1/ A lot has been said on how Nadal has just won all his 20 Masters Titles on clay, and therefore counts for less.
Indeed there is no denying that Nadal has won the majority of his clay court titles on clay. Out of his 20 titles 15 of them have come on clay, this is 75%. Quite high.
But then we look across to Switzerland where Swiss number 1 Roger Federer has also won a staggering 20 Masters Titles. Out of those 14 are on hard court, which means he has a percentage of 70%. This is 5% lower than nadals percentage won on clay. Thus Fed has a better balance of titles won, they are slightly more equally shared across the surfaces.
Nadal fans like me will also moan about the fact there are only 3 clay court tournaments while there are 6 on hard court, nadals least favourite surface.
2/ Bodo mentioned in his article that when they were younger Nadal was dodging Federer on outdoor HC, and this played a bearing on the H2H.
Let's get one thing clear. Federer has never, and I repeat never, had a positive H2H against Nadal on outdoor hard. Even when Nadal was young.
They have played plenty of times- 6 times to be precise, and Nadal has won double the matches Federer has. So thus I believe more matches on HC outdoor would have benefited Nadals side of the overall H2H considering Federer has never been ahead on the outdoor H2H.
And anyway why speculate on futile hypotheticals, when they have already played 6 times and Nadal has won the majority.
3/'Nadal was nowhere to be seen in the 17 masters Federer won on outdoor HC'
Interesting point made by Tenez.
However it is hardly surprising. Considering Nadal has won the majority of outdoor HC matches against Federer, no one will be surprised to hear that in the majority of the 17 titles won by Federer he did NOT have to play Nadal. This makes sense.
Also we must remember for Federer, having lost to Nadal, cannot then go on and win the Masters 1000 title.
I would just like to add some excellent posts by Summerblues (I hope he doesn't mind ):
1/ 'Federer may or may not have had flu but this type of argument is nowhere near sufficient. For all kinds of innocent reasons players follow up poor performances with great ones and vice versa. You can support almost any hypothesis you want by picking the argument of the type "player A barely beat player B in one tournament but also destroyed a much better player C in another tournament, therefore..."
Also, it is a very dangerous type of argument because it is difficult to make sure that one stays honest with oneself. When we make these arguments, are we really sure that we are equally scrutinazing both the results that would at first glance support our views as those that would at first glance repudiate them? If we are only diving deeper in those cases where the first glance works against us, then we are introducing a bias in our favor into our arguments.
2/ Yes, there is no question that back in 2004-2006 Federer was overall a far superior player on hard courts. That is why Nadal was never making all those HC GS and Masters finals where Federer was winning.
However, as I also said yesterday, that is not the same as to say that if Nadal had been in those finals, Federer would have been beating him easily. He would not. His record in their HC matches during that time was 1-2. And if we wanted to dissect that further into "would have beens" and "could have beens", we would more easily come up with 0-3 to Nadal then with 2-1, let alone 3-0 to Federer. All this was happening while Rafa was working toward a 5-0 clay H2H against Roger. All this suggests a pretty bad match-up issue for Federer. None of this is overly shocking if one watches their matches - the match-up issue is there for all to see.
What do you think?
Also, just as a side note, personal insults will not be tolerated. I recognise that different posters can have different views, and this encourages debate. However personal attacks, or insults will not be tolerated. There have already been some disgusting posts I have had to delete, I hope I will not have to do so again.
Rafael Nadal
posted on 18/5/12
Whats with all Nadal haters?
Can't you guys just appreciate that Nadal is quality and he is a credit to the game of tennis?
Anyway Amritia are you a girl and are you Indian?
posted on 18/5/12
Boy*
Yes Indian
posted on 18/5/12
Amritia I also gave you 5 stars and I agree with Ronaldinho lover about Nadal and what you are trying to say in this article.
Keep it up!
posted on 18/5/12
Thanks AL
posted on 18/5/12
Amritia I assumed that your actual name was Amrita but you are a boy.Anyway both of us appreciate Nadal as a player which is good!
posted on 18/5/12
1 BIG star for this effort of typing so many lines. But only 1 star for inaccuracy on which was the whole premise of the article based. Funny.
posted on 19/5/12
Rotla wrote:
You are making too much about this match-up thing……..
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will not copy your full post but you then go on to list arguments why the initial 1-2 HC H2H is not too meaningful and why some of the early losses dented Roger’s confidence on clay, and how that extra confidence resulted in biased H2H.
I would put it this way:
In a way I would say these are good arguments. If one were a “defense attorney” for Federer’s H2H trying to argue that his H2H really should have been better, these might be precisely the types of arguments one would put forth.
However, when all is said and done, I do not think these are “winning” arguments. That is, when you put them all together, they do not strike me as sufficiently convincing. Note that these arguments have to overcome a number of hurdles, e.g.:
- The initial H2H was quite bad (1-2 on HC and up to 0-5 on clay). How much is one willing to attribute to sickness, bad luck in close matches etc? One has to be careful with these arguments to make sure one is not just looking for excuses, tennis players are often less than 100%, and tennis scoring is such that one can often find silver lining even in a relatively bad loss.
- Even in the one HC match that Federer won, he did not have it easy. In fact, he came awfully close to losing. A win is a win, but one cannot happily pocket this victory and then poke holes in the losses. Either you take them all, or you examine them all.
- You list some of the bad HC losses that Rafa suffered in that period. But I would say those just weaken your argument rather than strengthen it. Clearly Rafa was a very very inferior HC player to Federer back then. Yet he managed to hold his own or better in their first few encounters on HCs – which to me once again points to a potential match-up problem.
When I look at it all, on balance I find the conclusion that Nadal is a bad match-up for Federer more convincing. Mind you, there can always be a bit of both. Even if Rafa is a bad match-up for Federer, I am willing to entertain the idea that had Federer been a bit luckier early on, he may have done somewhat better later. But I do not see enough evidence to suggest the H2H would have been drastically different.
Of course, I could be wrong. We will never know for sure.
posted on 19/5/12
Rotla wrote:
They want to show it like "Fed beats everyone -> Nadal beats Fed -> Nadal is greater".
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Here I totally agree with you. I have seen this logic and I find it silly. But I would note that I do not think amri was saying this, so I do not think it is an issue on this thread.
posted on 19/5/12
@summerblues
The initial H2H was quite bad.
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Do you want to call this 1-2 h2h quite bad? Fed had far worse that this against many of his peers. Can you use those to suggest that they were also a bad match-up for Fed? But we are not here to debate on whether Nadal was or wasn't a bad match-up. I have said Nadal's game is very tough against SHBH. But that doesn't mean it will have to be so tough that under any case and Nadal will have to win against Fed or any SHBH. Infact a lot of losses Nadal suffered were against SHBH players. So is this particular case only with Fed?
- You are saying Fed could have lost him self that Miami 2005 win, that was very close. I agree. But can you not say that even Nadal could have lost some of those 5 Clay wins that he managed against Fed. I see Fed was mighty close on many of those matches even when its his weakest surface.
You are putting too much about initial 1-2 h2h. I told you Fed had far worse initial h2h against many players including simon. But this can't be used as an argument to draw any matchup conclusions or conclusions about how this will fray in future. Even Nadal has a 0-1 HC h2h against Mayer till now. Are you going to used this initial result to draw out any match-up conclusions.
-Fed has match-up issues with Nadal. I have agreed to that. Its wasn't anything like its made out to be. I have to also say it turned this out largely due to Nadal not facing Fed enough on HC prior to facing many times only on clay. Nadal was able to get this grip only because he was able to beat Fed on clay where Nadal's game suits best and Fed's the worst. This is the one that worked best in Nadal's favor to build his confidence to face Fed.
- Had it been the opposite i.e. Nadal playing Fed on more HC than clay, this h2h would have been quite opposite. Even nadal's clay results would have started to affect just like Fed's HC results have affected when playing Nadal.
posted on 23/5/12
Rotla wrote:
- You are saying Fed could have lost him self that Miami 2005 win, that was very close. I agree. But can you not say that even Nadal could have lost some of those 5 Clay wins that he managed against Fed. I see Fed was mighty close on many of those matches even when its his weakest surface.
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Agree. But I think overall the luck roughly evened out so that is fine.
Rotla wrote:
- Had it been the opposite i.e. Nadal playing Fed on more HC than clay, this h2h would have been quite opposite. Even nadal's clay results would have started to affect just like Fed's HC results have affected when playing Nadal.
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I just do not see it that way. Their first three matches on HC do not indicate so, nor do I see any evidence for it otherwise. You are suggesting that:
(a) The initial H2H on HC should be discounted (I guess you are saying that sample too small to take seriously),
(b) The clay court matches affected Roger's performance so that even the remaining HC matches should be discounted.
I suppose there is some chance you may be right, but it just does not strike me as a very convincing argument. In the end, we do not know with 100% certaintly, so we just choose to go with what seems to us as most believable, and to me your explanation is not it.
However, I certainly cannot quite prove that you are wrong and I already kind of stated my case, so we may as well leave it at that.