Fourteen is an awfully big number. At least when it comes to tennis. It’s the equivalent of Joe DiMaggio’s 56, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100, Brett Favre’s 464. And when Roger Federer matched Pete Sampras’ hallowed mark of 14 career Grand Slam titles earlier this month at Roland Garros, it further fanned the flames of the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) debate. Now that he has tied Pistol Pete, and with No. 15 clearly within his sights, surely we can call him the best ever, right?
But before you book a caterer for the coronation, Andre Agassi – himself the holder of eight Slam titles – has a word of caution. The Las Vegan says that, whether we’re attempting to measure Federer against Sampras, Laver against Borg, Connors against McEnroe, Budge against Tilden, we shouldn’t get too caught up in the numbers. On Wednesday, the Las Vegan told Inside Tennis that there’s a whole lot more to Federer’s magic number than 14.
“Magic number French Open,” he said. “The quantity has less relevance with where he found himself that day, getting over the line in Paris and winning a tournament that had eluded him. He could have won that thing five or six times. It’s pretty amazing to watch him get over that line…If it weren’t for Nadal, he probably would have won five of those things and arguably won two Grand Slams back to back [’06 and ’07].”
Getting caught up in Slam totals is SOOOOOOOOOOOOO yesterday.
“That seems to be a ’90s phenomenon, how many Slams you win,” added Agassi. “If you look back over the history of our game, you look at the history of our peers, champions from generations past, that was never a benchmark. We have never been a sport that has measured itself by quantity. It’s not how we’ve done it.”
He’s got a point. Bjorn Borg closed his career with 11 Grand Slams, having played only one Australian Open (and that was in an era when it was played on grass – a surface on which the Swede dominated). So it’s not a stretch to think that Borg could have annihilated Emmerson’s then-record of 12 Slams, had it been a priority. In his first 12 years on the tour, John McEnroe only played the Aussie twice. How many times did Jimmy Connors play the AO? On only two occasions in his 20-plus-year career. Agassi himself snubbed Melbourne the first nine years of his career. Who knows how many Slam titles they would have bagged had they decided to travel Down Under.
How do you measure Rod Laver’s ability to win the calendar-year Slam in ’62, take a five-year hiatus from ’63 to ’67, then do it all again in ’69 (at the age of 31)? And why is it that no one has ever ranked Emmo above The Rocket, even though his fellow Aussie had won more Slams?
“I’m not sure what the criteria should be for how you measure the greatest of all time,” Agassi said. “But we should at least acknowledge that using the quantity of Slams has never been the benchmark…[For Roger], being able to be a dominant player in every part of the year is just as much a testament to his overall genius.”
In truth, Agassi can only speak to the competition he faced. And immediately after losing to Federer in the ’05 U.S. Open final, he made it clear that the Swiss was the best he’d ever gone head-to-head with.
“It might have seemed like a reach to say it at the time because it’s easy to get caught up in the moment, but I was speaking specifically about places on the court where you can’t hide,” he said. “There’s no safe zone with him. He can hurt you from any part of the court. A great champion tends to have one or two strengths, but one shot for sure that transcends everyone else’s. We saw that with Pete and his serve. Federer, at the peak of his career, had maybe three or four departments of his game that you could argue – individually and separately – are the best in the world. There was his movement, his forehand, his court sense, his ability to bring three or four major weapons to the table and not really have a weakness. I had never seen it before.”
It boils down to a quality vs. quantity conversation. And for Andre – who stands side by side with Federer as one of only two men ever to win Slams on four different surfaces – you’ve got to look beyond the numbers.
“The benchmark for all our peers has never been ‘How many can I win?’ Now that Fed won in Paris, we tend to say ‘He’s tied Pete.’ That’s great. It’s an amazing accomplishment. But what happened in Paris that made it so special was that he found a way to get over the line…Any way you size it up, his career now speaks to what I believe it is he earned a long time ago, which is the right to say that this guy, certainly in the Open era, is unmatched in accomplishments.”
