Roger Federer, pictured here after the Australian Open final, is clearly not, but Rafael Nadal, talking with the last man to complete a Grand Slam, Rod Laver, is poised to win all four majors this year.  Nadal has already won in Melbourne, is a heavy favorite to win the French, proved last year that he can win Wimbledon, and showed by winning the Australian Open and Indian Wells this year that he can win on hardcourts, the New York surface where the Grand Slam season ends in September.

Only one man other than Laver has won the true Grand Slam, meaning the four majors in order, and that was American Don Budge in 1938. (Three other players hold “career slams,” meaning they have won all four but not in order — Fred Perry, Roy Emerson, and Andre Agassi.)  The term Grand Slam originated, according to Bud Collins’ indispensable and encyclopedic History of Tennis, in 1933 when Australian Jack Crawford won the first three legs and sought the U.S. championship.  Collins wrote: “The prospect of his winning that one, too, intrigued a New York Times columnist, John Kieran. If he did, wrote Kieran, it would be something like a ’grand slam’ in bridge.” Crawford lost in a grueling five-setter in the final to Perry, including a second set by the pre-tiebreaker days score of 11-13, but the Grand Slam was born.

 Laver in his 1973 memoir The Education of a Tennis Player (the prose of which bears the hyperbolic stamp of Collins, his collaborator) wrote: “I like to think the tennis Slam is the hardest of all because you have to get your game up to the top level four times over an eight-month stretch, and of course your’e playing other tournaments in between, too. Much travel and changing conditions are involved. In 1969, I started in the tropical summer heat of Brisbane and wound up in the autumn rain of New York.”

And those varying conditions are even more varied now.  When Laver won his Grand Slams — as an amateur in 1962 and in the Open professional era of 1969 — only the French was not played on grass. Today, there are two on hard courts, the fast courts of Flushing Meadows and the slower blue hard courts of Melbourne, as well as the red clay of Paris and the grass of Wimbledon.  The modern Grand Slam is as difficult as it has ever been. 

Nadal has a long way to go, with the two most difficult for him coming last, but if he pulls it off, he’ll have to rank atop the list in the perpetual argument of who is tennis GOAT — the greatest of all time.

Sorry, Roger.

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Even if Federer wins five more Wimbledons in a row, his status as the GOAT is dubious without the French, just as Bjorn Borg’s failure to win the U.S. Open excludes him from the conversation, just as Pete Sampras’ failure to win the French hinders his argument. And what about Bill Tilden, winner of six U.S. National Championships (then the U.S. Open) in a row from 1920-26? Or Richard Sears, who in the 1880s won the U.S. title seven times in a row?

Laver, winner of two calendar-year Grand Slams, both as an amateur in 1962 and in the open, professional era in 1969, is still undoubtedly the GOAT to beat. Laver turned pro in 1963 and missed five years of Grand Slams. You can argue that Pancho Gonzalez and Jack Kramer who missed even more years might have surpassed Laver, Emerson and others in Grand Slam titles. We’ll never know, and that’s why the debate sometimes goes in circles and provides John McEnroe endless fodder to talk about instead of the match at hand. Laver’s record, however, is tangible and speaks for itself. He is, for now, the greatest of all time.

If Federer can beat Nadal at Roland Garros, he’ll have legitimate chops in the conversation. As Borg said in a press conference Saturday, “He definitely will be the greatest player ever to play the game.” But even with a win, Federer will have a career losing record against Nadal. He’s 6-10 going into Saturday’s play, including 2-3 in Grand Slam finals. I ask you this: Can you be the greatest of all time and still have a losing record to a peer in your era?

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