The Contrarian Case That Andy Murray > Pete Sampras

There are multiple ways to judge a player's position in the greatest of all time debate:

• career accomplishments
• peak skill level
• edge against competition
• some combination of the above 3

No matter what sport this debate comes up in, it's always difficult to compare players that played in different eras or in different situations. For instance, many people think Babe Ruth is the best baseball player of all time, but was he really better than Willie Mays or Mike Trout? Or look at the NFL: Tom Brady is unanimously considered the greatest of all time due to his career accomplishments, but strictly skill level wise he's not a better quarterback than Aaron Rodgers, and many of his accomplishments came due to having the best coach of all time by his side. Fortunately in tennis, we can ignore the situational aspect that comes with team sports and only have to tackle the problem of comparing players from different eras.

We know that Pete Sampras was better than everyone else in his era, and we know that Andy Murray is not better than everyone else in his era. But, when considering if Andy Murray was better than the best player from another era, I'm reminded of a famous Google interview question:

There are 25 horses among which you need to find out the fastest 3 horses. You can conduct a race among at most 5 to find out their relative speed. At no point you can find out the actual speed of the horse in a race. Find out how many races are required to get the top 3 horses.

The answer is 7 races: you run 5 races of 5 horses each to obtain the top 3 in each race. Next we race the 5 winners: the winner of this race is the fastest horse. The second fastest horse is either the horse which finished 2nd in the fastest horse's first race, or the horse which finished 2nd in the winner's race. The 3rd fastest horse is then either the other of those two horses, the horse which finished 3rd in the winner's race, the horse which finished 3rd in the fastest horse's first race, or the horse which finished 2nd in the 2nd fastest horse's first race.

To make this easier to understand, assume the finishers in each race are as follows:
-a1 a2 a3 a4 a5
-b1 b2 b3 b4 b5
-c1 c2 c3 c4 c5
-d1 d2 d3 d4 d5
-e1 e2 e3 e4 e5

Where each letter represents a race, and each number represents that horse's finishing position within a race. In race 6, we race a1, b1, c1, d1, e1, and suppose without loss of generality that they finish in that order. Thus in race 7, we race b1, b2, a2, a3, c1, because those are the possible candidates to be the second or third fastest horse.

Unfortunately when it comes to comparing players of different eras, we cannot match them up a statistically significant number of times to see who is the better overall player like in our horse race puzzle (where there was no variance, so one race each was enough to determine the faster horse). So instead, we have to logically lay out the case for each player.

The Case for Pete Sampras

He won 14 grand slams, and was #1 for 286 weeks, meaning he was the clear best player in his era. He had winning records against Becker, Edberg, Courier, and Agassi who were the top players that mostly overlapped him. Andy Murray so far has won 3 grand slams, has only been #1 for 41 weeks, and is the 4th best player in his era.

The burden of proof is on the Murray side.

The Case for Andy Murray

Andy Murray has a higher peak ELO rating

ELO ratings are a simple rating system to determine skill level. You have a rating. If you win your rating goes up, if you lose your rating goes down. If you have a higher rating than your opponent then you gain more for a win and lose less for a loss, and if you have a lower rating than your opponent you gain less for a win and lose more for a loss.

Here are the all time highest peak ratings for tennis players:

1. Novak Djokovic 2570
2. Roger Federer 2524
3. Bjorn Borg 2519
4. John Mcenroe 2496
5. Rafael Nadal 2489
6. Ivan Lendl 2458
7. Andy Murray 2439
8. Jimmy Connors 2384
9. Boris Becker 2383
10. Pete Sampras 2376

A 63 point gap corresponds to roughly a 60% chance to win on a neutral surface. There's often worry of rating inflation over time -- that is due to a larger pool of players, the ratings at a later point in history are higher. For instance, Bobby Fischer probably had the largest edge over his competition of any chess player in the past 75 years, but his peak rating would not be top 10 right now. However, I don't think that is the case in tennis given that Mcenroe has a higher peak rating than Nadal while playing 30 years prior, and just about everyone would agree Nadal is a better all time player with a higher peak level.

Andy Murray's Stronger Competition

People don't appreciate just how difficult the competition is for Andy Murray. While Sampras has won far more grand slams than Murray (14 to 3), they've made a similar number of semifinals: 23 for Sampras and 21 for Murray.

• In Sampras' 23 SF, he made 18 finals and won 14 grand slams for a total of 41 SF/F grand slam matches.
• In Murray's 21 SF, he made 11 finals and won 3 slams for a total of 32 SF/F grand slam matches.

In Murray's 32 matches, he played 20 of those matches against Roger, Nadal, or Djokovic. The remainder were against Wawrinka, Roddick, Cilic, Raonic, Berdych, and Tsonga, who were consistent top 5-10 players with a total of 5 grand slams between them. Sampras simply did not face this level of competition. He did play a significant number of his SF+ matches against Agassi, Becker, Edberg, Courier, Rafter, Ivanisevic, Chang, Martin, Henman, or McEnroe, and these were all fantastic players (including some of the best ever), but it's not the same as playing over half the matches against the 3 best players ever. In SF+ matches played against the big 3, Murray was 4-16. In his other SF+ matches he was 10-2.

To take it one step further, over 30% (56/184) of Andy's career losses are to either Roger, Nadal, or Novak. If we add in Wawrinka it's 35%.

What % of Pete's losses are to either McEnroe, Connors, Edberg, Becker, Lendl, Courier, Agassi, Federer, or Ivanisevic? 18.4%

You might say that's because Pete was winning those matches while Murray was losing them. Let's look at overall % of matches those players make up.

% of matches Andy played vs Roger, Rafa, Novak, Stan: 12.2%
% of matches Pete played vs Mcenroe/Connors/Edberg/Becker/Lendl/Courier/Agassi/Federer/Ivanisevic: 12.1%

Andy has simply faced a much greater % of best of all time competition than Pete, and if we added in matches against Del Potro, Cilic, Roddick, or other players similar to the level of Ivanisevic then it would seem lopsided.

Andy Murray has a higher overall winning % than Pete Sampras while playing a higher % of matches on his worst surface

Andy Murray career win %: 78.06%
Pete Sampras career win %: 77.43%

Andy Murray % of matches on worst surface: 18.23%
Pete Sampras % of matches on worst surface: 14.63%

Won a higher % of matches in a tougher era while playing a higher % of those matches on his worst surface.

Andy Murray is the better all court player

Both players favorite surface is grass and least favorite surface is clay, but Andy is a far stronger clay court player: he's made the quarters, semis, or finals at the French Open 7 times vs 3 for Pete, including one final which Pete never reached. Andy has won 70% of his clay court matches vs a dismal 63% for Pete.

Andy's playing style would transition better to not just Pete's era, but any era better than Pete's style would transition to today's era

Andy moves well, he hits winners, he has a fantastic backhand, forehand, and one of the best return of serves of all time. Pete has one of the best serves of all time, one of the best forehands of all time, and one of the best net games of all time. The problem is, players who mostly come into the net nowadays get torched by passing shots. Pete's return of serve and backhand were liabilities, and I think he would struggle to play in this era, while Andy would be able to transition smoothly to Pete's era as his game compares closely with Andre Agassi's. Further, there have always been great baseline players in every era, but serve and volley is not a style that is ideal anymore.

Higher peak, better all around, tougher competition, higher % of matches won, likely better if eras switched

These are tough arguments to bypass, but I'm still not fully convinced. Despite all of these things, Pete still had winning records against the best players of his era (Becker, Agassi, Courier, Edberg) while Andy did not. I mostly did this as a devil's advocate in a fun debate, and do think there is a strong case that the 4th best player of the current era could be a better player than the best player of the previous era.

As a conclusion, here is my top 10 all time tennis players ranking:

1. Roger Federer
2. Novak Djokovic
3. Rafael Nadal
4. Bjorn Borg
5. Pete Sampras
6. Rod Laver
7. Ivan Lendl
8. John McEnroe
9. Andre Agassi
   10a. Andy Murray
   10b. Boris Becker

Top 10 peak skill level all time tennis rankings:

1. Novak Djokovic
2. Roger Federer
3. Rafael Nadal
4. Bjorn Borg
   ...I quit, too hard.