Can you be the best tennis player ever if another player beats you six times in eight Grand Slam finals matches?
It’s an open question.
Roger Federer has won 16 Grand Slam titles, two more than anyone else. But Rafael Nadal, four years Federer’s junior, has 10 titles of his own and has been winning them at a near-Federer pace. (Roger had 11 Grand Slams when he was Rafa’s age.) Perhaps more importantly, Nadal boasts a 6-2 record against his elder rival in championship matches of the most prestigious tournaments.
The sixth win came yesterday in the French Open final. It was the fourth time in six years that Nadal beat Federer to win a title at Roland Garros. When Federer was up a break in the first and appeared to be in control of the match, I was preparing my superlatives: beating Nadal in Paris is the one thing that Federer hasn’t done. When Rafa took over and won the match in four sets, I had to rethink the two players’ places in history.
Can one make a case that Rafael Nadal is, or will be, the greatest tennis player ever?
Perhaps.
At the age of 25, he already has more Grand Slam titles than Agassi, Lendl, and McEnroe and more than Guillermo Vilas, Arthur Ashe, and Ilie Nastase combined. He has an Olympic Gold Medal and is one of four players in the Open Era to have won a career Grand Slam.
We are blessed to be living at a time when we can watch two terrific tennis players, each of whom could make a convincing argument that he is the greatest of all time. But the GOAT conversation doesn’t start and end with Federer and Nadal. It’s quite possible that the best tennis player ever isn’t from Switzerland or Spain, but from Illinois, right across the river from St. Louis. That’s where James Scott Connors was born in 1952.
