Brilliant and well constructed argument by Raymond Lee who is a very well tennis historian, i completely agree with him 
Reviewing The Great Debate By Raymond Lee
http://www.tennisweek.com/news/fullstory.sps?inewsid=6636241
Over the last few years Roger Federer has been accustomed to having incredible praise heaped upon him for the amazing feats that he has performed on the tennis court. There is no doubt that he is a fantastic player. Clearly if he retired right now he would be considered at the least one of the finest players in tennis history.
Federer, as virtually all tennis aficionados know, just recently broke the official record for majors with his victory over a very game Andy Roddick in an epic 77-game showdown that was the longest Wimbledon final ever. Federer now owns 15 Grand Slam titles, he completed the career Grand Slam by winning Roland Garros last month and is the reigning US Open, Roland Garros and Wimbledon champion.
Federer's resurgence this season has prompted people to again ask the obvious and too often repeated question, "Is Roger Federer the Greatest of All Time (GOAT)?"
What is amusing to me about this question is that just earlier in the year many (a few of them the same people) were asking "Is Rafael Nadal the GOAT?" Now maybe it’s just me but I would like to think there is only one GOAT in the history of tennis and definitely not two GOATS simultaneously. At the rate GOATS are popping up I feel we should have a shepherd to tend to the flock. The emergence of a new GOAT in tennis should be a very rare occurrence, not every few months. Even potential GOATS should be very rarely seen.
This question is now being asked mainly because Federer is the all-time Grand Slam singles king. It is clearly the majors record that Federer broke but at the same time it really isn’t the record. No, this is not like the riddle of the Sphinx but it’s an attempt to explain the different conditions in which Federer, Sampras and many in the Open Era have played under as opposed to the players in the past.
Bill Tilden, at his peak in the 1920’s, was widely acclaimed as the Greatest Player of All Time. According to Bud Collins’ Tennis Encyclopedia he won 138 of 192 tournaments as an amateur and had a 907-62 match record. Bill Tilden’s match winning percentage was .936! All the top players were in the amateurs at the time so clearly Tilden was the best player in the world.
With this type of dominance you would think Tilden would have won close to thirty majors in his long career and yet Tilden won only ten majors in his career. Why is that you may ask? Simple, the man didn’t enter many majors in his best years. If you don’t enter a tournament you can’t win it.
In the 1920’s and the 1930’s boat travel was the best way to go from place to place. This could take many weeks and the player or players would not be able to practice or keep in shape. The travel lag also must have been horrible. Most players chose not to do this as spending weeks aboard a boat could wreck their entire year on the tournament circuit.
It’s not unreasonable to think that if Tilden played all of the majors in the 1920’s, assuming he had the airplane travel we have today that he would have won at least 20 majors out of 40 entered.
Later the Professional Tournaments were formed and many players like Tilden chose to turn pro in order to make a living at the sport they loved. The primary problem with this was that once a player committed the unpardonable sin of turning pro, they were banned from playing the majors. And if you can’t play the major tournaments, you’re not going to win the major tournaments.
In 1937 Don Budge won the last two majors of the year and in 1938, the next year he chose to travel by boat to go to all four majors in an attempt to win the Grand Slam. Budge succeeded, sweeping all four majors in the same season to give rise to the term "Grand Slam" and extend his streak to six straight majors.
Budge decided to turn pro to compete and make a living on the professional tour and never played a major again. To be fair, I’m not sure if Budge would have won six majors in a row if all the top pros like Ellsworth Vines, Hans Nusslein and Fred Perry were allowed to play the majors but I think you get the point. Budge, like many following him and some before him never had a chance to break the majors record because once he turned pro he wasn’t allowed to enter the majors.
The record for majors is 15 currently (I expect Federer to probably add to that total in the future) but it really should have been higher if Open tennis existed earlier and if the transportation was better in the past. So given the same conditions over tennis history I would tend to think the record should have been in the mid-twenties. I was not surprised at all when a great player like Federer broke Pete Sampras’ majors record so quickly. I felt at the time Sampras’ record of 14 was very very vulnerable.
I think Sampras was and still is a fabulous player but Pete won his 14 majors in 52 attempts. It’s a very good record but all he had to do was break Roy Emerson record of 12 at the time. What are the odds that a player as great as Sampras isn’t going to win more than 12 tournaments out of 52 attempts? The law of numbers clearly favors the Great Pete Sampras here. It was wonderful that he did it but it was hardly a superhuman achievement given his 52 entries into major tournaments.
Let’s look at this from another perspective. Margaret Court started playing in the 1950’s and continued into the 1970’s and won 24 majors out of I believe 48 attempts, an excellent percentage of fifty percent. She played all the top players whether she was an amateur or a professional and still holds the majors record to this day, men or women. In 1970 Court won the first Open Grand Slam for women. Court, unlike great players like Pancho Gonzalez, Ken Rosewall, Lew Hoad and Rod Laver was never banned from playing the majors. I’m sure if she was banned from playing the majors during her best years that her record would be diminished in the eyes of many, yet Court would have been every bit as magnificent a player but many wouldn’t know it when they looked at her record..
Yet this very thing happened to great players like Don Budge, Jack Kramer, Pancho Gonzalez, Ken Rosewall and Rod Laver. They weren’t allowed to play the majors and played tennis in the obscurity of the old great pro tours. In the old pro tours there was tremendous competition, awesome players and yet very few knew they were playing. Gonzalez, Rosewall and Laver were all at their peaks as tennis players when they played in the old pro tours and when Open tennis started in 1968, all of them were no longer in their physical primes, despite the fact Laver won the Open Grand Slam in 1969.
Steffi Graf only played in the Open Era and won 22 majors in 54 attempts plus a Grand Slam in 1988. Graf’s winning percentage for majors won and majors entered is an excellent .407. Like Court and many top players, Graf was able to play in every major during a great portion of her career. Many consider Graf to be the true major tournament record holder because Court won double digits in Australian Championships that had weaker fields.
Actually Federer’s style is quite similar to Graf’s. Both have super forehands (both Graf’s and Federer’s forehands have been called the best in tennis history) and only good one handed backhands. Both cover the court very well and are extremely smooth movers. Graf and Federer have the ability to serve their way out of danger with excellent serves. They both play it relatively safe generally off the backhand, with Federer driving the ball a little more while Graf usually plays a heavy slice. Both are very content to rally from the baseline, waiting for the opportunity to hit a forehand winner.
The importance of the major tournaments tends to differ over certain periods of time. During a good portion of the 1970’s and early 1980’s, the Australian Open, which is traditionally a major, did not draw the all of the top players as majors do today. It was played toward the end of the year which is the holidays for many players and because of this many of the players did not want to enter. The Australian lost much of its importance during this period of time.
Tournaments including the year-end Masters, the WCT championships were considered clearly more important than the Australian Open. So during the 1970’s and early 1980’s you had winners like Mark Edmondson, Brian Teacher, Johan Kriek (198-82), and Vitas Gerulaitis. All of these players were excellent players and perhaps they may have won even if the top players came but it is doubtful. The top players usually skipped the Australian Open to either relax or prepare for other tournaments.
Essentially in that period, there were only three majors, the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. Great players like John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors would have probably added to their majors resume if they decided to play the Australian Open during this down period. Nowadays the tournament has regained its importance.
Let’s look at some of Federer’s other accomplishments and see how they fare against other greats. Federer has won 60 tournaments in (if my count is correct) 175 tournaments entered as of July 11, 2009. Roger’s tournament winning percentage is 34.29%. An excellent total and percentage but far behind the official ATP tournament record of 109 by Jimmy Connors. Connors’ approximate tournament winning percentage incidentally is 31.2%. Bjorn Borg has an approximate tournament winning percentage of 48.3% and 100 tournaments won.
Now Connors has what is the official record but record keeping in the early days of Open Tennis were to say the least a bit confusing to be nice about it. The differences in tours like the ATP, the WCT and the Bill Riordan tours and other factors made accurate records virtually impossible. Jimmy Connors has actually won far more tournaments than recorded officially. I believe it may be in the 140’s. Bill Tilden is in the 160’s and Rod Laver is at 199 tournaments victories, according to my research. Laver’s total of 199 is staggering and I can’t imagine it being broken, at least for the next few decades.
Federer currently has 15 majors but if you include the old pro majors in the 1940’s to 1960’s (they are not recognized as majors), Ken Rosewall has 23 total majors and Laver has 19. Considering there were no more then three pro majors every year as opposed to four majors a year in the Open Era, the totals of Rosewall, Laver and other pros from that time are even more impressive. Rosewall at one point won 10 majors out of 11 entered, including nine straight during his best streak. Rosewall has also won approximately 130 tournaments in his career.
Here's my conclusion: when you factor in decades of tennis history that many seem to have forgotten, then Roger Federer may or may not be the GOAT in the future. His record is staggering but to be honest if you look at his career record compared to the greats of the past, he is not a giant among ants, as many seem to make him out to be. He is one of the giants among the many other giants that have played tennis in the past. He has the majors record because the Open Era has been only around for a bit over 40 years and I think he probably will add to the record.
It’s a quirk of tennis history that the record for majors among the men isn’t in the twenties or even the thirties. Right now I will write that Federer may possibly be the GOAT in the future but nothing indicates in his career statistics that he is definitively the GOAT now. It is very debatable whether he is even the greatest of the Open Era.
Federer is about to turn 28 and he has plenty of time to add to his remarkable resume of accomplishments. Laver for example at 28 would in the future win a pro Grand Slam and an Open Grand Slam.
We have to wait and see how Federer’s career continues in the future. Right now I would venture to say that we have two potential future GOAT candidates, Federer and Nadal, because of Nadal’s youth and established record. Their rivalry, along with Murray, Djokovic and the resurgent Roddick should be something to treasure in the future.
