Men, this was a heck of a match yesterday.

Roger Federer, King Roger, born and raised near my hometown (Basel), won yesterday his seventh Wimbeldon-title (equals the record of Pete Sampras & William Renshaw) and now defitively became the best tennis player in history. Here a extremly shortend list of the records, he has already broken:

- He's the leading-awardee in Laureus "Sportsman of the year": 4-times
- He has won the most Grand Slam tournaments (17)- He's only one of seven players that made the career Slam (Win all Grand Slam tournaments at least once)
- He's the only player in history that threetimes won at least three Gran Slam tournaments in one season (2004, 2006, 2007)
- He's the leader (together with Roy Emerson) in years with at least two Grand Slams won: 5 years in a row
- Together with Sampras, Nadal and Borg he's the co-leader in seasons-streak with at least one Grand-Slam-title: 8 years in a row
- He's the only guy, that reached in all four Grand-Slam tournaments at least 5-times
- He's the all-time-leader in reaching semi-finals in Grand-Slams: 32 times
- He's the all-time leader in the matches-won-streak (equal to Jimmy Connors: 31) and also in sets-won-streak (36) in Grand-Slams
- He's won the most Grand-Slams-matches: 244 (Second is Jimmy Connors with 233)
- He's also the leader in master-tournament-finals participation (32) & second in winning them (20, Nadal's got 21)
- He's won the World Tour finals tournament the most times: 6 times
- He's the all-time point-leader as well for the season-end as for the highest score ever reached in the ATP Ranking (8370 points in 2006). (Also highest season-ending points in the Champions Race (1674 points))
- He's was the longest Nr.1-inhabitant of all time (even longer then Steffi Graf) with 237 weeks (Second is Connors with 160 weeks)
- Since YESTERDAY he's also the leader in total weaks as Nr.1 (286) together with Sampras (but gonna break this record automatically...)
- He's holding the record for most ATP-finals-victorys in a row: 24
- He's the the all-time streak for wining on Grass (65-times) as well as winning on hard-ground (56-times) (Nadal is the leader for Sand-games: 81)
- Last but not least: with a win procent of 94,2% he holds the best 3-years-total as well as in the percent of winning tournaments (69,4%) and in finals-reching (94,1%)


All in all, there's surely no discussion, that he obviously is the best tennis player of all time.

Surely he's also one of the best sportsmen of all-time: Besides Jordan, Russel, Babe Ruth, Pele and Ali

But who is the greatest? Let's have a fair discussion on this one, as objective as possible...

In addition here a link, were you find pictures of all 17 Grand-Slam-titles:

bluewin.ch/de/index.php/437/de/sport/bildergalerie?id=36885

Sorry, I am ignorant on the subject. I bet Serena could out-squat him though.

I did read your post to be more educated on the matter, however.

Good post.

I'm watching tennis and all I can say is that he's the best player of all time. And because he's Swiss I like him.

daddyfatsax wrote:


Federer is definitely the GOAT in the tennis world.

It is cool to see him keep winning and regain that #1 ranking when people were saying he was done years ago.

Best Sportsman of All Time? Wow. I would say Jordan, but I don't want to come off as ignorant, so I will pass for now. Lance Armstrong has to be up there in the top 10, right. It is so hard to compare people from all different sports and eras. Damn near impossible. I mean who can really argue against a Jessie Owens? It's a crazy question. Sweet post though.

Lance Armstrong is a juicer though. I think that disqualifies him.

roundhouse wrote: Yeah, he definitely cheated (unfortunately )

Have you guys read articles and research and stuff about the past few years of cycling? After they tried harder to clean things up, the times for everyone are down ridiculous amounts compared to Armstrong's heyday. Plus like a billion people have been caught and suspended.

College Wolf wrote:
Yeah, but everyone was cheating. So Lance was just the best of the cheaters. He still won the Tour de France like 7 times, which is just ridiculous. It wasn't like he was doping and going up against a bunch of clean riders. They were all of the same playing field as far as I'm concerned.

It's kind of like Barry Bonds getting such a huge wrath, unfairly in my opinion, because he was really just the best of all the cheaters.

It sounds dirty to say it like that but I think that is the truth.

BonK wrote: That's fair. I can actually roll with that.

I'm not saying that winning the Tour de France 7 straight times isn't an incredible feat, but the the question in the OP is "best sportsman of all time". I dont think a true sportsman would need to cheat, regardless of whether everyone else is or not. Therefore, Lance Armstrong is disqualified.

roundhouse wrote: Also a very fair point.

Maybe another point.

Cycling surely is a big and important sport, as Basketball is (the game I personally love the most) but are these World sports?`

I want my MTW wrote: Cycling and Basketball are both very popular sports around the entire world, yes.

Popular yes, but how's the international competition rate?

Well I'm surely the last guy, that says something against Basketball, I love this game,
but doesn't make you a bit suspcious that the US still gives the most of the Superstars in this Sport?

The same in Cycling: how many guys of South America, Africa, Australia or Asia do you know, that are cycle-stars?

But with tennis (as it is with soccer) there's a whole different story: Sure Asia (Vijay Amritraj, Leander Paes, Ramesh Krishnan, Ramanathan Krishnan, Kei Nishikori, Shuzo Matsuoka, Zenzo Shimizu, Jiro Sato & Africa (Karim Alami, Hicham Arazi, Byron Black, Kevin Curren, Ismail El Shafei, Younes El Aynaoui, Andrew Pattison, Cliff Drysdale, Keith Diepraam, Raymond Moore, Johan Kriek) aren't that dominant, but beneath Europe & Northern America, there are at least quite a lot of South Americans and Australiens as well, and over a long period, i.e. BIG competition. That's why there are so many different winners of Grand Slams, too...

Maybe you can argue, in Soccer there would it be even harder, but that's just half correct, because there's really difficult to find such a dominant player, who also have won that much... Is it Pele, is it Maldini, Raul or Francisco Gento (never heard of this name? Well he the former 'Champions League' 6 times!! & was 12-times Spanish-champion! & even Euro-Champion)