Rod 'The Rocket' Laver vs Roger Federer: Battle of the GOAT part 1

Thank you http://www.australianhistory.org/
and http://img.dailymail.co.uk/ for supplying the pictures.


Recently, I've been posting on Tennis Warehouse Forums and I've noticed that several of the threads mention Laver, as the GOAT or greatest of all time. I found this kind of surprising, after all Laver, only won 11 majors and yet he was considered to be better than Federer, who owns 13 majors or Sampras, with 14? I decided to do some research about Laver, so that I could better compare him to Federer and Sampras.


After doing some reading about Laver, I realized that it's difficult to judge how many majors he actually won. Wikipedia, listed him with the following achievements:

Rod Laver

11 major titles. The majors were won from 1960-1969.
Two calendar year grand slams (winning all of the majors in the same year.)
185 titles. Although some of those are amateur level.

But as I've mentioned before, prior to 'the open era' in 1968 all of the grand slam tournaments were open only to amateur level players, so it's impossible to compare Laver's amateur grand slam victories to Federer's Professional grand slam victories. Which means that in order to compare Laver to Federer I would have to exclude all of Laver's grand slams before 1968. Now there were professional level tournaments back then. The US Championship, The French Championship, and The Wembly Championship. These were like the majors today except there was only three of them and they were only played on two surfaces, grass and indoors. In 1963, Laver turned pro and won 8 of these tournaments over the course of four years. Unfortunately, before the Open Era the amateur circuit was more popular than then professional circuit and sometimes the professional tournaments were cancelled because people wouldn't even go to watch them. The quality level of the players who played at these tournaments varied from year to year so it's difficult at best to judge how important winning these tournaments actually was. Laver, only won 5 grand slam tournaments during 'The Open Era' and these are the only majors that can be directly compared to Federer. Basically, Rod Laver cannot be compared to Roger Federer based on achievements. If I tried to it would look like this.

Rod Laver

11 grand slam titles (5 pro) (6 amateur)

12 straight major semi-finals (or better)

There was no ranking system back when Laver was playing but most historians believe that he was the best player from 65 until 69.

Laver, did win the calendar year grand slam but three of the four majors were played on grass. Which was Laver's best surface.

Roger Federer

13 grand slams (professional)

18 straight slam semi-finals (or better)

#1 player for 237 straight weeks

Did not win the calendar year grand slam

That makes it really hard to compare them. Well since achievements are out I decided to compare videos of Federer and Laver. In the next part I'm going to post some videos of Laver and Federer and compare their playing styles.

To be continued...