I disagree with him AND feel the need to see him personally demeaned, so this thread is working for me.

And Dustin Brown serving and volleying on a fast indoor court is a serious threat as well; anyone could lose to him. That said, I do think Goran moving on has impacted Cilic’s game.

That’s why they need to go left!

Taylor Fritz and Jared Donaldson look promising. But don’t forget: there’s a doubles side of the tour too, and a certain large country has dominated that for a while.

Counterpoint: there are many countries, such as maybe most notably the Czech Republic and Russia, where the female tennis players are much stronger than their male counterparts. I mean, can you think of a strong Russian male player? And who’s better, Kvitova or Berdych? Pliskova or the Worm? Not to mention Angelique…

But, but, but....

Although a bunch of Coyne Long’s gap was taken up by service in WWII— you’d have to think she would have been winning in that intervening period, if she’d been playing.

Istomin is the GOAT.

I don’t disagree re: Djokovic’s potential greatness. I think there’s much discussion to be had regarding which of Djoker, Nadal, or Federer had the tougher road, and I can respect any position on that, and again, I’m not saying Djoker won’t get there, but I hold to the opinion that he’s just not there yet. Fed’s got…

Djokovic’s last six major victories have come against Federer and Murray— only. Obviously, if Federer’s prime was when he was playing players like Roddick, those majors wins all came *after* Federer’s prime, and well after it at that. And as you say, Murray is weaker than even a declining Federer, and hasn’t figured…

Also Nadal had to work much harder than either of them to change his game to fit grass and hard courts— arguably his achievement was much more difficult, and therefore greater, than either Djokovic or Federer.

I’d pick peak Djokovic too, but that’s not an adequate measure of total career greatness. For instance, I’d pick peak Marat Safin to beat almost any player of his era, but he’s obviously not the greatest of his era— he just had one of the highest (unreached) ceilings. Head-to-head at peak is an interesting argument,…

He’s interesting.

Alec Guiness.

Also, the RT-GOAT (greatest of all real-time-passed) beat Roddick, Murray, Djokovic, Nadal, Hewitt, Safin, Agassi and Philipoussis (among others) in Major finals. Not trivial. You could easily argue that Djokovic’s wins came mainly after Federer’s peak, and most came after Nadal was struck by continual injury, so…

GOAT doesn’t mean “the greatest of all time including the future which is an undiscovered country which may end at any moment as the sun explodes or a giant meteor strikes the earth sadly finishing tennis forever but leading to the long peaceful green reign of the plant kingdom.” It means the greatest of all the time…

Actually he beat Djokovic in all of them: in the Australian Open, he went through him in the quarters. And that was 2014, when there was absolutely no evidence that Djokovic was in any kind of decline (Djoker won six more majors after that, including two in the last year, so...).

All this talk of “while, Nadal and…

Wawrinka has 3/4 of a Grand Slam, all wins coming after he was 28; at both the AO and the French, he beat both the #1 and #2 ranked players in the world, and at the U.S., he beat the #1.

No, earned errors are called “forced errors,” vs. unforced errors. Winners are defined as balls your opponent actually couldn’t get to, and hence aren’t considered errors at all. Winners and forced errors are both considered “earned” points (in the parlance of the article, usually you just hear forced/unforced/winner…

Dude, Thiem is 22 and *already in the Top 10*; any list of potential future next-big-things has to at least mention him, if only to explain why you think he doesn’t qualify.