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Hot take but in my mind Federer is still the “better” player, at least from an aesthetic and “legacy” perspective.
I think decades from now people will still be reading about Federer’s forehand and watching his highlights, whereas they’ll just read about Novak’s insane trophy case but not actually watch him play.
Perhaps and there is some Floyd money mayweather aspect to Novak’s game. Novak is technically awesome. Very few weaknesses. He will find your weakness and make you win with that. He doesn’t hit so many winners but plays a lot of 60-40 balls.
FMM is like that. Doesn’t knock people out. But is just so damn technically perfect that he wins every match. But some people like the Manny Paq of the world who whilst not as good a boxer is a better entertainer.
Eh, I was never as impressed by Mayweather as others were. He was a one trick pony in an era of one trick ponies, his trick just happened to be better than everyone else's. He wasn't technically perfect. He had blazing speed but he couldn't, or at least wouldn't, do anything else. This was most prominent in his fight against Zab Judah, whom he shouldn't have let go the distance. All Floyd could do was dance around and throw combinations when the other guy made a mistake. What he couldn't do was take control of a fight and force the other guy to fight it his way.
While "take what the other guy gives you" may be good strategy in certain contexts, it has its limitations. To use an analogy from football, if a team is facing an opponent with good pass coverage the offense will try to run the ball as much as possible, give them looks that they think will create favorable matchups, and try to exploit weaknesses whenever they can. What Mayweather did was the equivalent of going out in shotgun on every down and hoping that the cornerback blew his assignment.
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