Is Serena better than Roger?

There is no point in comparing Serena to Federer, or Federer to Laver/Borg and expect a yes/no answer. Just to compare two players - Unless two players compete against each other on all surfaces for a reasonable number of times at their prime, it wont be a fair one. Now if we are going to starting talking about GOAT, then we are tying to find an end point of a circle - Surfaces/Age/Competition/Gender plays a huge factor and there is no way we can neutralize those during the discussion. Is Federer better tennis player than Serena? YES! I believe he would beat her at tennis more often than not. Has Serena achieved more in tennis than Federer? YES! She has more slams/titles/Win ratio than Federer. Is Federer more qualified than Serena for being a GOAT? NO! W/L record against Joker and especially Rafa/Calendar Grand Slam/Clay court dominance goes against this incredible player. Is Serena more qualified than Federer for being a GOAT? NO! Just the fact that she didn't play against best male players of her time goes against this incredible player. You have two players compete in different competitions and use the numbers from the competitions to compare both is just a load. But then again, there is nothing wrong in making an argument about it :) After all we need some thing to kill our time!

Agree with some of what you are saying, but not sure this score line: Safin def. Federer: 5-7, 6-4, 5-7, 7-6 (8-6), 9-7. is being blown off Court.

A Serena type player would have less chance of winning against a guy than a Henin or Hingis, who rely more on skill and placement than on power. They would all get spanked but as a guy you would prefer to play against Serena who plays like a man just with less power than against someone who can make you run across the court.

It actually is sexist but its not bad sexism, having mens and womens sports is sexist but its sexism that is for a good reason.

Was she ever as dominant as Federer though? While Fed was Number One for 302 weeks, Serena was One for 310 weeks. But that's in total across their careers. Federer holds the record for the longest time period at number one with 237 weeks while Serena notched 186 weeks, tying her with Steffi Graf. So at their respective peak of their powers the Fed-Express spent 51 weeks - or pretty much an entire year longer as world number one than Serena did.

Serena and Venus were crazy enough to claim they could beat a male player outside the top 200 when they were young. They actually took one on, one after the other in a set and lost thats hardly suprising. However the claims of your coach, coaches are massive bigheads who exagerrate how good they were, and usually have some sob story that some injury stopped them being the greatest. The closest thing to a women beating a man in tennis is Rosewall. As the most skillful tennis player ever, he could take on the top men and beat them when he was as old and weak as the best women physically. However the best tennis player physically will not be the most skillfull. So it would have to be a freak occurance that you get a super skillful women, there has not been one close to being really skillful as a Federer let alone a Rosewall, who is also at the top of the range physically.

Women's tennis is really poor in my opinion. It's not just their physical capabilities or the lack of meaningful competition, it's also the women's appalling technique. So many of the women, even those in the top 10, have clearly been badly coached. They just play the game poorly .

Silly to compare - The women's game is very different, they have different bodies. If they combined it would be unfair and no women would win a match at ATP level. Categories exist to level the playing field to a fair standard so achievements can be recognised with their category (men's, women's, wheelchair, veteran's tour etc.) If you say "Serena is the best tennis player ever" you are not recognising the categories and excluding wheelchair players like Esther Vergeer who won 470 matches in a row, 40 odd slams and statistically the most dominant tennis player of all-time. She rarely gets mentioned in the GOAT debate. Objectively, the men are the best tennis players - it's not sexist, it's just how it is. Serena is one of the greatest female players, to say she is the greatest tennis player is ignoring other categories of players where they are achieving more.

In the 90s my old Juniors coach told me that he could beat Steffi Graf, and that decent mens college players would destroy the top women. He was probably correct. In terms of dominance, you can't go past Serena, but then the women's game is so flakey, most of them are so fragile mentally. There really is very little competition for her, even at 35. Also the best of 3 helps as she gets older, doesn't have to grind long matches like the men. Don't get me started on the equal prize money.....giving them 25% of the men would be generous.

The more pertinent question, really, is why bother proclaiming a GOAT at all? Surfaces and racket technology are changing all the time, fitness science and training methods march ever ahead, to say nothing of the changing competition. Would Federer really have been a better player if Nadal had decided to play soccer instead of tennis, and he'd bagged 2 calender slams and 30 slams instead of 0 and 18? Would Serena really have been a worse player if Graf had been born 10 years later, and they'd split slams between them?

If it's about dominance, though, there is no question that Serena has been more dominant than Federer. She has all of the records to prove it. It's just not a very meaningful comparison in the first place, because Federer and Serena have never been playing in and hence have never dominated the same competition. The only real measure by which they are comparable is their abilities as tennis players, and here there is no contest - even Kyrgios is unequivocally a better tennis player than Serena.

The question is who is more dominant over their respective sex. Federer had no one really any good directly before him, Aggasi and Sampras are about 10 years older. Safin could have been competition if he had less injuries and was not a nutcase, and did actually blow Federer off the court at the Australian Open.Phillipousis was even more injury riddled. In Federer's generation he had Roddick and Hewitt, they were harder trainers and fitter than Federer was in his young days especially crazy Hewitt,. Where Federer really was disadvantaged was the whole clump of great players younger than him, Nadal,Djokovic,Murray,Wawrinka. So Federer won most of his grand slams but once he hit his late 20's he had enormous competition hitting their peaks and so has won little since. If you look at Serena she seems to have won most of her grand slams when the opposition was weak. So she won a clump initially when she had Capriatti and VEnus as her main competition. Then Henin came on the scene and they dried up Henin who would have been her great rival retires in 2007 she starts winning a lot more. Serena has done great in her 30;s winning more titles per year than in her 20's. You have to be realistic and look at the competition and womens tennis is at its lowest point in history. Navratilova ran into Graf and then Seles at the same point. The only player dominant in all stages of their career was MArgaret Court and she had quite a few breaks. She dominated over older greats when came in Beuno. SHe dominated her big rival who won mainly when she was absent Billy jean King. She dominated Chris Evert Lloyd the up and coming great after her first child when she was over 30. A 50% grand slam winning rate. Its clear the best of all time is Margaret Court.

All round for me Serena is ahead of Rog. Serena's double record is so good as well, she's been world no 1 in both singles/and doubles before. For me Navratalova is 2nd best ever in Open era, she's the best double's player ever period, and her awesome singles record combined with here longevity for me puts her at no 2. And laver rank no 3. Laver won a grand slam in the open era in 1969. He didn't win anymore gran slam tournaments after that but that was because he was playing mostly on the other professional tennis tours at the time. He played only five Grand Slam tournaments from 1970 through 1972. This was partly because of his contracts with NTL and WCT. But on the WCT tours, he remained the leading player and by far the leading prize money winner.

Let's keep them in men's and women's please. It seems the media is racing to describe the next GOAT at every opportunity. Serena may have knocked off Steffi in titles. Look at the era Graf had and the competition whereas Serena look at the different winners? I can't comment on Margaret Courts era? Federer has had Nadal, Joker, Sir Andy for a good deal of time The first question - how strong has Serena's era been to other era of the 80's, 90's, and 00s? Second Question - I would love to see all four tennis majors in women play best of 5 sets. They get the same pay? You would have some of the greatest horror matches to watch with doughnuts galore on the scoreboard.

No, Federer will beat Serena in straight sets.

Serena is certainly ahead of Roger with records, dominance, weeks at No.1, but to suggest she is the 'better' tennis player is just nonsense, as she is clearly not if she can't beat him, it's just the way it is. If you do go along those lines, then clearly Margaret Court is the best Tennis player of all time - with the singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles she had, that record will never be beaten, but I don't think many will suggest she is the best 'tennis' player of all time. The more dominant tennis player of the era, as you've said above would be a more interesting and reasoned argument. There's no way Roger has been as dominant as Serena, although having to play in an era with 3 of the top 5 of all time also has to be taken into consideration.

No offense, but it's a silly comparison. Nobody is seriously suggesting that Serena would be capable of beating any of the men's top players in a match - not even Serena herself, who, at the height of her confidence, felt that she could beat a men's player ranked upwards of 350 in the world, and has commented that she doubts she could win a point against Andy Murray. Every intersex match previously undertaken has demonstrated that the women simply cannot play the men's game and, if, in playing the same game, she can't beat any of the best, or at least be competitive against the best, she cannot reasonably be considered to -be- the best in any sense of the word. As much as I love the women's game, there is no getting around the fact that it is essentially a handicapped competition - ie a competition from which men are excluded due to the perception that it would be unfair for the women to have to compete against them.

lets organise a match, my money is on Fed