Why this is not a weak era.

I know this has been argued again and again, but it really is a disrespect to every player on tour right now to say this is a weak era. It is also an absurd argument against Federer being the GOAT. There are three major reasons for this:

1. A player's draw looks better decades later than it does at the time.

This is because we do not know the success that young players playing right now might have. For instance, right now, Federer beating Murray in the 08 US Open finals looks respectable but nothing special. However, Murray is young and I fully expect that he will win 3-6 grand slams in his career. If that happens, Federer's victory over him suddenly looks a lot better. Basically, the point is that the players Federer is beating now will have success later, and thus those victories will look better in the future, just like victories of players like Sampras and such look better after time.

Let me illustrate this again with another example. In 2003, Nalbandian beat Federer in the 4th round of the Australian Open. At the time of that victory, some people on here probably would've said "Federer is a clown who hasn't been beyond the quarters of any slam and it still took Nalbandian 5 sets." In retrospect, that victory looks VERY impressive. Federer's victories now will be similar in many cases.

2. It is inherently illogical to say that a player can't be the greatest because he dominated players who haven't won many slams.

This is rather obvious but doesn't occur to many people. If you dominate an era, that means you are winning just about every slam. This means that no matter how good the other players are, they won't rack up lots of slams. That doesn't show that the other players aren't good. It simply shows that the dominating player is far better.

Here's the example I haven always given. Let's say that somehow there was a perfect tennis player created. This perfect player plays in an era with Federer, Sampras, Laver, Borg, McEnroe, Connors, Agassi, Becker, Edberg, and Wilander. Obviously, this is an ABSURDLY strong era. However, this is a PERFECT tennis player, so he still wins about 3 slams a year, leaving none of those 10 all time greats with many slams. Does this make those players weak? Absolutely not. Number of slams won is NOT solely indicative of a player's ability, but rather how much better he is than those around him. In our case, Federer was so much better than everyone else (except on clay where Nadal was better than everyone else) that no one else got many slams. That does NOT mean they are any worse than players in previous eras who did win slams.

Let's delve into this a bit more.
- Federer beat Marat Safin 4 times in slams. Safin would probably have 3 or 4 slams instead of 2 if Federer wasn't there.
- He beat Lleyton Hewitt 6 times at high rounds of slams. Hewitt would probably have about 5 slams if Federer wasn't there.
- He beat Andy Roddick 7 times (probably will be 8 after tomorrow) in the quarters or above of slams. Roddick would have won these slams without Federer there. He would probably have 6 or 7 slams overall (especially given this Wimbledon) if Federer wasn't there.
- He beat Nalbandian 3 times in high rounds. I think Nalbandian would have won a slam or two without Federer.
- Federer has probably robbed Haas of 1 or 2 slams as well.
- He has already beaten Djokovic 3 times at high levels of slams, so I would say Djokovic would probaby have 3 slams already without Federer.
- Del Potro and Murray are just getting started, but both would probably have slams (09 FO and 08 US respectively) if Federer wasn't there.

Basically, the point is that without Federer, these players who people say are bad because they didnt win many slams WOULD have won many slams. They WOULD be considered great. To say that Federer's opponents were weak because Federer always won is tantamount to saying "Federer is not the greatest because he dominated everyone too much." It is ridiculous.

3. Right now the lower ranked players are better than in years prior. This makes the higher ranked players SEEM less good when they are not.

The fact is that the level of the lower ranked players in this era is undoubtedly better than in years past. Anyone, including Pete Sampras, would/does agree with this. This means that it is way easier for a top player to lose in early rounds of a slam, because they are simply facing higher quality players in early rounds. What this means is that it is a lot harder for any single player to consistently get to higher rounds of slams. As a result, the top players dont SEEM as consistent as top players in previous decades because they have lost early sometimes. For this reason, people here call those top players lame. That is not the case. It is just that the difference between top ranked and lower ranked players is not as big as before. That does NOT in any way mean that the top ranked players are not as good as previous decades' top ranked players.

CONCLUSION: In today's era there is a smaller gap between top players and lower ranked players. This makes it harder for the top players to look consistent. Furthermore, Federer has been so far ahead of everyone (except Nadal) that even the more consistent players didnt win many slams, as Federer took them. These things BY NO MEANS show that today's top players are weak. It simply shows that the overall talent pool is higher AND that Federer was head and shoulders above everyone else. The idea that his opponents were weak is basically saying "Since he was better than everyone in his era, he must not be the best ever." What I just said applies mostly to the older players that Federer beat. In terms of up and coming players, Federer's victories over them will look more impressive in many years after they are retired with many victories to their names too. This is not a weak era.