MATCH POINT: Official – Swiss legend Roger Federer is the GOAT (*according to the history buffs… Novak Djokovic is still mine!)
A joy last week to once again hear the calmly assured tones of John Barrett, microphone in hand, joining in a fascinating discussion at Wimbledon about who really is the greatest tennis player of all time.
The former player, administrator, Davis Cup captain and BBC commentator, still going strong at 92, was lending his experience to a panel debate which ended with surprising conclusions. Not least in his own assessment, drawn from a well of living first-hand knowledge whose depth must be almost unmatched.
The occasion was a history of tennis conference, which drew nearly 300 enthusiasts to the All England Club for a series of presentations and lectures on everything from the game’s art to modern social media.
Among them was an attempt by writer and broadcaster Chris Bowers to apply some kind of scientific formula to the question of who is the GOAT irrespective of gender, a topic which has never been more prevalent than in the recent era of Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams.
While at pains to emphasise its subjective (and largely lighthearted) nature, Bowers’ underlying thesis was that greatness has to be judged by more than numerical success.
Swiss legend Roger Federer came out on top in GOAT list, just ahead of Serena Williams
Novak Djokovic was third in the GOAT list devised by writer and broadcaster Chris Bowers
He has therefore come up with a weighting system, taking into account numbers of titles (40 per cent), a conglomeration of factors headed ‘economic pulling power’ (25 per cent), transcendence of mere sport and tennis (15 per cent) and measures focusing on an era’s relative level of competition, aestheticism, team performances and doubles. After crunching these numbers the winner was… Federer with 93 per cent, followed by Serena on 92 per cent and Djokovic on 88 per cent, marginally ahead of Nadal. The winner was a popular choice within the room with an electronic poll of 31 per cent of attendees giving the Swiss legend the most votes.
When summoned up to make his contribution, Barrett was keen to name-check Rod Laver and Pancho Gonzales, pointing to the amount of events they missed out on while being unable to play as professionals in the pre-Open era.
Put on the spot, however, he expressed the view that the real GOAT may have been American Maureen Connolly. She played in 11 Grand Slams and won nine of them, and in the early 1950s amassed a match record of 259-16 which included some extraordinary winning streaks. That was before she was forced to retire at 19 after a horse-riding accident. She died tragically young from cancer, aged 34.
A personal if somewhat unoriginal view — which I think survives recency bias — is that Djokovic’s sheer weight of significant titles, especially achieved in the era he was born into, has to make him the GOAT of either sex, regardless of any extraneous factors.
And before those notoriously sensitive folk from the online ‘Nolefam’ whip themselves up into a state of frenzied indignation, the whole exercise was designed to stimulate thought, and not to provide a non-existent definitive answer.
