Who is the best: Djokovic, Federer or Nadal?

I agree with you. Though I must also add that Roger also faced with tough competition from Safin, Roddick, Nadal and recently Murray and Djokovic.

Federer had Sadie, Roddick, Saint, Nadal, Djokovic and Murray pushing him. Given Rafa's 2013 comeback, after people had ruled hum him, I feel he still has a couple of slams left in him. If he steers clear of persistent injuries, he'd really be up there. Djokovic can definitely add a good 7 more to his name.

Federer had Sadie, Roddick, Saint, Nadal, Djokovic and Murray pushing him. Given Rafa's 2013 comeback, after people had ruled hum him, I feel he still has a couple of slams left in him. If he steers clear of persistent injuries, he'd really be up there. Djokovic can definitely add a good 7 more to his name.

Steele, that's living in hypotheticals, you can only play what's in front of you. And how do we know that. You could say Sampras had an easy run at times, Agassi was wasted half the time. And guys like Phillipousous were always injured. Did Chris Evert and Navratalova get lots fo easy grand slam wins then? Only play what's in front of you. Oh and Steffi Graff must of too as Seles got injured,and Serena Williams with Henin and Clisters,Capriati,Hingis, retiring in there primes,and Venus Williams getting sick too

Agree with Johnno. Part of maintaining your place at the very top is managing your body to perform at it's peak throughout your career, otherwise Bruce Reid or Shane Bond would be considered the best bowlers ever. The other salient point that people forget is that Federer endured a bout of Mono at his peak - Soderling still hasn't come back from his bout and many others have been laid low for up to a year.

That would be a valid argument if he reached a number of Semi Finals or even one final, but he went out before the 3rd round in the majority of years he played there, which would suggest he often lost to unseeded players.. Even McEnroe managed a final, Connors a few semis - and he didn't even play there for awhile.

Your top ten is absolutely spot on in my opinion.

Federer got cheap grand slams prior to the emergence of Rafa and Novak. Novak reached his peak later than Rafa, but Rafa lost many opportunities to injury, which meant that Fed got some more wins, as he is rudderless against Nadal, even when he was much more advanced in years and game. Fed never gets injuries and is easily the most consistent performer, he's never off. But for me if all four played at their peaks in some sort of round robin across all the different surfaces, it is actually Novak who would win the most times. His best is the best there's been. Nadal would be a close second and Federer would come last easily. Fed will prob have the most slams when it's all said and done and his worshippers will point to this, however there is much more to it than that.

Tony: I didn't mean to offend you, but gave you my honest opinion on your comment. "supposedly", "incredibly", "avoided", and your choice of other such words speak volumes as to your "unbiased" opinion. I am not just a Nadal fan, but also a fan of Roger. Roger is GOAT and the fairest player of his generation. He never indulges in those unsportsmanlike tactics that are often seen in almost all other top players' games. Having said that, he's ALWAYS had a losing record against Rafa. He's won ONLY one significant match('07 Wimbledon) against Rafa(21 years old), and even that was a very close match. He's lost to him EVERYWHERE, RG, AO, MS finals, WTF, you name it! It's ironic how Nadal's detractors minimize his biggest achievement i.e. at his best, his ability to perform better than ANYONE else on all surfaces. Cases in point '08 Wimbledon, '09 Australian Open, '13 US Open etc . Do they not know that he's the ONLY player to have held 3 slams on three different surfaces TWICE! Not to mention winning three slams on three surfaces in the span of 3.5 months! That IMHO is one of the BIGGEST achievements of all time!! Again, Rafa is behind Roger in terms of achievements, but if he manages to win another two slams, trust me, people will look at his H2H vs Roger as that will be the ultimate decider. People like Johnny Mac and Agassi have already declared him to be GOAT, but I don't agree with them. Rafa's reached 20 GS finals, 9 on Clay, 6 on HC and 5 on Grass. If you look at just the finals, it's a very balanced record. But when you look at the titles, it's 9, 3 and 2. It's still better than Pete's 7, 7 and 0! I never said Lendl wasn't ONE of the best, I said that he's not considered a contender in Greatest Of All Time debate. Only, Laver, Borg, Sampras, Roger and Rafa's names are brought up. Of course Lendl is ONE of the best of all time. WTF weighs a little more than MS titles but not by much. It's ONLY played indoors, so you can see the problem there. If they changed the surface every year, it would have more significance as that would make it an even playing field for everyone. One more thing - Rafa and Novak faced a much tougher competition than Roger did from '03 to '07. In fact, for all of his GS titles, Rafa had to go through one of the other big three, often two of them!

Raheel, there is no need to attack the messenger and pretend you are unbiased since your points are questionable. Nadal’s advocates keep emphasizing his H2H hoping that it confuses people about Nadal’s deficiency in the two primary and official measures of ATP performance: (1) prestigious titles and (2) world No. 1. It’s actually amusing to hear Nadal’s H2H being touted given Nadal’s failure at the ultimate H2H competition every year: the year-ending World Tour Finals championship. This Year-Ending championship has long been important in men’s tennis since 1970 and its roll of champions comprise more great players and reigning No. 1 players than any grand slam championship since 1970. In 1971, the WCT Finals was actually more prestigious and more watched than any grand slams event, even Wimbledon. In 1974, Bjorn Borg travelled to Australia just to play the Year-Ending championship, but he skipped the Australian Open which started one week later. [In contrast, the Olympic men’s singles gold lacks prestige and history: the Olympics was not considered important during most of tennis history; top players like Sampras skipped the Olympics; most Olympic men’s singles champions do not have a grand slam title; no Olympic men’s singles champion was a reigning No. 1 player when they won the gold, not even Nadal.] In any case, Nadal’s H2H records should be taken with a grain of salt because the results are skewed. A disproportionate amount of Nadal’s wins (a) have come on clay and (b) have come while Nadal is in relative top form and Federer/Djokovic are in relative slumps. Nadal plays only 5 clay events out of 16 to 21 total tournaments each year, yet almost 50% of Nadal's matches against Federer/Djokovic are on clay. Nadal played 15 clay matches (of 33 total matches) against Federer. And Nadal played 20 clay matches (of 44 total matches) against Djokovic. When Nadal is in a slump (a) Nadal has avoided competing against Federer/Djokovic on non-clay surfaces and (b) Nadal is less consistent in reaching the final stages of non-clay tournaments to face Federer/Djokovic (while Federer/Djokovic more consistently go deep in clay events even when they are in a slump). Federer was in his longest slump due first to mononucleosis and then to back injuries(where he lost 21 matches, including several losses to unheralded players) between January 2008 and May 2009, yet he still went deep in every grand slam and most clay masters events where he had several losses to Nadal (including at 2008 Wimbledon). Incredibly, since 2005 Nadal has not missed any clay court tournament due to supposed injury. All his supposed injury breaks conveniently happen in the non-clay parts of the season he does not prefer. For example, Nadal skipped seven months of ATP competition during the hardcourt season between July 2012 and January 2013, claiming to have a left knee injury – yet, during both the 2012 US Open and 2013 Australian Open, Nadal played golf tournaments in Spain, and even won a golf tournament during 2013 Australian (Nadal plays golf right-handed so he puts stress on his left knee whenever he plays golf). In 2008, Nadal missed the World Tour Finals in Beijing and Davis Cup finals in Argentina claiming to have a knee injury – yet he was photographed water-skiing and doing other watersports in a beach resort. In any case, head-to-head wins are irrelevant. That’s because the ATP World Tour is not a H2H competition between the top players. Instead, the ATP World Tour is a battle for dominance over the ENTIRE field of competing players by winning the biggest titles, winning the most titles and keeping the World No. 1 ranking. The Association of Tennis Professionals has consistently defined the goal of the ATP World Tour is to “battle for prestigious titles” and “ATP Rankings points” to be “officially crowned” the “ATP World Tour No.1.” The ATP Executive Chairman and President has stated: “Finishing as the year-end No.1 is the ultimate achievement in our sport.” The ATP defines the ATP Rankings as the "objective merit-based method” that provides “fair analysis of a player's performance.” Nadal's lack of weeks at No. 1 proves his performance is deficient relative to Federer, Djokovic, Sampras, etc. H2H was never used as an official or primary measure to determine the greatness of a player. For example, Andre Agassi is considered the greatest player in 1999 because he ended that year World No. 1 and was the most successful in prestigious championships (French Open champion, US Open champion, Wimbledon finalist, Year-Ending Championship finalist). Agassi’s greatness in 1999 was confirmed by both the ATP and ITF: he was awarded both the ATP Player of the Year and ITF World Champion. It was irrelevant to the ATP and ITF that, in 1999, Agassi had a losing 1-4 H2H against Pete Sampras, who was the Year-End No. 1 the previous six years. Indeed, Agassi’s four losses were in their most significant matches (Sampras beat Agassi in straight sets in Wimbledon final, ATP World Tour Finals final, Cincinnati semifinal and Los Angeles final; Agassi beat Sampras in a WTF round-robin match). If H2H was so important, then Agassi would not have been considered the best player of 1999. H2H is rarely brought up in the greatness debates of other players (not involving Nadal). For example, no one mentions that Ivan Lendl has a winning H2H over most of his rivals: 21-15 vs McEnroe, 22-13 vs Connors, 15-7 vs Wilander, 11-10 vs Becker, 6-2 vs Agassi, 4-0 vs Courier, 5-2 vs Michael Chang. Lendl probably would have a winning record over Borg had the Swede not left the tour so early before Lendl reached his peak. As well, Lendl used to hold the record for most ‘Masters 1000” titles (it was called Grand Prix Super Series / Super 9 tournaments during his time). Yet Lendl does not bother to mention his H2H records or Masters 1000-level titles when he defines his career highlights that make him one of the great players. http://ivanlendl.net/Tennis_Career.html Btw, knowledgeable people often bring up Lendl in the GOAT conversation. Only people ignorant of tennis history never bring up Ivan Lendl in the GOAT conversation. In 2007, tennis historian Raymond Lee’s "Greatest Player of All Time: A Statistical Analysis" ranked Lendl seventh in entire tennis history (Laver, Tilden/Borg, Federer, Gonzales, Rosewall, Lendl, Connors, Sampras, Budge). In 2005, Tennis Magazine’s “40 Greatest Players of the Tennis Era” ranked Lendl fifth among men between 1965 and 2005 (Sampras, Borg, Connors, Laver, Lendl, McEnroe, Agassi, Edberg, Wilander, Newcombe). Borg is usually ranked 3 or 4 places higher than Lendl because Borg’s 3 more slams (than Lendl) is weighed against Lendl’s 8 slams and No. 1 weeks.

Andrew The injury thing is not valid. Nadal chooses to play that way, and gets injured, if he modified his game he'd get less injured.

But for injury, Nadal would have the grand slam record. He has missed multiple slams due to injury. In 2009, he would have won French and Wimbledon, but was running on bad knees. If he had won those evens, nadal would have 16, federer 15. And the fact of the matter is is that nadal Has a) missed many more slams due to injury. B) always had incredible competition-14 slams in federer a era is incredible c) his chief late rival (djokovic) is only 1 year younger then him. Federer a is 4 years younger, so for several years federer had uncontested and very poor competition in slams. Bhaghdatis? Etc federers longevity and luck has ment more slams. But if nadal was 1 year younger then federer, federers record would be no record, esp if he never had injury. Federer most successful, but I don't think he is superior to nadal. Proof: federers tears at 2009 aid open final. 9-2 for nadal on all surfaces. Lucky for federer nadal got injured that year.

And for all the Lendl critics out there, Lendl did make 2 wimbledon losing finals on his weak surface in a golden generation of grass in the 80's, Pete never made a French open final as we know, so some Lendl critics should eat some humble pie.

Max Clay wasn't Sampras best surface, we know. But Rafa dominated clay in a weak clay era. Rafa if he was around in the 70's/80's/90's, wouldn't have dominated on clay in the golden generation of clay. He still would have been the best, but would have only won 3 or 4 French opens in that era. Bjorg was great. Jimmy Connors is the only player to win the US open on all 3-surfaces(grass/clay/hardcourt), US moved to hardcourt in 1978. OZ-open was grass until 1987. Mats Wilander won OZ-open 3 times 2 of those wins were on grass. Mats never won wimbledon singles but did pinch a wimbledon doubles title in 1986.

Nadal is the Greatest of All Time (G.O.A.T)...ON Clay: approximately 65% of his (14) grand slam and (27) Masters 1000 victories were on Clay and the same applies to his other titles. As for his Olympic Gold Medal = 1000 ATP points = Masters 1000 victory. Davis Cup victories are TEAM victories, and he had David Ferrer, a top 5 player, in his TEAM. He has suffered injuries, but cannot be excused for them because he has millions of $ and access to the best sports doctors in the world. He has been ATP#1 for less than 150 weeks, due to his lack of consistency, and is not likely to reach 200 weeks. His H2H against Fed does not automatically make him the G.O.A.T , except on clay. As for the Djoker, his losses at the French Open occurred when playing against the G.O.A.T on clay, and he was unfortunately ill when playing in the final last year. This year, he was unfortunate because the Murray match left him with little more than a day to recover. He has reached 155 weeks at #1 and is likely to cross the 200-week mark. As for Fed, we know that he has numerous records and remarkable consistency on various surfaces. The rest is history. Borg was injured at the 1978 US Open and received death threats at the 1980 US Open, and beat Connors prior to Connors winning the 1982 and 1983 US Open. That should tell us something about his ability to play at the US Open. Laver did not play on as many varied surfaces at slams, had a losing H2H against Rosewall until Rosewall grew older and benefited from Rosewall's and Gonzales's absence at some of the slams. Sampras did not do much on clay.

Tony: Totally a biased opinion. You've missed the following points. 1- Nadal has a winning H2H vs both, Roger and Novak. 2- Nadal had a 9 months bad run vs Novak i.e. 7 straight losses. Apart from that, Novak NEVER dominated Rafa. Since that streat, they are 7-7! Not to mention 4-1 in GS matches. 3- Rafa is 25-8 in GS matches vs the Roger, Novak and Andy combined. 4- No one has had a winning record against EVERY significant player of his era, apart from Rafa! I could list his records that no one has touched or, most likely, won't be broken for a a long long time, but will stop here to add couple of things - His 141 weeks is not great, but remember, Lendl has almost as many weeks at #1 as Pete and Roger but is never brought up in GOAT conversation. On the other hand, Borg, who has not even half as many weeks at #1 is a legitimate contender. As for the WTF championship, it's irrelevant. One could make a counter argument that Roger doesn't have as many 'Prestigious' titles as Rafa i.e. GS + WTF + MS + 500, as most of Roger's titles are 250. Also, the fact that he never won an Olympic Gold. One more point - Rafa beat Roger in his prime on his most preferred surface i.e. Wimbledon '08(Roger was 26!). He also beat Novak at the US Open in '13. But the two of them were never able to beat him at his best i.e. RG. Finally, Roger is the GOAT for now. And if, Rafa matches his GS record or 17 titles, trust me, the only record that will determine the GOAT out of these two, is their H2H.

Tony N Excellent analysis. Some points I'll add. You Nadal Vs Novak head to head is a very good point. There both born in 1986 the same age, and since 2009 when both age 23, Nadal has been dominated by Novak, people forget or don't even know that. And Nadal wasn't past his prime at 23. Federer was 27 when he lost in 2008, so he wasn't past his prime either when he lost too 22-yr old Nadal. But some players struggle against certain players eg Mcenroe has a better record in grand slam finals head to head vs Bjorg, but I and many consider Bjorg greater. Also Mats V Lendl, Mats is better in grand slam finals, but more say Lendl is better than Mats Wilander, and Edberg has a better head to head in grand slam finals vs Becker, but Becker leads him indoors/davis cup/and on tour finals. Federer's longevtivity is oustounding, at age 34 he his cranking up some good results. Serena Williams/Martina Navratalova only 2 in modern game repeating similar feats.

Thanks Johnno. When you consider the fifth most important championship (the World Tour Finals year-ending championship), Federer has won 17 of the most important annual titles in tennis compared to Nadal’s 14 titles in Nadal’s own era. Even in the grand slams, Federer still won 13 slam titles in the entire Nadal era (or 17 titles in the entire Federer era), even though Federer has been past his prime years since early 2010. Nadal won 14 slam titles in his entire Nadal era, mostly on his favorite clay surface. Nadal is past his prime years and is now where Federer was in age and total career matches played at 2010 US Open. In other words, Nadal might not win another slam because he is now past 29 years age and almost 900 career matches played (in the ATP era, only a handful of players past both thresholds have won 1 or 2 more slam titles). Nadal’s head to head over Federer is irrelevant or secondary -- otherwise we have to also consider Nadal’s 9-18 losing record in the past six years (since 2009 Cincinnati) to a player from his own age group (Djokovic). Nadal and Djokovic are from the same generation so losing to one’s generation is worse. On the other hand, Federer and Nadal are from different generations given their five year age difference – tennis history is full of examples where younger players learned to beat the older great players. It is not the goal of men’s professional tennis (ATP World Tour) to win head to head battles. The primary goal of ATP competition is to dominate the overall ATP tour by (a) winning the world’s most prestigious tournaments and (b) holding the World No. 1 ranking. These are the hard measures for determining the dominant player in each generation. We can then use this to compare across the generations to determine the greatest player in history. The greatest player is defined by his dominance of his generation is the greatest relative to how well other great players dominated their generations. Nadal’s weakness is that he has only 141 weeks at No. 1, which ranks him at only No. 7 in the ATP era (after Federer, Sampras, Lendl, Connors, McEnroe, Djokovic) – that’s because Nadal has failed to dominate the overall ATP Tour (the non-clay tournaments for Nadal) as well as Federer or Djokovic dominated the overall ATP Tour. Nadal may have won some matches over Federer, but Federer has more than twice the No. 1 weeks (302 weeks) because Roger has dominated the overall ATP World Tour better than Rafa has done. E.g., compare Nadal at Wimbledon to Sampras at French Open. In his entire career, from 1988 to 2002, Sampras lost to only one player ranked 100 at French Open (competent clay-courter Andriy Medvedev, who went on to reach the 1999 French Open finals). Nadal in his prime lost in the early rounds of the last four Wimbledons to unheralded players ranked between No. 100 and 144.

For those that want to put Sampras down because of his RG career: FO 89 - Loss to eventual Champion Michael Chang who went on to beat the number 1 in Lendl during the tournament FO 91 - Loss to Champion ( I think Pete should be excused for such a cool name he played against) but the fact he beat the Original "King of Clay" in Muster in the first round is an amazing feat. FO 92 - Loss to a 2 time FO finalist in Agassi who would eventually win one in 1999. FO 93 - Loss to Bruguera who would eventually go on to win the title and defend the title in the following year. FO 94 - Loss to Courier who won back to back FO titles from 1991-1992. FO 95 - Loss to G Schaller FO 96 - Loss to Kafelnikov who would go on to win FO going through Krajicek, Sampras, and Stich in the final. FO 97 - Loss to M Norman who would eventually become a FO finalist in 2000. FO 98 - Loss to R Delgado FO 99 - Loss to Medvedev who would eventually make it to the final losing to Agassi in 5 sets. Look at the stats: From 1989-1999 Sampras has lost to an eventual finalist within the same year 5 times with 3 of those winning the title (Chang, Bruguera, Kafelnikov) Sampras beat a former King of Clay in 5 sets (Muster) Sampras played in a clay era with with different FO finalists with at least 1 FO title to many of their names: Chang - 2 finals 1 title Agassi - 3 finals 1 title Bruguera - 2 titles Courier - 2 titles Kuerten - 3 titles Kafelnikov - 1 title Medvedev - 1 final and 3 hamburg titles

Good analysis Tony N Federer is the most consistent, in terms of progressing through a slam, and not winning it. He makes alot of semi's and finals. People often remember the wins more at the end of the day. Federer's weakness is the fact Nadal has the wood on him in head to head battles. But then again Mcenroe won more head to heads vs Bjorg too, but I consider Bjorg better, not by much but a touch.