say he is the greatest athlete the world has ever seen.

i've no doubt he'll get to at least 28. it wouldn't surprise me one jot if he got to 30.

we'll genuinely never see anything like the man again IMO.

eagle eye · 13-09-2023 4:47am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121102080#Comment_121102080

Well I just can't accept what he is doing at his age.

You start to lose speed at 30 at the latest, he's 36 and shows no signs of slowing down.

When you look at those three, Federer had 16 slams before he hit thirty, Nadal had 14 and Djokovic had 12. How can you possibly be just as consistent after thirty?

Oh and Usain Bolt is the greatest athlete the world has ever seen.

Jack Daw · 13-09-2023 8:53am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121103451#Comment_121103451

Tennis is largely a skill based sport, sprinting isn't. You can't really improve in sprinting if you haven't the raw athleticism that you are born with.Hard work and tactical nous can get you a lot further in tennis than it can in a sport like athletics .Therefore comparing age of decline between the 2 is not relevant at all. Djokovic can compensate for any physical flaws he may have at this age by being technically and tactically proficient, you can't do that in sprinting.We saw this on Sunday when his net play was incredible which is an area he was weak at in the past, he's also massively improved his serve over the past 5 years or so.

Djokovic before 30 had a tougher competition , perhaps if his before 30 competition was the same as it is now he would have won closer to 20 grand slams before 30 and therefore his supposed same level of performance after 30 wouldn't be the case at all.

Also it is ridiculous that you imply Djokovic is doping and then unfavorably compare him with Bolt who's team mates have all been done for doping.Pick a better comparison if you are going to go down that line.

Musicrules · 13-09-2023 9:00am

Djokovic is the GOAT, zero debate left. And the testing in Jamaica was basically non existent so huge question marks over Bolt.

josip · 13-09-2023 9:30am

Djokoic was prepared to to forego a couple of grand slams and other major tournaments so as not to have to put any foreign substance in his body. Most people don't agree with his personal no-vac stance, but he's been completely consistent about it. It doesn't seem likely to me that he'd then choose to take performance enhancers.

eagle eye · 13-09-2023 9:50am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121103711#Comment_121103711

The other thing that wanes after thirty is reaction time.

Saying speed isn't critical to tennis is laughable.

As for Usain, I explained that a couple of posts before. If you need more, he was winning under 17 titles and setting records at 15 years of age.

Guilt by association is a ridiculous train of though.

Is a serial killers wife a murderer too? Is an alcoholics brother also a big drinker?

josip · 13-09-2023 10:07am

@eagle eye Have you played tennis or done athletics?

Jack Daw · 13-09-2023 11:18am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121103897#Comment_121103897

I didn't say speed isn't important in tennis, just not as important as it is in sprinting.

In technical sports like tennis lack of athleticism as you get older can be compensated for by having better technique.That doesn't apply anywhere near to the same extent in sprinting where raw athleticism is far more important.

eagle eye · 13-09-2023 12:53pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121103969#Comment_121103969

Both but at amateur level. Completely different to being an elite athlete. I played Rugby at a high enough level, completely different and it's a team sport where you can get away with things when you are older because you have young teammates with speed, reactions and stamina that you can only dream about when you go past thirty no matter how hard you try.

Even look at soccer, Cristiano Ronaldo was so fast when he was younger and that speed started to wane as he turned thirty. He was still a great player after that but it was because he had teammates picking up the slack and allowing him to stay forward and not work as hard. By 33 he was no longer wanted at Real Madrid and moved to Juventus in Italy, a lesser league, and did well there. He still scored lots of goals but at that stage he was already depending on his teammates to do the work he couldn't do anymore. He then went to United for a year and was unwanted there after a short spell because he couldn't do the work and ended up on the bench and he wasn't happy about that. He works hard on his fitness and he's still going but he's been nowhere near the player he was at 30 but he's made it work.

In an individual sport there is no place to hide, you have nobody that can do the work for you. This is why I mentioned sprinting and athletics in general. Longer distance runners, 5k and 10k track runners move up to marathons when they get older because there is less speed and you don't have to react quickly to a move. All you need for that is a consistent stride pattern, reasonbable speed and stamina.

You want to talk technical events where speed is not required as much, the triple jump is a very technical event. The oldest winner of that in the last five Olympics was 28. The high jump is another technical event, oldest winner of that in the last five olympics was 30. These events don't require the speed and reaction times a tennis player needs.

Can you explain to me how such a dominant player hasn't won the Olympic singles? Would it having anything to do with the amount of testing thats done in advance and during the event? Or are you just going to tell me it's unimportant for him?

josip · 13-09-2023 1:15pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121104680#Comment_121104680

At the Tokyo Olympics, the general consensus is that Djokovic tried to do too much by playing in both the singles and mixed doubles. In the humidity of Tokyo, it was too much strain on his body and he couldn't recover in time. He still managed to get to the semi-finals in both disciplines, so I don't think it's an anomaly.

You mentioned stamina in your post above. That's a recognised trait of Djokovic's and one of the reasons he's harder to beat at GSs. He's a lot more beatable at the 3-setters nowadays and only enters them in order to prep for a GS. Which tallies with the point you're making about him not being quite as fast around the court as 6 years ago.

eagle eye · 13-09-2023 1:20pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121104772#Comment_121104772

You mention one Olympics, how about all the other ones?

Andy Murray won it twice, same age as Djokovic. And he hasn't been the same player since he turned 30. His last grand slam final was at 29.

josip · 13-09-2023 4:41pm

Now that I think about it, you might have something. That he never won an Olympic medal, let alone an Olympic title, does indicate something suspicious. Federer would also be under the same cloud then. Would his bronze mean anything? But Nadal and Murray are in the clear by virtue of their golds. And Murray's decline was because he turned 30, not because he broke his body trying to get to #1.

eagle eye · 13-09-2023 5:14pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121105807#Comment_121105807

I always loved Federer but like you say no Olympic title but even more than that he won one title in 2010 and another in 2012 and then out of nowhere five years later he wins three in twelve months.

Girly Gal · 13-09-2023 8:59pm

The main reason Djokovic is still dominating in the slams, is that the level of competition has dropped to possibly an all time low over the last 4/5 years. Djokovic's level has also fallen in that time, but, it's still high enough to generally win in the slams, with the exception of Alcaraz, no new worthy contenders emerged in the last decade or more. If Nadal and Federer were able to stay fit, they would still probably be Djokovic's main threats. Alcaraz still has to find consistency at slam level, this will come probably in the next year or so, but he is the only serious threat to Djokovic at this stage.

The reality is Covid and disqualification have cost Djokovic more slams than any opponents in the last 3/4 years, that's a sad indictment of the state of men's tennis. That's not Djokovic's fault, he can only play what's in front of him.

walshb · 14-09-2023 4:26pm

Nole is, and has been slowing down. What do folks expect? You get to 31 and suddenly you’re fit for the scrap heap?

Simple: Nole today and recently is not as good/fast/intense as he was 5-6 years ago. If folks can’t see this (with silly comments) like he’s not slowed down (when he clearly has), and then accusing him of doping to explain this silly analysis, well

Nole at 34/35 and 36 is still good enough to be number 1. And if it was Nole from 2014/2015/2016, he’d be winning with one leg and one arm.

and can we stop this nonsense sprinting-triple jumping/tennis comparison. Speed is vital in sprinting/triple jump. Speed is important in tennis, but unlike sprinting, tennis has far more to consider. Huge and varied skill base!

Girly Gal · 14-09-2023 6:20pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121109690#Comment_121109690

It's fairly obvious to anyone with eyes that Djokovic is not as good as he was, that's to be expected as he ages, happens to everyone. What's really ridiculous is when commentators who should know better insist that he is playing as well if not better than ever, it's all an attempt to keep hyping the "product" in this case tennis. They did this with Federer before him and Nadal when he won the AO last year. The standard right now is at a low ebb, to be expected really following on from the peak of the big 3's sustained excellence for well over a decade. It's obvious to anyone with even a passing interest in tennis, that the standard has fallen significantly, but, the media and tennis World in general do not want to admit it, as it will damage their "product ".

FEDERER v NADAL V DJOKOVIC (etc) - MOD NOTE 1ST POST

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