For obvious reasons, I do not want to carry on spending my time replying to SB comments on amri's threads. So I have created this thread to answer to SB.
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Federer may or may not have had flu but this type of argument is nowhere near sufficient. For all kinds of innocent reasons players follow up poor performances with great ones and vice versa. You can support almost any hypothesis you want by picking the argument of the type "player A barely beat player B in one tournament but also destroyed a much better player C in another tournament, therefore..."
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Typically I would agree to make a mockery a mockery of the A>B>C....=> A>C logic in tennis.
However here, there are too many obvious facts to take this Miami04 match out of context. Nadal is still a nobody in 2004 as his results then proves, and Fed is simply unbeatable. He just won IW convincingly.
As mentioned it woudl be absurd to believe that Lopez is a better grass player than Nadal cause on the time they played on that surface Lopy won....or that Nadal is suddenly a better player than Djoko on clay cause he won his last encounter. We, as posters, have to put matches into their context.
I can see tanking, loss of fitness and/or form and can even be wrong about it but one thing for sure is that I say what I see and nothing else.
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Also, it is a very dangerous type of argument because it is difficult to make sure that one stays honest with oneself. When we make these arguments, are we really sure that we are equally scrutinazing both the results that would at first glance support our views as those that would at first glance repudiate them? If we are only diving deeper in those cases where the first glance works against us, then we are introducing a bias in our favor into our arguments.
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Well, this is the very reason we are posting and what makes the difference between objective posters from players fans. If I was just a Federer fan fine...but I believe I can as easily point to Nadal, Djoko or any other players "excuse" or reason for losing.
I do not believe in this "if your are fit to play, you have no excuse to lose". Life is not that simple I am afraid. It still makes a loss a loss but it doesn't allow to make conclusions about relative strengths and weaknesses of a player.
In that respect taking that Miami04 encounter in the equation is absurd and a fan argument.
Same applies actually to the first time Murray beat Federer.
Nadal 20 Masters...75% on clay!
posted on 19/5/12
i will as long as people don't continue to be unnecessarily mean as it appeared there was a morass of intolerant, bitter posters on here.
I know its kinda lame but 'One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself'.
'That's god damn right' - morgan freeman (shawshank).
posted on 19/5/12
Tenez wrote:
As mentioned it woudl be absurd to believe that Lopez is a better grass player than Nadal cause on the time they played on that surface Lopy won
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I am certainly not suggesting Nadal was better than Federer. I am just saying he was a very bad match-up for him. I addressed more or less this same thing in my response to rotla on amri’s initial thread, so will not repeat it here.
posted on 19/5/12
Youzhny and Blake bigger hitters than Federer? ehhh??? You forgot how big was Fed's FH.
So how do you explain that Federer was thrashing Nadal indoors and not outdoors? Do you think there is such a big difference between Shanghai indoors and outdoors? or AO indoors and outdoors?
I am surprised you think that Nadal is a particular bad match up to Federer, yet only Federer (amongst the SHBH) has beaten Nadal since 2007 (bar Lopy of course ).
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Federer is not your typical big hitter. He has a big forehand but he does not hit it very flat very often, plus he prefers to use his weapons to create an opening first and then go for the kill. Youzhny and Blake were more likely to just tee off on anything, and that seemed to be giving Rafa more problems for a while.
Nadal is a pretty bad match up for any SHBH, and there are not that many potent ones left. Also, he now deals better with power hitters than he did early on.
I do think that indoors is somewhat better for Fed, I also think that Rafa in general tends to play worse that part of the season, plus Federer is pretty good, so he will always win some matches – match-up or no match-up.
posted on 19/5/12
Tenez wrote:
I understand that one match can go either way down to many factors including form of the day...but others you know an upset is on the card before the players enter the court. Or at least it makes all sense after the match.
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This is the place where I think we have to be careful. If something “makes sense after the match”, maybe we are just tempted to mold reality into where we want it to be.
I know it is not quite as simple as to say a “win is a win” because indeed all kinds of additional factors go into it. However, one has to have an awful lot of circumstantial evidence before one makes a strong claim based on it. I believe there will be numerous cases where we just do not have enough evidence and at best can raise some questions rather than having the answers.
Say looking at that 2004 Miami match. You say it is clear that Fed was ill and support it by a handful of scores from tennis matches. At best I could say that maybe you create some doubt about that one match, but the evidence is not enough to expect everyone to agree and disregard the result altogether, as you suggest we do.
posted on 19/5/12
Thanks to bring the thread back to its original purpose but I still very much disagree with you SB on the following points:
1 - considering Miami04 at the same same face value as their other encounters. If Federer is proven to feeling unwell that day as indicated by his previous round match v Davydenko, then we are considering a false data to support a wrong argument. And as you are not bad at stats, you are probably aware that an argument based on 3 events (till 2007, federer's hey days) with some possibly biased is not very solid.
A last point on this. the score was 63 63 for Nadal....a year later when much better, Nadal struggles a bit more to win his sets.
2 - Big hitting. Frankly you may have a point regarding Blake as he certainly can go for broke but that point doesn't work when considering Youzhny success. There is not a shot/pace that Youzhny has that Fed hasn't.
The reason Youzhny had some success is that he was meeting Rafa on faster conds. And on fast conds Nadal was toothless. You may have missed the thread on HC pace on V2 but teh USO, Cincy were proven to be faster pre 2007. And that is why Nadal was going nowhere then on those courts. Nothing to do with indoors/outdoors. IW and Miami are notoriously slow and have always been.
3 - The 2004 match is not supported by the matches around only but also what I and Laverfan heard/read of the time.
We will never find anything that suggests that Nadal tanked v Lopez or Fed v Roddick more recently. We just have to be smart about it and analyse the circumstances around it before drawing conclusions that Lopy is better on grass or that Roddick has finally found the formula to beat Federer again.
posted on 19/5/12
Rotla wrote:
You are putting too much about initial 1-2 h2h. I told you Fed had far worse initial h2h against many players including simon. But this can't be used as an argument to draw any matchup conclusions or conclusions about how this will fray in future. Even Nadal has a 0-1 HC h2h against Mayer till now. Are you going to used this initial result to draw out any match-up conclusions.
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Very good point again.
Likewise, I know that would Nadal play at a "slam fit" level indoors , I don;t think Federer woudl be able to bagel him like he did a few months ago. The surface is not that relevant. The power and spin with which the ball arrives is what causes Federer some trouble, more than the match up itself.....And Nadal 2004 had nothing to hurt a fully fit Fedrer.
posted on 23/5/12
Tenez wrote:
Thanks to bring the thread back to its original purpose but I still very much disagree with you SB...
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Well that is to be expected I think. I do not think many of us are going into these debates expecting to change the other side's opinion. I am quite happy to present my side, hear the other side, with a little luck some of it will be new enough to give me food for thought. Not really having big illusions about people changing their minds - we have all been thinking about this for far too long and have seen far too many arguments to be easily swayed by a few more posts here and there.
Tenez wrote:
There is not a shot/pace that Youzhny has that Fed hasn't.
The reason Youzhny had some success is that he was meeting Rafa on faster conds.
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Perhaps you are right here. In my mind I see Youzhny going for broke with big hitting far more than Roger but maybe I just need to rewatch some of his matches - perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me.
But even if you are right, if the point is that he was playing on faster surfaces than it suggests that on slower HC surfaces the match up may indeed work in Rafa's favor. So maybe you could argue that had Rafa and Roger only played in Cincy or under similar conditions then Roger's H2H would have looked better. Perhaps. But the initial argument was about HC H2H - and to me that should mean "typical" HC. And if you take Miami (2x) plus Dubai, they do average to a pretty typical HC.
posted on 23/5/12
Comment Deleted by Article Creator
posted on 23/5/12
Not really having big illusions about people changing their minds - we have all been thinking about this for far too long and have seen far too many arguments to be easily swayed by a few more posts here and there.
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First glad you make it through the wumming going on JA606 atm. Regarding the above I can say I have changed my mind many times over the years…not only about tennis but everything else so even if I might not agree at first I might change later on. In fact I was one who thought not so long ago that champions in tennis reached their physical peak at 26/27.
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Perhaps. But the initial argument was about HC H2H - and to me that should mean "typical" HC. And if you take Miami (2x) plus Dubai, they do average to a pretty typical HC.
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Clearly this outdoor HC argument is a biased one for the reasons I gave already. Just a last saving ground found by the Nadal fans. The only reason outdoor HC would be an advantage to Nadal in those early encounters is that if it was particularly windy, which I don't think was the case. Then yes, outdoor HC could favour Rafa. But on those 3 matches there is nothing to conclude…except that Fed is learning to play a ball he is not used to handle.
posted on 24/5/12
…except that Fed is learning to play a ball he is not used to handle.
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Ah! But that may be enough. He never quite learnt.