Is NOVAK DJOKOVIC the GOAT of Tennis?

NOTE: We are only discussing the greatest MALE tennis player of all time.
The FEMALE GOAT is between Marina, Steffi Graf, Serena. And Steffi wins it as she is the only female player in open era to win a calendar grand slam. And yes before anyone points out, she also won the Olympic gold, but thats not a prize money event, so am not taking that into criteria for GOAT, which am basing on pure professional prize money events.

Novak Djokovic wins the 2016 FRENCH OPEN and with it completes non-calendar GRAND SLAM or the Djoker Slam. Is Djokovic GOAT?

Now, in my view, the most basic qualification criteria for GOAT or GREATEST TENNIS PLAYER OF ALL TIME is to win a Major or slam in all 3 surfaces. That automatically (and unfortunately) rules Rod Laver out as he won only on grass and clay. It is arguable if he would have won had majors been played on hard courts in 60s.
Only the following 6 players have won Tennis Majors in ALL 3 surfaces (clay, grass, hard court) in the Open Era:
The great Jimmy Connors! Yes, while he didn’t win French Open, not many know that his US Open triumph in 1976 came when it was played on clay.  YES.. for 3 years, the US Open was played on clay as the hardcourt stadium was being renovated. And he beat BORG in that clay court US Open final. Borg as we know was a clay master!
Connors obviously also won US Open on hard court and Wimbledon on grass.
The sportive Wilander we know didnt win Wimbledon, but he did manage to win the Australian Open in 1983 and 84 when it was played on grass. He has also won the French Open on clay and the US Open on hard court.

And then come the modern greats – Agassi, Federer, Nadal and now Djokovic – have all completed  a “career grand slam” (all 4 majors played in 3 surfaces).
Out of these 6 players, Novak Djokovic is the ONLY PLAYER to win 4 CONSECUTIVE MAJORS in a row across 3 surfaces. This makes Djokovic a massive GOAT contender.

But despite that, Nadal remains, the only male player to win 3 consecutive MAJORS IN 3 DIFFERENT SURFACES within a single calendar year when he won the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open in 2010. No player has ever done this to date.

And Federer of course has 17 majors. But his poor losing record to Nadal in head to head really puts a dampener on his GOAT claims.

BUT if Djokovic wins WIMBLEDON, then he will equal Nadal’s under-rated record above and also become the first to win 5 majors in a row. UNPRECEDENTED.

And if he wins the US Open, then he wins the “calendar grand slam”, the ONLY male player to do it across 3 surfaces. And also winning 6 majors in a row in that process.

Djokovic has ticked almost all other boxes: better head to head against the top 4 best players of his era: Federer, Nadal, Murray and Wawrinka and barring one, ALL his Major wins he faced another major winner as opponent. Plus, he has won more ATP Masters Series titles than anyone else.. and  is also the first to cross $100MN prize money.

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In short:
Just Wimbledon and US Open wins this year stand between Djokovic and the crown of UNDISPUTED Greatest Of All Time (GOAT).

Filed under: Sport, Australian Open, djoker slam, Djokovic, Federer, French Open, GOAT, GRETAEST OF ALL TIME, IS DJOKOVIC GOAT, IS DJOKOVIC THE BEST TENNIS PLAYER EVER?, IS DJOKOVIC THE GOAT OF TENNIS?, IS DJOKOVIC THE GREATEST PLAYER OF ALL TIME?, Nadal, non-calendar grand slam, Rafa Nadal, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, TENNIS GOAT, Wimbledon

The Best Decade of All Time in Tennis

In no generation or decade in the Open Era have the top active players won 91% of all grand slams!

Never before. Not the Agassi, Sampras, Courier period nor the Connors, Borg and Mcenroe period

Not even the Wilander, Lendl, Edberg and Becker period.

Have taken a top player to mean anyone who has AT LEAST won 4 grand slams in the Open Era in their entire career!

Agassi, Courier and Sampras together won LESS THAN 60% of all grand slams.

Borg, Connors, Vilas and McEnroe were better and they CUMULATIVELY won 75% of all slams.

The immediate next group of Connors, McEnroe, Wilander won just 83% of their slams.

Even the highly competitive 80s era of Wilander, Lendl, Becker and Edberg together won just 82% of all slams.

But FEDERER, NADAL AND DJOKOVIC HAVE WON 32 OF THE LAST 35 SLAMS. 

Never before have the top tennis players DOMINATED a decade like this.

This is a phenomenal 91% win rate in all grand slams.

And the best part? the TIME PERIOD of this era is now 9 YEARS!!!  so its not like a brief 2-3 year bright period. Its freaking 9 YEARS!!!

(Click on the image to see full size).

Filed under: Sport, agassi, Becker, Bjorn Borg, Borg, Boris Becker, Courier, Djoker, Djokovic, Edberg, Federer, greatest tennis era of all time, greatest tennis player in history, Greatest Tennis Player of all time, Guillermo Vilas, ivan lendl, John Mcenroe, lendl, Mcenroe, Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Rafa, Rafa Nadal, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, sampras, trivalry, Vilas, Wilander

India become World Champions in Cricket after 28 years!

The shot that will remain etched in the memory of the 70 Million Live TV viewers in India on 2nd April 2011.

Dhoni hits a 6 to win the ICC 2011 Cricket World Cup for India

Every Indian cricket fan would want to watch the India-Australia, India-Pak & the Final vs SL again and again! I searched around and found that the  official highlights are already available! Check it out at Flipkart: ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 – Official Highlights.

Full credit not just to the current Indian team led by M.S.Dhoni but to Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman and Kumble who laid the winning foundation for the current team by consistently winning test matches  home and away.

Filed under: Sport, CRICKET WORLD CUP, dhoni 6 final, dhoni hits winning 6 in final, dhoni winning shot, ICC, ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP 2011, india, india beat lanka in final, india sri lanka, india win world cup, india win worldcup, WORLDCUP

India is now the No. 1 ranked team in Test Cricket

UPDATE: Dec6 2009: INDIA is now the NO. 1 Ranked Test Team basis official ICC rankings! This phenomenal achiement came when India defeated Sri Lanka in the recently concluded Test in Mumbai.

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India’s 100 Test Match Wins – Growing Win%

Have a look at India’s decade wise Test match performances, and we can easily understand that India’s win rate is increasing every 10 year years. More importantly, the more tests we play, the more we win. This chart also probably highlights how Indian team selection over the last few years has improved. The more merit involved in team selection, the better the results.

More than anything else, this coincides with the entry and rise of the Big 5 batting superstars:  Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Virender Sehwag and  Saurav Ganguly. India’s bowling strengths were Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan. The youngsters, Ishant Sharma and Sreesanth will hopefully carry the pace bowling torch forward.

In terms of captaincy, India’s winning streak started with Azharuddin in a series of Home Wins… and Saurav Ganguly started India’s Overseas Wins.  Dravid/Kumble maintained the win rate for their brief stints. The new captain, M.S. Dhoni has taken over from the previous generation and consolidated the win percentage.

Decade	No. of Tests	No. of Victories	Win %	Cume Tests	Cume Victories	Cume Win %
1931-1940	7	0	0	7	0	0%
1941-1950	13	0	0	20	0	0%
1951-1960	50	6	12%	70	6	9%
1961-1970	46	9	20%	116	15	13%
1971-1980	67	18	27%	183	33	18%
1981-1990	86	11	13%	269	44	16%
1991-2000	69	19	28%	338	63	19%
2001-2010	96	37	39%	434	100	23%

Filed under: Sport, 100 test wins, azharuddin, brabourne stadium, captaincy, cricinfo, cricket, dhoni, dravid, gambhir, gautham gambhir, icc test ranking, India cricket, india cricket statistics, india no 1 ranked test team, India statistics test match, India Test Match, India test match stats, India wins 100 tests, India wins 100 tets matches, India's 100th test match victory, India's 100th test match win, India's wins in tests, kumble, laxman, MS Dhoni, mumbai test, rahul dravid, rank 1, sachin tendulkar, sehwag, sehwag 293, sreesanth, srisanth, tendulkar, Tets match cricket, viru, zaheer khan

Why Nadal’s 5-2 head-to-head record against Federer is misleading!

A lot of arm-chair Nadal fanboys keep touting the stat that in Grand Slam Finals, Nadal has a 5-2 head to head record against Federer and hence Federer hasn’t “dominated” Rafa.

But these guys completely miss the point (which all tennis legends like Sampras, Agassi, Laver, Mcenroe and Becker accept):

Nadal didn’t even make ONE  U.S. Open final during Federer’s reign!!!

ZILCH. ZERO. Not ONE SINGLE final in the 5 YEARS Federer won.

Why should we bother about Federer losing to Nadal, if we don’t scrutinize Nadal losing to weak players in US and Aus Opens? In fact, Nadal lost to way lower ranked Soderling in 4th round of his FAVOURITE surface after winning 4 times.  Federer has lost ONLY in the finals of Wimbledon since his 1st win in 2003  and NEVER lost US Open after he first won it in 2004.

Nadal is extremely inconsistent in Hardcourt Slams. (Update: 27/Jan/2011,  Nadal has crashed out of Aus Open in Quarters! )

Considering Roger’s awesome hardcourt Slam record, the head to head would easily be in FEDERER’s favour  of at least 8-5 (4 US Open wins and 2 Aus Open wins in Federer’s prime).

By  refusing to acknowledge Nadal’s miserable hard court slam record, and refusing to see Federer’s total dominance in US Open, the head -to-head stat supporters are  PUNISHING Federer for his CONSISTENCY in reaching FINALS of ALL slams, and REWARDING Nadal for his failure in U.S.Open and Aus Open.

Absolutely ridiculous. Basically Nadal fanboys have been devastated by Federer’s French open win and the fact that he has been declared the Greatest Tennis Player of ALL Time by none other than Sampras, Agassi, Lendl, McEnroe etc etc.

The right way to check slam dominance, is to take up ALL THE SLAMS in which BOTH Nadal and Federer participated and check the winning percentage you find that Nadal is way inferior to Federer than Agassi was to Sampras (and not otherwise as Nadal fanboys love to believe).  When you add the 2 Wimbledons, 4 Aus Opens and 5 US Opens that Nadal and Federer haven’t met in, but Federer won 2 , 3  & 5 of those Slams respectively, you get the TRUE picture.

Over time, Federer will dominate sports history books, while Nadal may remain a footnote (unless he starts winning 10more slams…)

Also read: how-nadal-maintains-his-head-to-head-record-against-federer

To quote a fellow tennis enthusiast & blogger (see comments section below):  “…Roger leads (Rafa) 29-20 and 35-23, in the Same Tournament Entered and the Titles in Total Tournaments Available, respectively. On top of that Roger leads 12-6 in the Same 21 Grand Slams Played.”

This is an awesome stat and once and for all makes the lousy “Roger didn’t dominate Rafa” argument completely untenable. Read the full analysis here which debunks the popular myth that Roger never dominated Rafa. A better and more statistically valid data set to measure GOAT and true Grand Slam head to head is the above mentioned  “Same 21 Grand Slams Played”.  Click here to read more:  There’s More to Nadal and Federer Than Head-To-Head Meetings

Update: May 30, 2010

To put all debates to rest, Nadal himself now admits Roger Federer is better with simple, cold logic in an interview. Read the article here : Roger’s still better, says Nadal

“If someone says I’m better than Roger, I think they know nothing about tennis,” Nadal said…

“You see his titles, you see my titles. There’s no comparison.
It’s difficult to compare Roger with me right now. He has 16 Grand Slams, I have six. Roger’s records might be impossible to beat.”

Despite Federer’s more tightly-packed trophy cabinet, Nadal has a 14-7 head-to-head record against his rival and has won six of their last seven encounters.

The 24-year-old Mallorca man, however, believes that is indicative of nothing more than the Spaniard’s famed ability on clay. “I am number two in the world for five years now,” he said.
“I think I am a good number two. Sure, I can beat him, number two can beat number one. I can beat him, but I beat him a lot of times on clay. I’ve played with him more times on clay than on the rest of the surfaces.”

Filed under: Sport, 21 Grand Slams Played, 5 U.S.Open wins in a row, Australian Open, Becker, Bjorn Borg, bleacher report, bleacherreport, bleacherreport.com, Federer, Federer better than Nadal, Federer is greatest if all time, Federer Nadal rivalry, federer stats, Federer–Nadal_rivalry, Grand Slam, Grass courts, hard court, Hardcourt slams, hardcourts, inconsistent Nadal, ivan lendl, John Mcenroe, lendl, misleading, Nadal, Nadal failure in US Open, Nadal Federer rivalry, nadal head to head, nadal stats, nadal US Open flop, Pete Sampras, rafa roger head to head, Rafael Nadal, Rod Laver, Roger Federer, roger rafa head to head, Same 21 Grand Slams Played, Same Tournament Entered, sampras, truth about statistics, U.S. Open