Former Argentine player Martin Jaite believes that the intense
rivalry between
Roger Federer and
Rafael Nadal makes it difficult to label Serbia’s
Novak Djokovic as the greatest player ever.
There has been a lot of argument in favour of the current world
number to be regarded as the greatest player in the history of men’s tennis in
the singles category, having won as many as 24 Grand Slam titles.
Jaite was recently quoted in a report where he highlighted since
Federer and Nadal, who are also in the discussion of the greatest player ever,
were involved in an intense rivalry which stretched to more than a decade, it is
hard to favour Djokovic for that title despite his on the court achievements in
the sport.
“It’s very difficult for me to put a ranking of the best
players of all time, because there are a lot of important players that I didn’t
see play,” he said. “For example, many people talk about Laver, and I didn’t
see Rod Laver play. I started watching tennis with Bjorn Borg, Guillermo Vilas
and all that bunch.
“Then, you have to go by the number of titles won and the
number of Grand Slams. In that sense, one might think it’s Djokovic, but for
me, the duels of Federer and Nadal were stronger than the duels of Nadal and
Federer with Djokovic. It’s very difficult to take sides with any of the three.