Roger Federer: (Un)arguably the GOAT

Whenever I see an article that says RF is Greatest of All Time (GOAT), there is always a qualifier "arguably". I don't know what else the guy can do. Anyway I myself don't believe in GOAT, but he is the best I have seen since I started watching tennis 25 years ago. There is also this constant comparison of him and Sampras, but I think that is a wrong comparison. The person he should be compared with is the great Ivan Lendl. In the chart below I show how Federer compares with Lendl, Sampras and his greatest rival, Rafael Nadal. Though i personally don't like Nadal kind of play, I like the intensity he brings in to the match.

In the chart below, winning percentage(# of matches won/total matches played) in a season is plotted vs the year (Year is normalized to reflect the total year they played as professional tennis players). Notice the longevity of Lendl at the top of his game, only partly matched by Federer. Federer's greatest years were undoubtedly 2004-2006 when he was always above 90%. Only Lendl has 5 years above 90%. Federer may not be able to match that, but he is the only player apart from Lendl to have lost the Year end # 1 ranking and regain it, Federer doing it this past year.

It is interesting to note that Sampras never had even a single year with winning % above 90. Clearly Federer is towards the end of career as per the historical data shown in the chart. I only hope Nadal curve doesn't fall of precipitously.

As somebody noted, since 2004 Australian Open, Federer has lost in a Grand Slam event only to the eventual winner. I hope he breaks the 286 weeks record as #1 currently held by Sampras. Of his 62 titles, 16 are GS and 16 are Masters.

I hope I can get to the US open this year to watch him play.

Central Park, NY

I have never driven in NY city, but this time during the thanksgiving weekend when my friends were here, we drove to the city and it was very good. I was able to take a picture of the upper east side buildings in the evening twilight from central park and i really liked the picture.

Top Down Approach: Never Works

I read this very nice quote from the book of Stanford Professor Linda Darling-Hammond in her website "Bureaucratic solutions to problems of practice will always fail because effective teaching is not routine, students are not passive, and questions of practice are not simple, predictable, or standardized. Consequently, instructional decisions cannot be formulated on high then packaged and handed down to teachers" which is from her book The Right to Learn

Meeting KJ Yesudas

As i was waiting at Gate D10 at LaGuardia Airport, i thought I will go and get a cup of coffee. While waiting in the line to pay for my coffee I saw KJ Yesudas walking with his traditional white dress and i smiled at him and he smiled back at me. I couldn't resist and went and talked to him. Since i had to pay for my coffee, he told me that he is at gate D6. After paying for my coffee, i went and talked to him.

It was a very pleasant conference. I told him that his is a "theiveega kural", meaning divine voice. He was curiously asking me about my research related to the hard disk drive. When i told him currently we are working on a problem he commented that in science a problem is not the problem in the manner in which we refer to it in everyday life, but rather a problem whose solution is not yet there.

He said that it was mostly God's gift that he is able to sing. He was telling me about the meaning of word "kadavul".

Of the many songs i have in my collection, i could only mention the following three to him

1. Theivam thantha veedu
2. Mandhiram idhu mandhiram
3. Neeyum bommai, naanum bommai

Actually I told him about a "sirappu thenkinam" i heard when I was a 8 years old on vividh bharathi, in 1982 and referred to him about a comment he made about the song that his son vinod likes. He told me it was "En iniya pon nilave".
Usually i don't fly out of LaGuardia, as the flights invariably get delayed there. I am thankful that I did chose LGA this time around.

First Email

This is our one year olds' first email, sort of :-)
eeeeeeefvf nfffffffmhy khhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,
dcbnffffffffffffffffffvvvvvvvnv
PS: Actually he was helping his mom when she was writing one.