Who is the greatest male tennis player of all time?

Answer 1

Answer 1Roger Federer is undoubtably the best tennis player of all time. Answer 2

ASSESSING THE GREATEST - Tennis:

I'd like to throw a few different slants on how we probably should rank "the Best of All":

Firstly, do we only consider the "Open Era", because although we, today - in our totally "professional" world - may be tempted to consider the Amateur Era as defective, you would have to realize that in the past, it was THE thing to do - to play Amateur.

All the Prestige and Glory was publicly attributed to the amateur game pre-mid 60's, not the professional, despite that the 'pro's' existed and got paid. They were not held in the same esteem. In today's world we do not understand that, but that's a very serious consideration.

The honour was what was played for, and it was competed for totally seriously.

Names like Laver, Kramer, Budge, Gonzales, Emerson, Tilden, all hold their own individual honours and unique accomplishments that none of the likes of (say) McEnroe, Borg, Lendl, Sampras, Agassi or Federer, have come near achieving!

Firstly, even among those latter, those selecting Borg or McEnroe, for instance: they were only just inside the open era when they started. By that point, there had not been the build up of players across the world competing in a full career-minded sense as there had by (say) the Sampras or Agassi era, for instance.

The number of total players to 'beat' in McEnroe's day was less than [say] the Sampras or Federer period. Given their number of Majors won, then, one would tend to choose Federer or Sampras over the others of the more modern era.

You would also need to consider the competition during their respective careers: considering from among Borg, Sampras and Federer, for instance, obviously, Sampras had the toughest overall opposition in making his achievements.

Further, Borg only won at 2 Majors - one could not seriously present the All-time Greatest under such limited success conditions, and he was virtually just a singles specialist at that - little by way of major doubles success.

Now if this modern era is back-dropped against past players - those prior to (say) the mid-1970's, not only did many of these past Greats win all 4 Majors in their careers, some achieved full Grand Slams within the one year - Laver twice. That's considering singles only.

As importantly again as this fact, then, most past players were also far better doubles players than ANY of the more modern singles players - and some achieved brilliantly in 'mixed' doubles as well.

Some won on all surfaces - the very top tournaments of their day, with lesser equipment than that available today.

The Bottom Line:

To me, the Real 'Greatest of All Time' has to have DONE IT ALL - surely, that's truly the bottom line.

The Greatest has to have regularly shown 'all the shots' - under all sorts of conditions, including such as his record playing Davis Cup, etc for his country.

He has to be a Doubles expert and a singles champion as well, and be able to play any conditions with either sex as a doubles partner to boot.

He should be a top all court player - serves, volleys, and all ground strokes off both wings.

ALL of this goes together to make 'the Complete Player' - the "True All-Time Champion".

In the men's arena, few but Rod Laver can adequately fill this bill - and he played as "The Top", both, as professional and as amateur.

It seems to be the yardstick of measurement of many today to decide the Greatest merely upon the total number of Grand Slam singles titles won. Surely, this is an extremely narrow yardstick by which a Greatest player is chosen.

The history of the game, the history of each player also needs consideration, along with what they were capable of doing on a court. Laver, for instance, was effectively put out of contention from winning Grand Slam titles for 6 of his best years, because he turned Professional. Yet, during that period, he won 5 US Professional tournaments in a row from the best in the world, among the other key professional titles each year. Further, a technicality of his professional commitments only permitted that he enter 5 Grand Slam singles tournaments between 1970 and 1972. These restrictions, of course, also melt down his potential to also win (perhaps) far more Major doubles titles than he achieved as well.

Although it now seems a popular exercise, surely, measuring Greatness via the mere number of Grand Slam singles won in a career can be an extremely unrepresentative yardstick by which true greatness of the all-around tennis performer - the true champion - is assessed.

Answer:

For Males: Rod Laver Even Federer regards him as "the greatest".

Then there is Roger Federer himself - with the record number of total Grand Slam singles titles to his name already. Of course, though, he is nowhere near being the doubles player that Laver also was.

Another totally outstanding candidate is Pete Sampras.