Lack of serious competition

If we consider competition to be rivals and use the tennis criteria for rivalries, e.g. minimum 12 career meetings (including Grand Slam latter stages) between a No. 1 and a No. 3 or above, Federer has had seven rivals including Hewitt, Roddick, Safin, Davydenko, Nadal, Murray and Djokovic (note that he has also had superior win-loss records against a further seven ATP number ones). It was Federer's ability which has prevented the former three (all of whom had winning records against Sampras) from winning as many Grand Slams as they could do while with the latter three, Federer is said to have brought in a golden era for male tennis. By comparison, Sampras had seven rivalries but (when taking into account the opinion of professional players) against lower-quality opponents (e.g. Chang, Rafter, Ivanisevic won one Slam each while Becker and Courier were declining at this stage), Agassi had six, McEnroe, Chang, Borg, Edberg & Lendl had five and even Laver had only three. True, there were many more Grand Slam winners at Sampras's time but this is probably a result of his inability to dominate in clay (and also at the Australian Open), something which Nadal has done in current times and which Federer would probably have done if not for Nadal. This argument cannot continue to be used - 5 years ago Federer's detractors maintained he had no competition. We have since seen Nadal who, to his credit, has accumulated 6 GS and must be considered a worthy opponent. You can't now say Fed needs someone else to challenge him as well!! Borg, Connors, McEnroe was a magnificant time for tennis no doubt but perhaps that is another debate. Sampras didn't belong to an age of unremitting tennis genius - he had flaws on clay. Every year a new clay court specialist would emerge (e.g. Rios, Kuerton, Muster) to challenge his no1 spot and Pete would struggle to keep his position (hence he never got 237 weeks continuous at 1). Besides, Murray got to number 2 last year, behind federer of course :o) , so its not just Nadall challenging. And also there Del Potro to consider now - another GS winner. Thankfully Rog has a 6-1 record over him and lets remember the 6-3 6-0 6-0 he gave him in the Aus Open!! He's the greatest. ____________________________________________________ To ad on that: Federer had to beat 12 different opponents in major finals and defeated 11 of them (the only one he lost to was Del Potro), which is an all-time male record. His opponents were: (1. Philippoussis, 2. Safin, 3. Roddick, 4. Hewitt, 5. Agassi, 6. Baghdatis, 7. Nadal, 8. Gonzalez, 9. Djokovic, 10. Murray, 11. Soderling) Serious competition in Federer's area can be seen by players like: Nadal (9 GS wins, 2 runner-up) Djokovic (2 GS wins, 2 runner-up) Roddick (1 GS win, 4 runner-up) Safin (2 GS wins, 2 runner-up) Hewitt (2 GS wins, 2 runner-up) Murray (3 runner-up) Soderling (2 runner-up) Simply saying that his opponents weren’t good enough doesn’t make a great argument. During his 12 years on tour, Federer had to battle with another all-time great Rafael Nadal and you can’t ignore how dominant these two players were and say that well, “all other players were bad”. No, never have there been two so dominant players like Federer and Nadal because there have never been two players of such a caliber. It is Federers' majesty that he didn't allow others to challenge him except on clay! Actually those people who don't like federer, are always trying to degrade him!