There are many ways to clasify sportsmen. All are respetable and have advantages and disadvantages.

Some good tennis fans have sent us some comments on our WEB Tennis Race for History classification.

One criticizes us that Feliciano López is in better position than Carlos Alcaraz.

Obviously there are many ways to classify tennis players and Novak Djokovic leads most of the Rankings.

 

We do not say that our classification indicates who is the best player, the GOAT, although sometimes the term is used with the intention of drawing attention, even to polemicize.

 

Ours is another way of evaluating tennis player's career where merits that are not usually valued enough are reflected. Longevity is one of them. And logically young players have fewer points than veterans, but they have the incentive to climb the ladder when others no longer have that possibility.

 

And logically Alcaraz, if he continues as now, will surpass Feliciano and many others in a short period of time.

 

By the way, in March 2022 the creator of this page won a bet, with some tennis fan’s mockery, saying that Alcaraz (No. 16 at that time) would be number 1 in the Ranking that same year, which happened in August (albeit with the help of Djokovic).

 

It is proof of our opinion about Alcaraz.

 

 

Another fan tells me that with this type of rating, a player who played many tournaments a year would play many  matches and have many points.

 

The mistake is that for playing many matches itsn´t enough to play many tournaments, but rather win many matches to advance to the next round and increase your points as you advance.No matter how many tournaments you play, if you lose in the first rounds you will score few points and play fewer matches.

 

There are many very interesting records, some of which we already listed in our previous post, but there are many more examples. And you always have to compare the players in relation to their era, that is why we have tried to homogenize the tournaments in the most objective way we have found.

 

There are some examples of records that I really like, although they are not the best for making comparisons. One is the criterion of invincibility. We would set the bar of invincible to the player who during a year has won more than 90% of his matches.Here, as expected, the Big 3 is in the lead.

 

Federer in his streak from 2004 to 2007 achieved it the first 3 years and was close to fourth. Then he did it again in 2017.

 

Nadal achieved it twice, in 2013 and 2018, and came close in 2008-10-12 and 2019.

 

Djokovic, in his great streak 2011-2016, also achieved it twice, in 2011 and 2015, and was close the other years. He almost got it again in 2020 and 2021.

 

There have been great dominators in all eras, but we leave these other invincibles for another post.

 

And to finish today, of course, like everything in life there are subjective evaluations. Some value class, beauty, elegance, spectacle, intelligence, mentality, sportsmanship, aggressiveness, etc. more than the result itself.

 

We continue in next post