Now, undoubtedly Roger Federer may be one of the finest players to ever wield a racquet. But greatest ever? No way. The way I see it, if an athlete in an individual sport struggles against and is in fact dominated by his one and only consistent rival - Nadal - then he cannot be bestowed the title of best ever. And who cares anyway? Federer has proven that he is the best player of his generation and that is the only accurate and historically fair declaration one can make in the first place. Just as Pete Sampras, Bjorn Borg, Rod Laver, Pancho Gonzalez, Jack Kramer, Don Budge and Bill Tilden were the bests in their respective eras. The level of competition from decade to decade varies so greatly and

And I'd say it's likely that Borg and Nadal are the greatest players to ever toil on the red clay - it's hard to imagine otherwise. It's pretty much a given that in the modern era of intense media coverage no players come close to this duo. But it's just impossible to know how they would have competed against those from tennis' antiquity when racquet technology was non-existent and the players competed in long pants.

Would it be so hard if tennis announcers would simply utter the words "that I've ever seen" after the word greatest? That would be fair. McEnroe has been witness to a plethora of incredible players in his half-century of existence and if he does indeed think Borg and Nadal are the greatest clay courters or that Federer is the greatest all-around player that he's ever seen - that's a worthy enough compliment. No need to attach further historical significance to it.

Another aspect to this Greatest of All Time talk in tennis is that it seems to be strictly numerically based. That is, the number of Grand Slam titles won during a career. Pete Sampras is currently atop the list with 14 major titles with Federer just one shy of the Californian. But how many more Slam titles would Borg (who ended up with 11), Connors (8) or McEnroe (7) possess if this trio had played the Australian Open with any regularity? Back in the 1970's and early 1980's the top players often skipped the Australian Open - Borg only played once played Down Under.

And then think of the great players from the late 1940's through most of the 1960's. Tennis was still considered an amateur event and those players who decided to turn pro to earn significant money were disqualified from competing in the Grand Slam events. When Jack Kramer (who by the way was the first player wearing shorts to win Wimbledon in 1947) took aggressive control of the "professional tour" in the early 50's he recruited nearly all of the best players to join him.

It'd be a fun task but one of pure conjecture to consider how many major titles that Kramer, Gonzalez, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall and others would have won. And then there's Rod Laver. The Rocket won a true Grand Slam in 1962 - that is, winning all four Slams in a calendar year - but he proceeded to join the pro tour until the inception of Open play in 1968. He then promptly won another calendar year Grand Slam in 1969 and finished with 11 major titles. Laver spent five prime years while exiled on the pro tour so it's not a stretch to say that he may likely have accumulated upwards of 20 Slam titles. Though the circumstances are obviously vastly different, it's not dissimilar to Ted Williams who would own many more batting records had he not lost nearly five years when fighting in two wars.

I suppose this "best ever" talk has been around since the inception of professional sports. It’s a natural instinct to compare a player to one from another epoch. Grandparents and their grandchildren have spirited arguments when discussing the merits and accomplishments of their favorite athletes in vastly different times. But let's not falsely reduce or inflate an athlete's greatness by rushing to judgment by asserting with utter authority how they'd perform against those in the recent or ancient past. Sports is not math where there is a fixed formula. Rather I view it as more of an art where ambiguity and shading predominate.