Is Roger Federer the greatest tennis player of all time?

If the BBC weather forecast is to be believed, the sun promises to shine for at least the first week of Wimbledon and into the second. So, for many, this year, the only important question is whether Roger Federer will win his ninth Singles title, his twenty-first of the four Slam tournaments. Nobody has matched this score. So is Federer, as his fervent fans insist, the greatest tennis player of all time?

This is actually a pretty silly question even if we all indulge in such speculation, and not only because it passes the time when the rain is falling. We indulge in it because engaging in such argument is enjoyable, simple as that. We know that nothing can be proved, because we are not really comparing like with like; the tennis court, you may say, has been tilted in favour of the players of today. My friend, the Wise Old Hack, the pipe-smoker, will nod his head and say that the champions of one time can’t fairly be measured against the champions of another. This is undoubtedly sensible, as the pipe smoker’s comments usually are; and therefore, satisfies nobody, does nothing to still or settle the argument.

So much has changed over the years. Everyone recognizes that you can do things with modern racquets that were impossible, or sometimes only much more difficult, with the old wooden racquets with their smaller heads. Federer and Rafa Nadal can therefore play shots that, say, Bjorn Borg or Rod Laver couldn’t. This doesn’t make them better players; it makes them players with better equipment.

There is much more money in the game and therefore the top players – and not only those who are or have recently been at the top, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray obviously – travel with the sort of staff or court that, among sportsmen, used to accompany only champion boxers. They have not only their personal coaches, but their fitness trainer, their conditioning trainer, perhaps even their pet psychologist. And the players on the rungs immediately below may now be in the same position, far more cossetted than even champions were half a century ago.

Nobody can match the total of Slam titles won by Federer and Nadal. It’s possible nobody ever will, quite likely that Nadal’s eleven titles on the red clay of Roland Garros will be one of these records, like Don Bradman’s Test average of 99.4 that will never be challenged. But then, the pipe-smoker remarks, there’s also the question of longevity. Federer is now thirty-six; champions like Borg, McEnroe, Becker, Wilander and Edberg, were out of the game, or more or less out of it, by the time they were thirty. Pete Sampras was twenty-nine when he won the last of his seven Wimbledon titles. Why, you may ask, did they quit early? Don’t know.

The most remarkable example of longevity was offered by Ken Rosewall whose career lasted more than twenty years. As a 19-year-old amateur in 1953 he won the Australian and French titles. In 1954 he was beaten in the Wimbledon final by Jaroslav Drobny (usually described in the Press as “the exiled Czech”). In 1955 he won the Australian title and was runner-up in the American championship. In 1956 he was runner–up at both the Australian and Wimbledon again, but won the American title at Forest Hills. Then he turned professional, and was ineligible to compete in the Slams till the game went open in 1968. That year, aged 33, he won the French title. In 1969 he was runner-up to Laver in Paris and to John Newcombe at Wimbledon. He won the Australian title again in 1971 and 1972, and in 1974, though now in his fortieth year he was the beaten finalist at Wimbledon and in New York. Both finals were one-sided; his conqueror, Jimmy Connors, was only five months old when Rosewall won his first slam title in 1953. Rosewall’s record is the more remarkable when you think that he was ineligible for the Slams for ten years when he was at his peak.

The Greatest of All Time? Well, says the pipe-smoker, he’s a contender for that title too. As for me? I’m prejudiced; he was my boyhood tennis hero. But who is dispassionate in these matters? Who isn’t prejudiced?

Still, setting these party games aside, what of this year? Even if you argue that the renaissance of Federer and Nadal has been made easier by the absence of Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka (the other current male players to have won at least three Slam titles), it has still been extraordinary, unlooked for, delightful. But can it last?

Nadal hasn’t played a competitive match on grass this year, and he hasn’t gone beyond the fourth round at Wimbledon since 2011. So, despite one’s respect for everything about him, the pipe-smoker says “no chance, I’m afraid. But Federer? I don’t think he’ll win but you’d be rash to bet against him…”

Last weekend he lost the final In Halle (where till now he has always won) to the young Croat Borna Coric, who played a very good game indeed. He played well enough to make the result quite understandable. More worrying for Federer’s legion of admirers was that the Great Man had struggled uncharacteristically in earlier rounds, with an awful lot of sets going to a tie-break.  He had come through, perhaps because some of his opponents, unlike young Coric, didn’t believe they could beat him. One should never underestimate the importance of his aura of invincibility. Federer, like the All Blacks, has won matches not only because of the ability to produce the great stroke at the right time, but because everything told him he could still do it, told his opponent that the game was about to slip away from him.

“Well,” says the pipe-smoker, assuming his Wise Old Hack’s role, “the conventional view is that you usually need at least one demanding match in the first week to set you up for the second, but at Roger’s age, how many long matches can he manage? If that had been a five-setter at Halle, young Coric would have run away with the fourth to win 3-1 instead of 2-1.  I don’t say it’s yet a case of ‘mene mene tekel upharsin’, the writing on the wall at Belshazzar’s Feast, you remember, but Time’s winged chariot and all that, Time’s winged chariot , you know.”

“So, if not Rafa and you’ve all but ruled Roger out, then who?”

“Well, “ he sucked on his pipe, “I think it’s too soon for Novak and far too soon for Andy and Stan, after the operations all three have had. So the only ones left with experience of winning a Slam are Juan Martin Del Potro and Marin Cilic. And I don’t see either of them coming through. Juan Martin has a dodgy wrist, and Cilic? I don’t know about Cilic, even though the Fed beat him in last year’s final. I don’t know why – he’s won the American title but I can’t picture him winning at Wimbledon.”

“So a new champion? That would liven things up a bit, wouldn’t it.”

“Sure, sure, but the odds are against it. They’re mostly like two-year-olds that flop even before the 2000 Guineas is run. Dimitrov, Kygrios, Thiem, Raonic, and the rest. They’re like that Cabinet Minister who asked why he had been sacked and was told “not up to it”.

“Young Coric?”

“Coric? Nobody beats the Fed twice in a month.”

“So it will be Roger? That’s your judgement?

The Wise Old Hack sucked on his dead pipe

“Can’t see it myself,” he said. “Could be wrong but can’t see him winning this year.”

“But you can’t see anyone else winning either.”

“That’s how it looks. Not a winner in the field, if you ask me.”