Rob wrote:The bottom line is that you can't compare athletes of different eras who play with different styles. They all benefit from the latest and greatest knowledge and technology. That's why records will always get broken and one day there will be some new guy who everyone says is the G.O.A.T.
This is the key to me. When someone asks who the GOAT is, you always have to ask whether he means in overall comparative ability or in ability relative to his circumstances.
If the former, you have this argument between Sampras and Federer. Even so it is obvious that a strict comparison between the two players' tennis abilities, without extrapolating how good one may have been in the other's era, shows that Federer is the GOAT.
But if the latter, strictly relative argument, than you would have to give great consideration to Laver. It was so hard in his day to win all of the majors with travel concerns and much more frequent boycotting of events. He also played the dominant style of tennis that day so extremely well.
Yet a third posibility allows a combination of strict and relative comparisons, and this is usually where Pete wins out. Mainly because he was so much more loved than Federer, so that we all exagerrate how much better he would be than Federer had he played tennis at its current state; and he is much more concurrent with most interested tennis fans than Laver, so that it is impossible for people to extrapolate Laver's abilities to today's game.
To be honest, I am in awe almost every time I watch Federer play. I just loved watching Pete, his athleticism was so hypnotizing. But Federer is just amazing in every aspect of his tennis game. By today's standards he is nearly technically perfect on every shot, and has an impressive artistic flair to boot. Pete was for his day, but the standard for technical perfection has gone up dramatically even since his reign.
The way the question is implicitly stated, I would have to say that we are talking about a comparison that leans far more toward the strict side than the relative side. While we can consider that Pete would be marginally better had he trained in the current generation of tennis, we would also have to consider that he may not have been such a huge proponent of serve and volley tennis, and may not have made such an impression in today's army of baseliners. Federer plays a baseline game so much better than any other player ever has that I think he would even beat this idealized version of Pete, and so is my pick for GOAT.
Hope you enjoyed...
