Borg and the GOAT debate. From Gerard. Thanks.
Posted by tennisplanet on September 4, 2008
GERARD
Thanks, Andy, Chris Evert, Anonymous, Deep South Girl, Boxingary, Sol, Spring, Bento and Banti for contributing to this thread … you guys collectively have been fantastic at keeping this thread alive.
As for anonymous taking me up on providing them some migraine pills … all I can say is I am sincerely sorry for making you endure my tennis saga which seems as though it would be best summarised as rectinol’s version of ‘War and Peace’.
Also, the apology given from deep South Girl was not necessary but appreciated nonetheless for your thoughtfulness in doing so. I am thick skin and took no offense at all at any of your comments and most likely deserved them. I do sadly rave on don’t I …. but of the crimes against humanity one could commit I don’t think it is a ‘jailable’ offense and if it was I would most definitely get a life sentence I am sure you’d all agree.
so … let’s take this topic on another tangent to make my point as to why Borg IS the GOAT and not Federer. This is a position / opinion I would like your comments on and I am interested to see if you’d give the same reasonings which you voiced on the Borg vs Federer saga that I started:
The Williams sisters, Justine Henin, Ivanovic, Sharapova and Davenport represent a fair array of modern day talent in the ladies ‘department store’ of tennis. All playing the modern day game of power plus tennis ….. how would you rate them against the likes of Chris Ever-Lloyd, Martina Navratilova, Margaret Court, Billie-jean King, Steffi Graf and Monica Seles, as some of our former greats of tennis. Would any of these former greats be able to mix it with todays players mentioned above. Or, because of the speed of the game and the power advantage todays players bring to the game, would they just wipe these former greats off the court. Of course not!
Indeed, I think you you would be a very brave person to even suggest that the likes of Navratilova, Evert-Lloyd and co would be wiped off the court and be inferior to our stars of the modern era. I would indeed love to hear someone brave enough to try to put the idea forward that they would be no match to todays players.
So, if you are smart enough to decline to support such a proposition and realise that Navratilova, Graf, Evert-Lloyd and co would easily hold there own in any era and I would say, like me, you would go out on a limb and say they would be just as dominant today as they were back in their heyday regardless of todays superstars ….. then you would realise that this same argument for diminishing what records and achievements Borg accrued in his era, as many have tried to suggest in this thread, in which his records are superior in their entirety to any other player in history (ignoring the 4 year domination of Federer out of context to his whole career), will be as robustly defended for the same reasons.
So, a migraine pill is on offer for everyone who has read this far …… verbosity is probably still more evident, believe it or not I am trying to weave some dollops of succinctness in every now and then.
I rest my case … Borg would hold his own today without fear of doubt and his winning percentages would have stayed the same at the expense of Federer’s dropping, that fact is, the speed and power requirements would have evolved as a part of his game as is required today, what would make him dominate is his winning ability (his stats are testimony to that), his supreme fitness (I believe he was even listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having one of the lowest resting heart rates of any sports person), his mental toughness, his unflappability, his single-mindedness, court craft, locker room edge and the reverence his opponents held him in as do Federer and Nadal today which you can see when he presented the trophies at this years French open and last years Wimbledon.
That hard court nonsense, is the same as saying Federer is not good on clay. in a 9 year career Borg made 4 US Open finals, Federer in his first 10 years on the circuit has made 3 French open finals, so they are both fine players on their weaker surfaces even though they have not won either of those Slams. Please don’t use the quality of opposition reasoning that is getting so boring and lame and as relevant a fact as Michael Phelps needing swimming lessons. The bullish Vilas, Panatta, Higueras, Connors, McEnroe et al and many others by comparison lose nothing to todays greats, sorry to say. Borg is the only player in Davis Cup history who never lost a singles match, 33-0, Federer is currently 26-10. Seriously, Borg’s statistics are greater then Federer’s (without having to isolate a 4 year period) and add to this the fact he cannot be considered even the greatest of his own era, with his about 6 – 13 win loss with Nadal, that alone shoots holes in the argument he can be considered the GOAT.
As Boxingary said in his response as a 16-17 year old in 1973 (Borg was born on July 20 1956) he won 43 of his 66 matches, how ridiculously good is that. Unheard of in any era, that is how good.
Anon said
Holes in Gerard’s arguments:
Prefaced by : Fed is not the greatest either since he has a 6-13 record against a player in his own era.
1. Borg could not handle the heat and got out of the kitchen in his prime : This alone is a big disqualifier for someone to be the GOAT. The counterfactual is how would Borg have done in his 26-30 years which we will never know. But have to acknowledge that Borg made the decision to quit because **he knew** he will not be as good as the past (may be due to lack of motivation, may be due to decline in skills, may be something else we never know)
2. Borg never won a hard court slam (Yes, he did not go to Australia, but he did not even win USO when it was played on Grass and Clay)
3. Since Gerard is into Statistics he should read
http://www.tennisweek.com/news/fullstory.sps?inewsid=503656
4. Ignores greats in the pre-open era – Budge, Gonzales, Kramer
5. Here is a quote on Borg by Pancho Gonzales:
Björn Borg: “He was tough. I played him when I was 42 and he was 18… and beat him 6–1, 6–1. My best game against his best game, he would be one of the toughest. One of the all-time greats.” Note that either Gonzales’s memory was faulty or The Times had a typographical error: Borg, who was born in 1956, would have been 14 when Gonzales was 42; conversely, Gonzales would have been 46 when Borg was 18.
The reason for this is since stats can’t settle the issue, opinions of the greats themselves must be considered. Greats ranked Laver consistently higher than Borg (Calendar GS)
Deep South Girl said
I think the women of the past are probably better than the present crop.
Those women were stellar.
I think Borg–using today’s racquet and strings would—–oh, I’d just like to see him in today’s game. He played very tactically. Federer has brought something to the game that I have never seen before—and I don’t know what that something is. I marvel at his split second return choices while making it look soooo effortless. Borg didn’t make it look as easy as Federer does. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to say.
Federer has the whole package: the Art,Science, and Spirit of the game.
BTW, I was the anonymous seeker of migraine goodies. I didn’t mean to be anonymous.
boxingary said
Gerard wrote:
“As Boxingary said in his response as a 16-17 year old in 1973 (Borg was born on July 20 1956) he won 43 of his 66 matches, how ridiculously good is that. Unheard of in any era, that is how good.”
Once again, Gerard, you’re HALF right. Ridiculously good, yes.
But not “unheard of” at all — PLEASE STOP MAKING CLAIMS THAT YOU HAVEN’T RESEARCHED!
After his last match in 1973, Borg was 17 years and 4 months old.
His 43 victories in 66 matches is a 65.2 winning percentage.
Michael Chang was born on 1972-02-22.
So he was 17 years and 4 months old on 1989-06-22.
By that time, he had amassed a record of 53-22,
which is a 70.7 winning percentage.
Chang had TEN MORE WINS, ONE FEWER LOSS and a BETTER PERCENTAGE.
Oh………and Michael had a French Open title, too.
So Borg’s 1973 has absolutely NOTHING TO DO with his GOAT candidacy……just as Chang’s 1989 did not translate into even one more career Slam for him.
boxingary said
Gerard wrote:
“As for anonymous taking me up on providing them some migraine pills … all I can say is I am sincerely sorry for making you endure my tennis saga which seems as though it would be best summarised as rectinol’s version of ‘War and Peace’.”
And then Gerard wrote:
“So, a migraine pill is on offer for everyone who has read this far …… verbosity is probably still more evident, believe it or not I am trying to weave some dollops of succinctness in every now and then.”
Two overlong sentences to apologize for the same offense
COMPOUNDS THE OFFENSE. Get it?
Jenny said
Bjorn Borg was born on 6th June 1956, not 20th July.
boxingary said
Gerard wrote:
“Indeed, I think you you would be a very brave person to even suggest that the likes of Navratilova, Evert-Lloyd and co would be wiped off the court and be inferior to our stars of the modern era. I would indeed love to hear someone brave enough to try to put the idea forward that they would be no match to todays players.”
Please reign in your rhetoric. Regardless of how anyone may regard today’s women versus Navratilova and Evert-Lloyd, no one on this thread is suggesting that Borg would be “wiped off the court” or “would be no match to today’s players.”
We’re just saying that Federer is GOAT, and Borg is SOMEWHERE ELSE IN THE TOP TEN.
I, personally, would never dismiss as ridiculous someone’s contention that Borg is a CLOSE SECOND.
But even if he is, “close second” is not GOAT.
Adrian said
Dear Gerard, I also thank you for your interest in keeping this thread alive. It is very interesting to compare stats from the all-time greats. Nonetheless, I think it’s a futile exercise if anybody’s goal is to convince the others that such and such is THE GOAT. As has become evident from all the stats you and others have quoted, as well as from all the other sources that have been cited, it is virtually impossible to compare the feats of these players… mainly because different people will find that different records are harder to break than others, and different goals are tougher to achieve than others…
As I’ve said before, to me, Borg is indeed one of the all-time greats, no doubt about that. But in all the stats you provide, you seem to seriously neglect the fact that he simply quit, and we just DON’T KNOW what would’ve happened had he continued playing. In your mind, he would’ve continued rolling, but it seems like for a lot of people in this forum, including me, that is definitely not a certainty. We all know that he even attempted a return in 1991 and he failed miserably… while other greats were either rolling, like Connors, or flourishing, like Sampras.
In your case against Federer, you keep saying that he cannot be considered the GOAT because he has a losing record against Nadal, which means he can simply not be the greatest of his own age. I personally think this argument is flawed for the reasons I’ve mentioned in other posts (e.g., that most of those losses have occurred on clay finals and that Nadal is a ridiculous beast on clay, etc.). And this is, yet again, another instance in which your neglect to consider Borg’s decision to quit so early so blatantly tarnishes these comparisons between players. For instance, Borg’s record against McEnroe was 7-7, but McEnroe won the last 3 of their matches… so it was McEnroe who was on a roll then, and it was right at this period after Borg’s quit when McEnroe reached his peak… so to assume that he would’ve kept his winning percentage record during his later years is quite an assumption… take Connors’s case, for instance… one of the all-time greats as well, started playing in the 1970s, in 1974 he wins not only his first slam in Australia, but 3 slams in total that year, and continues beating the crap out of everyone up to the late 1970s… after that, he won, yes, including a couple of slams in 82 and 83… but continued playing until the 90s, and he didn’t win jack. People like Lendl appeared on the scene then, and we all know what happened then…
To sum it up, yes, Borg is great, super super great. But don’t be blinded by his awesome stats. They are quite tricky to interpret.
boxingary said
Gerard wrote:
“The bullish Vilas, Panatta, Higueras, Connors, McEnroe et al and many others by comparison lose nothing to todays greats, sorry to say.”
You SHOULD be sorry to say this. Literally!
Although Borg was 9-1 head-to-head with Higueras,
they NEVER ONCE MET IN A SLAM TOURNAMENT.
It’s true that Higueras was a good enough clay-court player to reach the semi-finals of the French twice…….but that was in 1982 and 1983, AFTER BORG HAD RETIRED.
And you have the nerve to include him in a list of legitimately tough Borg opponents like Vilas, Panatta, Connors and McEnroe.
You used the phrase “dollops of succintness” in your preamble.
Here comes one now: LAUGHINGSTOCK.
Andy said
Excellent post Adrian. I think people get a little too edgy in these type of discussions. Saying that Borg wasn’t necessarily the GOAT doesn’t mean that we don’t appreciate that he was amazing. Saying that guys like Pascal Portes in the third round may not have, in general, provided Bjorn with the same hurdles as Federer had/has to face at his majors doesn’t mean that we are disrespecting guys like Pascal Portes. And most importantly, saying that someone else might be a better contender for GOAT title than Borg, of course, does not mean that we are right.
I mean we’re doing this conversation for fun, and I’m all for fun in life, but, to pontify for a second, I think sometimes fans and the media forget that it doesn’t matter one single bit in the big picture of things who is the GOAT. The fact that we seem to take this SO seriously (and I’m addressing my fellow Fed fans here too) is a bit of an indication of a societal obsession with BEING THE BEST. Though there are some positive things that go along with that obsession, when it gets to the point that you can’t, while acknowledging a player’s super greatness also add a qualifying suggestion that the player wasn’t necessarily the best, without being told that you are showing disrespect, well, to me that is an indication that the GOAT thing might mean a little bit too much.
I mean, while having our fun, let’s also not forget what Pascal Portes used to say (I don’t know who he is either by the way),
“Who the F**K cares who the GOAT is”
Schop said
Adrian, thanks, great post! Andale!
Schop said
Anon: too bad, the link for the statistical table doesen’t work!
Deep South Girl said
Andy: I have a problem with your “societal obsession” thingy but I can’t figure out what it is.
Gerard:I’ve learned some things in this exchange. Picked up a few new words also.Thanks for getting it started.
Andy said
Deep South Girl – Well, let me put it another way. If Rafa goes on to win basically everything over the next four years he’ll likely be considered the GOAT then, right? My guess is that many Fed fans and of course Roger himself and his camp have deep deep trouble with that thought. And as a Fed fan, I have to admit that I do too – I am not exluding myself from my own criticism here. We are all kind of brainwashed by each other, the media and the athletes themselves into putting way too much emphasis on this GREATEST OF ALL TIME thing (think of Ali, who I love by the way, and the whole “I am the greatest” line).
I know – its a fun discussion and that is what this site is for. I’m just saying that we all, Roger included, ME included, should remember that, when you come right down to it, it’s just a fun sort of label, this GOAT. It’s not a life or death thing if you or your favorite player is not the GOAT. I mean, maybe Borg IS more deserving than Roger as Gerard argues. If so, who cares? Or maybe Borg isn’t more deserving. If so, who cares? Or maybe Rafa will one day be more deserving (has a LONG way to go though). Again, who cares? There is absolutely nothing Bjorn has done or Rafa will do that can take away from the fact that Roger has been a great player who has done, and hopefully will keep doing, some extraordinary things. Yet, there are more than a few people, both on and off this site, that make it seem like anything less than the GOAT should leave Roger, Bjorn, Pete, Don, Rod or Pancho and their respective fans with a huge sense of loss. Why? Because we are obsessed with the label and therefore downgrade anything less than it.