Are Federer and Djokovic better on clay than Nadal is on hard?

it is something that has intrigued me for a while, Nadal has 2 US Open plus 1 AO which is 3 hard court slams, which is more slams than Federer and Djokovic have on clay combined. Nadal impressively broke out of the mould of a clay courter to become a multiple slam winner on all surfaces, however despite this are Novak and Roger more consistently better on clay than Rafa is on hard?

Rafa grew up on clay, however playing most of the tour on hard was eventually going to make him better and better on the surface along with being a phenomenal player. That being said, is Novak and Rogers consistency over the years on clay more impressive considering they play less time on a surface that comes less naturally to them? If not for Rafa would there overall balance across all surfaces be more balanced?

Nadal has conquered both Roger and Novak on their best surfaces in slams, Novak and Roger cannot return the favour by beating Rafa at the French.

This suggest that Rafa is better on clay than Novak is on hard and Roger is on grass, but are Novak and Roger better on clay than Rafa is on hard?

Federer and Djokovic are great players

I'm not sure I understand the question? They both would have spent a lot of time playing on clay growing up no? It's not like they just found out about clay when they turned pro. Novaks first Grand Slam semi final was on clay.

No, Federer and Djokovic are not better players on clay than Rafa is on hard. Between them, they've managed one clay grand slam, and you could count the amount of times they have beaten Rafa in a clay court Slam with the fingers of the kit kat in my hand (I've just finished it). By comparison, Rafa has three Hard court slams, and has three hard court slams over Federer, and two hard court slam final wins over Djokovic. I guess you could make a case for Nadal ruining the statsheet, but we can really only work with facts.
Edit - Cheers Silver. Didn't catch that. I may not post for a day or so to keep the symmetry

Answering a direct yes or no to the question.. it has to be No imo
However, if you were asking Are Roger and Novak better on clay than Rafa on a Hard Indoor than the answer has to be Yes
Rafa has proved that for "a one trick pony", as he was so often called, he has conquered all surfaces.. except indoor. It is without doubt his Achilles heel.. I would love to see him win the ATP Tour to put that particular ghost to rest and complete his trophy cabinet.

I would argue yes, but Nadal is still a great hard court player. It's more that Nadal is slightly more vulnerable to being taken out early on HC than Federer (until recently) and Novak are on clay.

That being said, inverting the question slightly, he is much stronger on clay than they are on hard, which balances things out somewhat.

Edit: kingraf has 11111 posts, that makes me irrationally delighted.

The starts. And my own view point to no. Nadal has 3 hoc slams to only one clay one combined between the other two. Nadal has beaten them both in he finals too something the others haven't done. His game isnt as good as theirs on hc but their her 2's clay ability doesn't quite match to me.  Though as haddiw says indoor might be another story

Federer - H - 56 - 70%, C - 10 - 12.5%, G - 14 - 17.5%, Indoor 21, Outdoor 61 - Carpet = 2, Total titles = 80.
Djokovic - H - 37 - 77%, C - 9 - 18.75% , G  - 2 - 4.25%, Indoor - 10, Outdoor - 38, Total Titles = 48
Nadal - H - 16 - 25%, C - 45 - 70.3% , G - 3 - 4.7%, Indoor = 2, Outdoor = 62, Total Titles = 64


Legend

H,C,G = Hard, Clay, Grass

Percentage is calculated as Surface(H|C|G) Titles/Total Titles

Draw your own conclusions. My conclusions are - Federer is weakest on Clay, Nadal and Djokovic are weakest on Grass, despite winning slam(s) on their weakest surface.

laverfan. They are interesting stats. They could be more revealing if you factor in what percentage of the tour is played on each surface and by just using titles you give the same amount of weight to slams, 250's or even slams played as a warm up. I also suspect that players may play more on one particular surface because of their location rather than purely because they favor one surface over another so raw numbers of titles may be misleading when judging quality. For example I would expect a player from the USA wouldn't hang about in Europe collecting titles that tend to be played on clay and would play tournaments at home that tend to be played on hard. Or a player from northern Europe may have more indoor titles because they enjoy playing in front of a home crowd. For elite players like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic maybe they should be judged more on how they perform at Masters level and above rather than raw title numbers?

A Good debate to be frank, my answer is yes and no.

Federer and Djoko are not weak at clay but Nadal is very stronger on clay than any player in the history indeed his dominance on clay is a scary stat for any opponent.

Federer is a great player on grass and one of the best of all time in grass along with Sampras, similarly Djoko is a strong player on slow hard courts and starting to form his own legacy  you need to give him time to establish it.

Most players on top 100 could take Nadal out in fast hard courts certainly indoors, and very good players can again taken Nadal out in hard courts and grass on their day which means Nadal is more vulnerable on grass/hard courts than Fed and Djoko on clay.
In comparison Fed on his peak was only touted by Nadal on clay and Djoko is more or less reached that stage in the last 4-5 years, Nadal was never consistent like Fed or Djoko any time in his career [ barring 2010 and 2013] at hard courts reaching the final.

Many players till date holds positive h2h vs Rafa if only hard court stats are considered and again some players hold positive h2h record against Nadal if only grass court stats are considered.

Conclusion, Rafa on clay is much better than Federer on grass and Djoko on hard courts, on the other hand Rafa is more vulnerable on grass and hardcourts than Fed and Djoko on clay.

You don't need a Fed or Djoko take a Nadal out on grass and hardcourts but there was a certain Nadal needed to stop Federer from winning 5 FO's and Djoko a 4 FO's.

Nadal stats on grass and hard courts would have only been marginally better had there been no Fed or Djoko in this era, but had there been no Nadal in this era, we would have seen Fed with atleast 4 career slams and Djoko with 2 career slams.

Im not so sure about grass.. the jury is out on that one for me.. he does not have a bad record having won Wimbledon twice and he also won Queens within a week of winning Wimbledon... his main weakness in my mind is more indoor hc. I think 2015 will tell its own story in the tennis history books

invisiblecoolers wrote:

You don't need a Fed or Djoko take a Nadal out on grass and hardcourts but there was a certain Nadal needed to stop Federer from winning 5 FO's and Djoko a 4 FO's.

Nadal stats on grass and hard courts would have only been marginally better had there been no Fed or Djoko in this era, but had there been no Nadal in this era, we would have seen Fed with atleast 4 career slams and Djoko with 2 career slams.

I was really pleased that Federer got the RG title in 2009 because I thought more than any other player he deserved it. Getting to the final and being beaten by the same player 4 times is tough but to be fair he did beat Soderling in the RG that he won and obviously Soderling would have also been a well deserved winner that year. On the other hand Djokovic has only been to the RG final twice (the same number as Soderling) so clearly it's not just Nadal that has prevented him winning there. I wouldn't be so quick to even grant him the two titles where he faced Nadal in the final as other players have proved they can beat him.

I think as far as consistency on hard courts goes. Nadal's American hard court series win is pretty impressive (Canada, Cincy and the US Open in 2013). Neither Djokovic nor surprisingly Federer have managed that

hawkeye wrote:

invisiblecoolers wrote:

You don't need a Fed or Djoko take a Nadal out on grass and hardcourts but there was a certain Nadal needed to stop Federer from winning 5 FO's and Djoko a 4 FO's.

Nadal stats on grass and hard courts would have only been marginally better had there been no Fed or Djoko in this era, but had there been no Nadal in this era, we would have seen Fed with atleast 4 career slams and Djoko with 2 career slams.

I was really pleased that Federer got the RG title in 2009 because I thought more than any other player he deserved it. Getting to the final and being beaten by the same player 4 times is tough but to be fair he did beat Soderling in the RG that he won and obviously Soderling would have also been a well deserved winner that year. On the other hand Djokovic has only been to the RG final twice (the same number as Soderling) so clearly it's not just Nadal that has prevented him winning there. I wouldn't be so quick to even grant him the two titles where he faced Nadal in the final as other players have proved they can beat him.

I think as far as consistency on hard courts goes. Nadal's American hard court series win is pretty impressive (Canada, Cincy and the US Open in 2013). Neither Djokovic nor surprisingly Federer have managed that

I think we are in an agreement that all three are great players, its the argument who is weaker among the three on their non- favorite surface and for me its Nadal, due to the obivious reason explained in the previous post.

Tricky to answer. My inclination is that Rafa is better on HC than Roger and Novak are on clay.

Much of this comes from 3 HC slams for Rafa v only 1 clay slam for Roger and 0 clay slams for Novak.

Reasons it is not clear cut though, include:

- Roger has played in 5 finals at RG. Rafa has played in only 3 finals at USO and AO.

- Since Novak made his big improvement in 2011, he has played Rafa 9 times on clay. The h2h is 5-4 to Rafa. They have also played 9 times on HC and the h2h is 7-2 to Djokovic.

I see the difference as being that Rafa wins the big ones. His recent clay H2h with Djokovic is  close but Rafa won all 3 encounters at RG.

He also won the first final he played in at both USO and AO but it took Federer 4 attempts to win a final at RG and Novak is still on zero after two attempts.

So it's probably more the case that Rafa is better at winning HC slam finals than Roger and Novak are at winning clay slam finals.

It comes down to consistency vs winning the big ones I suppose. The same argument as year end number ones vs overall weeks at number 1. I can appreciate either side of the argument on this one tbh.

Six, Murdoch. Nadal has six Finals at Aus and USO. You've probably forgotten the defeats.

For me it really is quite simple. You look closely at their careers you'll find Rafa has three on HC, Novak and Roger have one put together on Clay. You don't need to go any further. If Nadal had the solitary slam on hard court, and Djokovic-Federer had none, but everything else was still the same, I suppose a case could be made using the other factors mentioned, but when it's 3>1, with every single one of Nadal's victories having come in a final victory over one of Federer-Djokovic, I think it's self explanatory. Overall, it's possibly close, but the margins at elite level are relative, and there's a relatively big gap between three and one. Even going to the next tie breaker, Masters, Djokovic has five clay masters, Federer seven, but Rafa has eight hard court masters (which is actually a hell of a lot, must be top ten all time?). A career haul of Three slams and eight masters beats one of 0 and five, and one and seven.


So to recap, more Slams, more Masters, more wins against the "King(s)" of said surface in majors.

kingraf wrote:Six, Murdoch. Nadal has six Finals at Aus and USO. You've probably forgotten the defeats.

I haven't. I was saying three at each, not three overall.

Saying Rafa has 6 HC slam finals v Federer's 5 clay slam finals is not a great comparison when there are twice as many chances to reach a HC final.

Same with your masters stats. Djoko has won 5 clay masters, with three opportunities a year. Rafa has won 8 HC masters with 6 opportunities a year.

The flaw in this question is to assume that "winner" is a fixed level. It's not.

Rafa is probably the best clay court player ever. He's certainly the most successful. For anyone else to win Roland Garros, they need to beat the best player ever on the surface (or hope that someone else beats him first). In other words, they could be brilliant on the surface but still lose because they are up against the best ever. Think how amazing Federer was in 04-07. That period yielded no RG titles because he was up against a red hot Rafa.

Rafa does not have an equivalent challenge on HC. A brilliant performance from him can get the win. Who is a HC opponent that is as tough as Rafa on clay? Federer was a HC beast in 04-08, winning 5 USO in a row and 3 AO. In that period, Rafa wasn't even making the finals.

Who's the best HC player these days? Probably Djokovic but his level on HC is not equal to Rafa on clay.

I do believe that Rafa is better on HC than the other two are on clay but I don't think it's an open-and-shut case. There's not a great deal in it.

HM Murdoch wrote:

kingraf wrote:Six, Murdoch. Nadal has six Finals at Aus and USO. You've probably forgotten the defeats.

I haven't. I was saying three at each, not three overall.

Saying Rafa has 6 HC slam finals v Federer's 5 clay slam finals is not a great comparison when there are twice as many chances to reach a HC final.

Same with your masters stats. Djoko has won 5 clay masters, with three opportunities a year. Rafa has won 8 HC masters with 6 opportunities a year.

The flaw in this question is to assume that "winner" is a fixed level. It's not.

Rafa is probably the best clay court player ever. He's certainly the most successful. For anyone else to win Roland Garros, they need to beat the best player ever on the surface (or hope that someone else beats him first). In other words, they could be brilliant on the surface but still lose because they are up against the best ever. Think how amazing Federer was in 04-07. That period yielded no RG titles because he was up against a red hot Rafa.

Rafa does not have an equivalent challenge on HC. A brilliant performance from him can get the win. Who is a HC opponent that is as tough as Rafa on clay? Federer was a HC beast in 04-08, winning 5 USO in a row and 3 AO. In that period, Rafa wasn't even making the finals.

Who's the best HC player these days? Probably Djokovic but his level on HC is not equal to Rafa on clay.

I do believe that Rafa is better on HC than the other two are on clay but I don't think it's an open-and-shut case. There's not a great deal in it.

This is an excellent post. I don't see how anyone can actually treat this question as having a definitive answer, which is why it's such a good topic (nice one CAS). Only looking at pure slam wins is simplistic in the extreme.

It's very very close...the stats are hard to utilise effectively here, so it could go either way. For my money, Nadal's 'peak' performance on HC is far better than either of the other two can manage on clay, which might swing it towards him. But for pure consistency, people are really underestimating both Novak and Fed's clay prowess.

Itn't a poor quwon iton it's just a very simple answer. For instance, I haven't suddenly forgotten that there is an uneven dispersion of Masters titles, I've just gone with the logic, which is indeed rather logical, that
1- The tour situation is what it is, it's hardly a new proportionality. Nadal's slams don't get double value just because there's only one clay grand slam. Why would Djokovic or the old man's Clay masters wins?
2- You can't award masters titles that weren't won. Five masters is five masters. Shall we then start counting up the Masters series events Nadal has missed and award him two or three extra?

Also, while an argument could be made for Federer, I just can't see it for Nole. I mean zero slams does not beat three any way you slice it. So he's had half the chances, by definition, to win it, but he hasn't won it there's been no displacement. A plane travels a 1600mph for one hour, and a jet travels at 0mph for eight years, which traveled further?

There's a certain amount of veracity to the claim that Nadal doesn't have to beat the greatest HC player of all time to win his hard court slams, but you can only beat what's in front of you. Otherwise we may as well crown Kraijceck the third greatest grass player of all time since he only won one, but was against quite possibly the greatest of them all. Getting to three was great Becker... But you didn't beat Sampras. Get back in the queue, somewhere next to any slam winner who didn't beat a guy with about eight slams at the venue

He isn't saying they should be valued any differently. He is saying that the opportunity for HC success is greater given their are more tournaments on the surface. To a large extent it's a good point.

For me I think Nadal's HC form is better than Federer's/Djokovic's Clay form. However, the slowing down of HC's will no doubt provide reason to some why Nadal was able to translate success from Clay to HC.

kingraf wrote:1- The tour situation is what it is, it's hardly a new proportionality. Nadal's slams don't get double value just because there's only one clay grand slam.  Why would Djokovic or the old man's Clay masters wins?
2- You can't award masters titles that weren't won. Five masters is five masters. Shall we then start counting up the Masters series events Nadal has missed and award him two or three extra?

Nobody is doubling value or awarding extra wins.

But simply saying 8 HC masters beats 5 clay masters, or 6 finals beats 5 finals, is a bit like saying Alec Stewart's 8,463 career runs beats Don Bradman's 6,996.

You have give the bare numbers a bit of context.

Silver wrote:For my money, Nadal's 'peak' performance on HC is far better than either of the other two can manage on clay, which might swing it towards him. But for pure consistency, people are really underestimating both Novak and Fed's clay prowess.

Good summary. That's how I see it too.

The Bradman example would be quite apt... If Novak had the highest clay masters title conversion or something... going with a cricket example... Novaks clay haul is more like Mike Atherton's or something. Bradman's numbers are freak outlier numbers, almost twice as good as he's next competitor... I'm not sure Novak's clay achievements are really in that league.

OK, ditch the outlier from the example.

Is Alec Stewart (8,463 runs in 235 innings, av 39.54) better than AB de Villiers (7,296 runs in 159 innings, av 51.02)?

I think it's a very tough question to answer, and that it could be argued well for both sides. Some points that make it tricky:
- The game of eacch player has evolved. For example, Nadal is far better now on HC than he was in 2006, and it's kinda the opposite for Fed
- Nadal is nigh unbeatable on Clay, so in comparison Fed's 4 Finals at RG lost against Nadal seem pale... But how many players have been good enough on Clay to reach 5 RG finals?
- And Djoko here is the least favoured, as if we crunch numbers, he'll certainly have lower results than Fedal, because at some point, the field was overwhlemingly dominated by Fedal (HC for Fed, Clay for Rafa, Grass for both).
- Comparing surface is kinda like comparing eras - to some extent.

Eventually, it all comes down to the definition of "Better" - which is highly subjective.
1. I feel Fed was better on Clay than Nadal was on HC. We've had enough discussion about the Fedal H2H and it's high clay content to remember that Fed 'always' reached the final on clay to face Nadal, while Nadal failed to do so on HC.
2. I feel Nadal is better on HC than Fed is on Clay, from the evolution of his game and the less stellar fitness from Fed.
3. I feel in 2011 Novak was better on Clay than Nadal, Fed better than Novak and Nadal better than Fed...

We could see things more clearly once they all retired, but it would still be subjective.
Example: Match wins per court type at Slams:
Hard:
#1 Fed: 145
#5 Djoko: 93
#7 Rafa: 82

Clay:
#2 Rafa: 66
#4 Fed: 61
#10 Djoko: 42

Something I would like to look at to mitigate the impact of Nadal and Fed and Djoko being at times unbeatable on the achievements of these 3 is to have the W/L ratios per surface on all the rest of the field (only taking away Djoko v. Nadal, Nadal v. Fed and Fed v. Djoko matches). To see how each of them dominated that comparable field.
(to insist: throwing in Djoko v. Nadal matches is somehow skewed, as Nadal never had to play Nadal and Djoko never had to face Djoko... It could be even reduced to players who played the 3 of them, and would still be unprecise)

Great post, biugo.

I don't know whether to commend CAS on conceiving a good question or curse him for leading us down a statistical cul-de-sac!

For me, the most compelling evidence is not the statistics (which can be cut and spliced in so many ways) but the fact that I've never seen Federer or Djokovic on clay string together a sequence of performances as great as Nadal's 2013 American HC swing.

He was superb last year. That 'peak' in form is more impressive than anything I've seen Fed and Djoko produce on clay.

That tips it to Rafa for me. Without that great sequence, I don't think the numbers or the subjective evidence of my eyes is as compelling.

Well crickets a team game and is a bit different.  The average tends to be the king in cricket as opposed to just runs scored as it is a game reliant on long term consistency. As such consistency wins matches and series in cricket  whilst "peaking" for the majors is the thing in tennis

I just think Federer and Djokovic are less likely to lose to others players on clay than Rafa is on hard, that being said I agree Nadal at Aus Open 09, US 10'13 played a higher level than Roger and Novak.

However, to simply say its 3 slams to Nadal and 1 to there 2 is really obtuse. Novak and Roger have been in a combined 7 finals, tis Rafa that always stops them. There isn't a hard court version of Nadal to stop him which takes me back to my points its more Rafa is better on clay than Rog/Novak are on hard, the tougher one to judge is clay vs hard the other way around.

Surface vs Career W/L	Hard	Clay	Grass
Nadal	333/95 (77.8%)	318/24 (93%)	53/15  (77.9%)
Federer	617/127 (82.9%)	198/62 (76.2%)	131/19 (87.3%)
Djokovic	390/81 (82.8%)	144/40 (78.3%)	60/15 (80.0%)

If titles are one metric, here is another to argue discuss about.

If the caliber of opposition is another yardstick in a n-dimensional Tennis frame-of-reference, I can add a list of each surface and losses by year to see if the opposition was considered strong/weak by the illuminati of v2.

If Federer is the second-best clay courter at 76.2%, Djokovic is much better opposition for Nadal, but an injury-prone Nadal is always on the table.

Borg had better opposition in Vilas (644/163 (79.8%)) and Lendl (329/75 (81.4%)) than Nadal has/had in Federer.

Yep, not at all the same. No one in cricket looks at run totals when ranking the greater cricketer. Allan Border surpassing the run old run scoring record nearly went without incident. I've never seen a cricketer celebrate getting past 5,000 6,000 or any thousand runs (except maybe 10 000. The benchmark for measuring greatness in cricket is a lot more complicated than in tennis. Poor Chandepaul has more runs, and centuries and a higher average than every west Indian cricketer except Lara, and he barely sneaks into the top 20 greatest West Indian batters (not IMO, I wrote a thread asking if he was the greatest, and nobody even put him top 15)

HM Murdoch wrote:OK, ditch the outlier from the example.

Is Alec Stewart (8,463 runs in 235 innings, av 39.54) better than AB de Villiers (7,296 runs in 159 innings, av 51.02)?

would that not be trying to work out who the better player is/was?

I think for stats to work like that in relevance to this discussion would be their stats say on Asian pitches, Australian pitches, Carribbean pitches or green top pitches, bouncing pitches, turning pitches and work out averages and compare the stats from that?

AB> Alec. It is however very close. Closer than it should be, but AB has underperformed... well, as much as any cricketer averaging >50 can underperform

kingraf wrote:AB> Alec. It is however very close. Closer than it should be, but AB has underperformed... well, as much as any cricketer averaging >50 can underperform

I'm surprised you say that. AB strikes me as being comfortably better than Stewart.

But I'll defer to you on that one as you know much more than me about cricket!

Its an interesting debate. Personally, I would say Nadal. He can claim to have been the very best on hard courts for spells in his career despite the fact he is competing with two players who will probably be at 1 and 2 on that list by the time they finish. We also need to consider that on hard courts Murray is also a factor - with 9 masters titles and a slam. Outside of the big 3 there is no other competition on clay.

Well, without wishing to divert this thread much further. Alec does get extra points for having averaged 40... ish despite having kept wicket for a large proportion of his career. In fact he's possibly the second greatest Wk/Batsmen. Also AB has the comfort of having played on flatter pitches, for a better side. Stewart averages 46 without the gloves, which shows how much of a hindrance they are to your batting, but also a clearer picture of how close it becomes.

kingraf wrote:Well, without wishing to divert this thread much further. Alec does get extra points for having averaged 40... ish despite having kept wicket for a large proportion of his career. In fact he's possibly the second greatest Wk/Batsmen. Also AB has the comfort of having played on flatter pitches, for a better side. Stewart averages 46 without the gloves, which shows how much of a hindrance they are to your batting, but also a clearer picture of how close it becomes.

With equal reluctance to derail the thread... but a couple more comments:
1) I assume you have Gilchrist as the greatest WK/batsman?
2) Hasn't AB been keeping wicket recently?

I will refrain from further diversions from topic.

1 - correct. He doubles up as my favourite ever cricketer, and the one I modelled my batting on the most, but even without my natural bias - There's daylight between Gilly and everyone else who's been a Wk/bat.

2- Yes, he was from mid 2012 but he stopped recently. Quinton de Kock is now the Test Wk. Keeping wicket and fronting up on the batting front is incredibly difficult.

kingraf wrote:Yep, not at all the same. No one in cricket looks at run totals when ranking the greater cricketer. Allan Border surpassing the run old run scoring record nearly went without incident.

This I'm afraid, is not entirely accurate. Run totals are very much looked at when ranking how good a cricketer was or is. I agree it is much more complex with cricket than tennis for a whole host of reasons. So much so we can probably find numerous examples to support both points of view. I don't want to get into that debate, as it will be never ending. My point is just this, people do very much look at run totals when ranking the greater cricketer. As well as averages.

The fact Allan Border passed the old scoring record (without incident you say) is a product of the time (and probably the nation) not the achievement. We are far more obsessed with records, stats and acheivements than at any point in the past. If Border was to do it now....it would be all over the media.

Well, yes they are looked at... but more as a part of the narrative. I've been on quite a few cricket forums, and had quite a few cricket related arguments... I've never seen run total picked up as the first weapon when picking a superior player. Viv Richards is only sixteenth on the list of greatest run getters, and having played 121 Tests, certainly doesn't suffer from having had too small playing time. He's average is "only" 50ish, and his total centuries isn't even top fifteen... I can say quite confidently that he's consensus top five all time. or just outside... certainly not 16th.

nadal on hard:

3 slams
8 masters

djokovic on clay

0 slams
5 masters

federer on clay

1 slam
6 masters

naxroy wrote:nadal on hard:

3 slams
8 masters

djokovic on clay

0 slams
5 masters

federer on clay

1 slam
6 masters

not bad considering they play against the best clay courter ever and only have a couple of months a year to accumulate that total

ab has had an amazing South Africa side as well to let him okay his trAde with. Alec stewert had atherton and that was about it

What about Tuffers he was the greatest.... an awesome.... wicket tacking..... um he spun the ball sometimes.

A better question is who is better on clay - Novak or Fed. I would edge towards Novak but its close.

Born Slippy wrote:A better question is who is better on clay - Novak or Fed. I would edge towards Novak but its close.

I'd maybe give a slight edge to Federer.

Novak is much better than Roger at playing Rafa on clay though.

HM Murdoch wrote:

Born Slippy wrote:A better question is who is better on clay - Novak or Fed. I would edge towards Novak but its close.

I'd maybe give a slight edge to Federer.

Novak is much better than Roger at playing Rafa on clay though.

Isner is better than Federer vs Nadal on Clay.

CAS wrote:

naxroy wrote:nadal on hard:

3 slams
8 masters

djokovic on clay

0 slams
5 masters

federer on clay

1 slam
6 masters

not bad considering they play against the best clay courter ever and only have a couple of months a year to accumulate that total

not bad, but not as good as nadal on hard

Well, arguably it is better, as Rafa has 6 hard court masters events per year plus the WTF and two slams to rack up hard court titles. Thats 9 events as compared to 4 clay events.

I would say though that the first three of Fed's masters were won without Nadal in the field and one was on the blue slime in Madrid, so it is a little misleading to say Fed's total is against the best claycourter ever.

Djokovic beat Rafa in the final for each of his last 4 clay Masters titles, across all 3 clay tournaments - Rome (x2), Monte Carlo and Madrid.

That's as good a statistic as any to show that he's pretty good on the surface!

Even more impressively, 3 of the 4 matches were straight sets wins and in the 4th he came back from losing the first set.

I just wish he could pull that off at RG!

Nice quote from Djokovic about winning RG:

"I have been pretty close to winning the French Open title and have played a few finals and semifinals but I have a problem, his name is Nadal"

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/tennis/international-premier-tennis-league/Djokovic-insists-he-is-close-to-winning-elusive-French-Open/articleshow/45435874.cms

I seem to recall Federer saying something similar once. Something like "I don't have a clay problem, I have a Nadal problem".

numbers are there and they speak clear.