Three men dominated world tennis with overwhelming superiority for two decades: Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic The Grand Slams were awarded year after year, leaving a historical legacy and an eternal debate about who is the best tennis player of all time. However, for some the discussion should be limited to the Balearic and Serbianthe two players with the most majorsas is the case of Yevgeny Kafelnikov.
The former world number one, who faced the Swiss on the court up to six times, achieving four victories, considers that the achievements of the player with the most Wimbledons in the history of the men’s circuit are very far from those of his counterparts, because for him It is not enough that the one from Basel is the third largest tennis player in history.
“To be honest, everyone has already forgotten about Federer. “It’s my personal opinion,” the Russian said on the First&Red podcast, in which he recalled the numbers of the ‘Big Three’ to express his point of view: “He has 20 Grand Slam titles. Objectively, Rafael Nadal is 22 and Novak Djokovic is 24.”
In this sense, Kafelnikov has recognized that, “for some, Federer will continue to be the best player of all time”, although he is clear that “numbers don’t lie”as well as “performance is measured by the number of tournaments and titles won”.
An aspect in which, in his opinion, the Swiss cannot compete with Nadal and Djokovic… despite the fact that in reality his record is greater: Federer has a total of 103 ATP titles, only behind Jimmy Connors’ 109, the Manacor player’s 92 and the Belgrade tennis player’s 103.
Furthermore, like its two main competitors, Federer is also an Olympic medalist: He has a gold in doubles (Beijing 2008) and an individual silver (London 2012), while Nadal has two golds (individual, in Beijing 2008 and in doubles, in Rio 2016) and a bronze (Rio 2016); and Djokovic was crowned Olympic champion in Paris 2024 after having won bronze in Beijing 2008.
