Yesterday, between discussions of 16 vs. 6, 13 to 7, those two strange beasts, Fedal and the Goat, and who had the better career, John McEnroe or Ivan Lendl (it was Lendl by a hair, by the way), there were a couple comments that got me thinking.
From bmars250:
Well this is interesting the way steve is now talking about Rafa ending up being the leading all-time masters champ. The reason for this is simmple. Rafa is better than anyone on clay and given the number of masters on clay well it’s kind of obvious and a bit unfair. Imagine if there was an equal number of masters on grass as well, cld you then imagine how many masters fed would have got by nw???????
Well, ys I cld begin to imagine!!!!!!!! Federer would have a lot more, and, if there were as many as three grass Masters a year, Nadal would likely have a couple more by now as well. There’s no doubt that the lack of grass events skews this comparison, but there’s no room for them at the time when they would logically be played, right before Wimbledon. A grass circuit in the fall would be fun, but I don’t see it on anyone's radar. At the same time, I don’t think the Masters set-up is “unfair” to Federer in particular. Six of its nine events are held on hard courts, a surface on which he once had a 50-something-match win streak. The Masters Cup is also on hard courts, and Federer has reaped the benefits with four titles to Nadal’s goose egg.
Elsewhere in the comments—I can’t find it now—someone mentioned that they thought that hard courts were a “neutral” surface, and thus the one that should be weighed most heavily when we look at a player’s accomplishments. Hard courts may have occupied a neutral position between grass and clay in the days when the balls skidded around the grounds at Wimbledon, but now that the style of play is basically the same everywhere, privileging hard courts doesn’t make sense. Nadal wins on grass, Federer wins on clay, they both win on hard courts. Look at the semifinalists at last year’s French Open—Soderling, Gonzalez, del Potro, and Federer. What unites them isn’t their specialization on clay, but that they’re four of the biggest hitters on tour. Tennis is played on various surfaces, and at this point in its evolution none of them is more of less important or central to the sport than any other. When you assess a player’s Masters titles—specifically, Nadal’s—there’s no reason to add the caveat that he's won most of them on clay, especially since he beat Federer in many of those clay finals. Everyone, except the Americans, of course, can play on dirt now. Nadal has won 16 Masters titles, 11 of them on clay; Federer has won 16, 11 of them on hard courts. They’ve each won 16, period.
From geellis:
I think the biggest point favoring the superior importance of the slams is not one of their empirical attributes (i.e., how many sets, number of hours on court, days of rest in between, seeding, etc.) but their intangible component, namely, how the players treat them. Put differently, I mean the emphasis or "pressure" that the players put on themselves to win at the Majors. That said, other than a couple of serious standouts (Fed, Serena, and now perhaps Nole and Murray) I'm not sure players today "try" any less to win a match at the Masters events than they do at the Majors. That said, I cannot disagree that the players consider the Majors to be a bigger deal than the Masters events.
In some senses, however, I would argue that this makes the Masters more not less difficult to win. And why? Because most players play their best tennis when there's less pressure not more. Thus commentators are so fond of saying player x can "swing freely" or player x is "playing with house money" etc. Why has Lleyton not won AO or Emelie not won RG? Because they were not good enough? Of course not. Because they could not handle the pressure (more on their cases later) and, therefore, could not produce their best tennis. Now I understand that some people will say it's exactly this quality of nerves that makes the Majors more difficult. I'd say, the factor of nerves is one that doesn't fall so neatly in the favor of the the Majors as more difficult. Or, rather, not a factor we should consider so highly. This is true because nervousness is not simply a result of a player's own predisposition, but rather also a result of the conditions around the player. Therefore, it's simply not fair to compare the pressure on Hewitt, Mauresmo, or now Murray at their respective Majors to the pressure on Rafa or the Fed.
As we said yesterday, the majors are the most important events because we’ve collectively agreed that they are. It’s a convention, but it's one that must become very very real in a player’s mind as he sets up to serve to win Wimbledon—it has to feel different from setting up to serve for Monte Carlo or Cincinnati, simply because of the lifetime-guaranteed prestige that goes with winning on Centre Court.
Along the way, I’ve also believed, subconsiously, that the majors were the “truest test” of a player. But are they? They’re 3-out-of-5 sets, which does force a player to win more sets and games and points against his opponent and to be fit enough to potentially play for many hours. But does that mean 2-out-3 sets is a less true test? It’s the format for the vast majority of professional matches, and no one believes that the vast majority of matches aren’t a true test of skill, do they? How could most pro matches not fully count on some level? Each player knows the format and plays accordingly. If longer matches mean truer tests, why not create a Super Grand Slam that’s best four-out-of-seven? Or why not abolish the tiebreaker?
No, two-out-of-three is a slightly different test, but it’s just as true. It’s less about stamina, patience, mental fortitude over the long haul, and more about precision under pressure, about the ability to produce now. There are fewer games, sets, and tiebreakers, which makes each one that is played just a little more nerve-wracking. Roger Federer, the master of the 3-of-5, has talked about how that format helps him relax, but how many times has he needed to come back from two sets down during one of his 16 Slam-title runs? I can only remember one, against Tommy Haas at Roland Garros last year. Like most champions, he’s excelled in both set-ups.
Empirically, you can make a case for the superior difficulty of winning a Slam or a Masters event. A Slam requires two weeks of concentration and fitness; a Masters often requires a 24-hour turnaround between matches, and a hot player can put you on the ropes in a matter of games. A Slam forces you to beat seven opponents, but likely won’t set you up with as tough a first- or second-round assignment as a Masters. What separates them is what we began with: the historical weight that all of us put on the majors, which lands squarely on the shoulders of the players. Slams are more pressurized, for all 128 entrants, because they’re about history—the world is watching, and it may only remember what you did at the big ones.
But I’m not sure about the significance of geellis’s point about the special difficulties of home-country pressure. Yes, this makes it tougher for Murray, Mauresmo, and Hewitt at their Slams. But does that mean that Virginia Wade’s win at Wimbledon in 1977 or Yannick Noah’s at the French in 1983 were greater achievements than, say, Nadal’s at Wimbledon in 2008 or Federer’s at Roland Garros in 2009? From my perspective, the pressure on the last two—on Nadal to win Wimbledon after losing a five-set final the year before, on Federer to take advantage of his best opportunity in Paris—is hard to top. I’m willing to just say that tryng to close out a Slam will put the weight of the world on you. And that’s a lot for anyone to carry, whatever country you’re from.