The Big 3: Who is the men's tennis GOAT?
Sometimes, you just need to put pen to paper. There is a lot of chatter now days on who is, or who will be, the greatest of all time in men’s tennis. There are certainly valid arguments for any of the Big 3. I thought I would take some time to create a spreadsheet so we could visualize just how these three compare with each other.
This sheet takes into account all Grand Slams, all Olympic Games and all ATP Tour tournaments since they turned pro. It is divided out by surface and year. Note, this is for Championship wins ONLY. There is no points here for second place. I think this is valid. The tennis scoring system is the biggest pressure cooker in all of sports. You can never be too far ahead. You can never relax and coast. There is always a possibility of the game being turned around on you. Those that manage the pressure cooker the best, win the most championships. It is unforgiving and grueling both mentally and physically and nobody remembers the runner-up. Additionally, seeding can heavily sway one side of the bracket or the other so that someone could potentially rack up points being far and away the second best player always in a favorable bracket. There is not room for that here. You win it all, or you get nothing.
The point system I used is based upon the ATP Point System divided by 100. This ensures the weighting of my sheet is equal to the importance the ATP tour puts on that individual tournament. For instance, if Nadal won an ATP 250 tournament, he would receive 2.5 pts. For an ATP 1000 tournament, he would receive 10 points.
I will keep this up to date until the retirement of all 3. As it seems now, Nadal and Djokovic still have some work to do but it is certainly not impossible as it appears Federer’s winning days are likely behind him at the age of 40.
(Edit: Federer retired in 2022) The question is will they catch Roger before father time catches them?
(Edit: Djokovic has taken the crown as of June 2023)
Ultimate Spreadsheet - The Big 3 - Visualized
If you found any issues in the above sheet, let me know and I can fix/correct it on the fly. But please, no arguing with the math….
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