Tennis 2017

BigMike

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Seems like a good bet Rafa's going to pass Roger in career grand slams, right? After he destroys Anderson tomorrow, he'll be at 16, and then how many more Roland Garroses can you pencil him in for at age 31? Four or five? He's so far ahead of anyone else in the world on that surface that he could decline a decent amount and still win there. The only real obstacle is health.

Meanwhile, I'd probably rate 36 y.o. Roger's over/under for remaining grand slams at 0.5. Would love to see him take one more Wimbledon and end his career with a nice round 20.
All depends on who is healthy.

Obviously the Roger who played this week has a 0.000001% chance of winning another grand slam. The Roger who played Wimbledon, has a 70% chance of doing it again

Djoker/Murray? Do they return, and i mean return as players close to who they were

And now there is at least some chance we finally have interesting young talent coming up, so we may see a real breakout player soon

Ad then of course how does Rafa health go, he has had a lot of physical injuries and is getting old.

15 months ago it looked like a given DJoker would pass Nadal, and good chance he would pass Federer. He was head and shoulders the best player in the world, and had dominated the grand slams, and really it looked like no one was up and coming who could beat him. Now he is probably below 50/50 to win another major
 

thestardawg

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I think it's a tipping point for men's tennis. I think Djokovic might be done as an elite player. He's been out of sorts for some time now, and his mental game has been a problem. Murray has squeezed every bit of ability out of his body, and is probably on the decline.

Nadal is playing amazing, but he breaks very easily. He could win 3-4 more french opens, or miss the next 10 months with a sore elbow. Roger I think just needs to get his timing back. It showed here at the Open,, whereas 2 months ago he was playing like the world number 1.

I can tell you that I have no idea who will be number 1 at this time next year. Over the past 7-8 years that was a very easy equation to solve.
 

jsinger121

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6-3, 6-3, 6-4. Nadal made this look easy. Championship point was a serve and volley win for Nadal.
 

InstaFace

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Didn't face a break point, in the final of the biggest major of the year.

List of men who have won 3 US Open titles in the Open era: Connors, Sampras, Federer, McEnroe, Lendl, Nadal
List of men who have won 2 Wimbledon titles in the Open era: Becker, Borg, Connors, Djokovic, Edberg, Federer, Laver, McEnroe, Murray, Nadal, Newcombe, Sampras
List of men who have made 4 Australian Open Finals: Agassi (4-0), Djokovic (6-0), Edberg (2-3), Federer (5-1), Lendl (2-2), Murray (0-5, 4 to Djokovic), Wilander (3-1), Nadal (1-3)

Even if he never stepped on the clay at Roland Garros, Rafael Nadal would be an inner-circle hall of famer.
 

jon abbey

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Even if he never stepped on the clay at Roland Garros, Rafael Nadal would be an inner-circle hall of famer.
Thought this was crazy when I first read it, but I think you're right. 6 Grand Slam wins with none at the French is exactly what Edberg and Boris Becker did, and both of them are in the Hall of Fame.
 

InstaFace

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Biggest major of the year?
Singles Champion prize money: US Open $3.7M, Australian Open AUD 3.7M ($2.97M), Wimbledon GBP 2.2M ($2.92M), Roland Garros EUR 1.8M ($2.15M)

Total tournament prize purse: US Open $50.4M, Wimbledon GBP 31.6M ($48M USD), Roland Garros EUR 36M ($43.1M), Australian Open AUD 50M ($40.1M)

Total in-person attendance: Australian Open ~729k, US Open ~713k, Wimbledon ~473k, Roland Garros ~472k, (Indian Wells ~439k)
(The AO overtook the USO in 2015; they also give a bottle of whiskey to every credentialed media member if that would be enticing CP)

Tournament revenue, 2015: US Open $253M, Wimbledon GBP 169.7M ($241M), Roland Garros EUR 187.3M ($205M), Australian Open AUD 255M ($175M).

Total TV viewership mirrors this trend too. Look, I know the players all talk about Wimbledon being "special", particularly when prompted, probably because the Brits like to hear such things about themselves, but the money speaks for itself.
 

jon abbey

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Also, it's not nearly as drastic as it used to be, but I always had the impression that while Wimbledon on grass favored the big servers and net play and Roland Garros on clay favored the consistent baseliners, the two hard court majors were more of a 'fair' overall test.

Combine that with the US Open being last chronologically of the four, and I think it's fair to say it's the 'biggest', although I'm sure if you polled players which single tournament would they most like to win, you'd get plenty of votes for Wimbledon and probably some for Roland Garros too.
 

jon abbey

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Googling this topic, it seems like the consensus is that WImbledon is the most prestigious, but I wonder if that has changed in recent years.
 

Apisith

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From a fan perspective, Wimbledon is always the biggest for me. It has the most storied history, the invention and home of tennis etc.

Not sure whether the myths are all true but I would say that it's the most prestigious, and many of the players have said it.

I'm not surprised the US Open pays the most, it's America so the money is huge like it is for all sports.
 

Apisith

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I think it also helps Wimbledon that the two really dominant players of the last 20 years - Sampras and Federer - both won a lot there and both have said that it's their favourite tournament.
 
Singles Champion prize money: US Open $3.7M, Australian Open AUD 3.7M ($2.97M), Wimbledon GBP 2.2M ($2.92M), Roland Garros EUR 1.8M ($2.15M)

Total tournament prize purse: US Open $50.4M, Wimbledon GBP 31.6M ($48M USD), Roland Garros EUR 36M ($43.1M), Australian Open AUD 50M ($40.1M)

Total in-person attendance: Australian Open ~729k, US Open ~713k, Wimbledon ~473k, Roland Garros ~472k, (Indian Wells ~439k)
(The AO overtook the USO in 2015; they also give a bottle of whiskey to every credentialed media member if that would be enticing CP)

Tournament revenue, 2015: US Open $253M, Wimbledon GBP 169.7M ($241M), Roland Garros EUR 187.3M ($205M), Australian Open AUD 255M ($175M).

Total TV viewership mirrors this trend too. Look, I know the players all talk about Wimbledon being "special", particularly when prompted, probably because the Brits like to hear such things about themselves, but the money speaks for itself.
The US Open has night matches, doesn't take the middle Sunday off, and has a 22,000-seat center court where most of the fans are more likely to get altitude sickness than a good view of the action - do these figures take any of those facts into account?

The US Open is a huge tournament, but calling it the single biggest or most important tournament is a massive reach, IMHO.
 

BigMike

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Worldwide there is no doubt that Wimbledon is the biggest and most prestigious.

In the US then maybe the US Open is.

CP did a good job of laying out why the money is higher for US Open.
 

InstaFace

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The US Open has night matches, doesn't take the middle Sunday off, and has a 22,000-seat center court where most of the fans are more likely to get altitude sickness than a good view of the action - do these figures take any of those facts into account?

The US Open is a huge tournament, but calling it the single biggest or most important tournament is a massive reach, IMHO.
Your sneering remark about "altitude sickness" hasn't seemed to prevent a steady flood of people coming to see the action at the US Open. And its capacity enables it to serve more attendees and offer more prize money. If you don't think getting literally 50% more attendees and a 25% higher champion prize (and comparable TV viewership) makes a difference in how seriously the athletes regard an event, then we're not going to agree here.

About the only thing Wimbledon has over the US Open is some sort of "mystique" or "prestige" for being an older event. Firstly, hearing the term held up as some sort of debate-ender on a Red Sox fan site that used to mock the MFY for claiming such qualities, is a little stomach-turning. But more importantly, regardless of the athletes saying nice things in postmatch interviews at Wimbledon, their priorities are revealed in everything from the frequency of players skipping the event and rankings required to get into quallies to the extent to which top singles athletes play in doubles or even mixed doubles. What defines prestige, anyway? Level of interest by the public surely needs to be high on the list. Well, look at attendance, at revenue, at TV ratings.

For US TV ratings, at any rate, Wimbledon's men's final gets 2.2-2.3M viewers, the US Open as high as 3.55M and averaging 2.8M over the last 7 years, though with high variability given the periodic conflicts with NFL opening weekend. It's edge to the US Open in basically every ready-to-hand statistic, and certainly no slam-dunk in favor of Wimbledon that earns a remark such as "massive reach".
 

Schnerres

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It´s four Majors and it´s been like that for a long time. Why does it always have to end in a dick-measuring contest. That´s so boyish. Who cares about 500.000 Dollars more or 50.000 more people watching in the stadiums or what-not.

Every major has its own specifics, be it the tradition, the rowdy-fans booing, night-sessions, a huge arena, specific courts or surfaces, or other things. Pretty lame to not accept other tournaments as the same level as "my favourite".
 

kenneycb

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Comparing Wimbledon ratings to US Open ratings as some sort of definitive metric without even mentioning a five to eight hour time difference (but actively mentioning the NFL part) shows your bias.

Not a perfect analogy but Wimbledon is like the Masters. There's something there that makes it more special in people's eyes, whether that history, location, previous winners, etc.
 
For the record, I'm not advocating specifically for Wimbledon as such - for example, I suspect that for most players from places like South America or Spain with a great clay court tradition, Roland Garros is the major everyone wants to win the most. I feel as though the Australian Open is to the US Open as the PGA Championship is to the US Open in golf, a sort of junior version of a similar, slightly better championship, but as with golf, the other three majors all have points in their favor. And just as is the case with golf, there's no one biggest major in tennis, which has been my position all along.

FWIW, my crack about "altitude sickness" probably was over the top, although I think it's fair to say that the US Open has prioritized revenue generation over fan experience to a greater extent than the other three majors. That aside, I do think this is a particularly weird year in which to argue that the US Open is the most important major, given the seedings of the players in the two singles finals and the four semifinals (etc.) and how many men's players in particular fell by the wayside before the tournament even started. Personally, I'm more inclined to view that weirdness as an anomaly than something systemically caused by the length of the season and the number of injuries players are more likely to suffer by late August, etc. But if the latter arguments carry the day in the public's and the players' minds, it could be that the US Open starts to feel less important, and that the large prize money pools become necessary to inflate its importance rather than serve as status of its inherent importance.
 

Marceline

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For US TV ratings, at any rate, Wimbledon's men's final gets 2.2-2.3M viewers, the US Open as high as 3.55M and averaging 2.8M over the last 7 years, though with high variability given the periodic conflicts with NFL opening weekend. It's edge to the US Open in basically every ready-to-hand statistic, and certainly no slam-dunk in favor of Wimbledon that earns a remark such as "massive reach".
What about the UK TV ratings for Wimbledon compared to the UK TV ratings for the US Open?
 

Infield Infidel

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It will be interesting to see how much revenue the French Open generates after renovation/expansion for 2019(?). They are adding a roof to Chatrier, so, night matches, and also expanding the venue which currently has by far the smallest footprint of the four majors.

Edit: Roland Garros will have 3 new courts in 2018, a new "Greenhouse Court", surrounded by four new greenhouses in the botanical gardens next door in 2019, and a roof on Chatrier in 2020.
 
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BigMike

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How the heck did Andy Roddick become a tennis hall of famer with 1 major title?
He's a popular American .And the HOF is based in US. Michael Chang is also in HOF

Anyway, from the HOF website, this is the requirement

Distinguished record of competitive achievement at the highest international level, with consideration given to integrity, sportsmanship, and character.
https://www.tennisfame.com/hall-of-famers/eligibility-voting-process/

Roddick had the one major, plus 3 years in the top 5, and 9 years in the top 10