Renowned coach and former player Mark Petchey has argued it is “recency bias” to think Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are better than the Big Four in response to Patrick Mouratoglou’s much-debated statements.
Mouratoglou, who has coached Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, frequently voices his opinions on tennis on his social media accounts.
The Frenchman has claimed that Alcaraz and Sinner are “already playing at a higher level than Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in their prime.”
Former world No 5 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga played against Djokovic, Nadal, Federer and Andy Murray, and he argued the Big Four faced stronger competition than Alcaraz and Sinner.
Mouratoglou hit back at Tsonga’s comments by saying: “I don’t believe for one second that today’s top players are weaker or less dangerous than those of previous generations.
“Players like [Jack] Draper, [Holger] Rune, [Alex] De Minaur, [Taylor] Fritz, [Ben] Shelton, [Felix] Auger-Aliassime are huge players. Really huge. And I’m not even sure that anyone from the previous generation would beat them on a regular basis.”
Speaking on Tennis Channel’s The Big T podcast, Petchey opposed Mouratoglou’s claims, highlighting Nadal’s achievements as a teenager as an example.
“To say that Sinner and Alcaraz are better than the Big Four, at this stage already of their career, I just think is a stretch, that’s just recency bias. That’s all that is,” said Petchey, who has coached Murray and Emma Raducanu.
“Just because you’re seeing them every single day, you just think they’re the best players because that’s what I’m seeing all the time.
“You can’t tell me that peak Rafa on clay isn’t beating those guys. Let’s just take a look at Rafa as an 18, 19-year-old.
“Let’s take a look at his 2005 season, [he won]: Roland Garros, Monte Carlo, Rome, Montreal, Madrid, Barcelona, Beijing, Bastad, Acapulco, Stuttgart, Sao Paolo. Miami runner-up.
“We forget that this guy was on another level, but because it was in ’05, we’re suddenly consigning it to the dustbin, saying, ‘That doesn’t matter, that was a different era, it wasn’t as strong as now.’
“Uh, I think Roger was playing particularly well in ’05, if I remember rightly. [Andy] Roddick was still around, there was awesome players around.
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“Would they all beat each other on various days? 100%. Yes, they (Alcaraz and Sinner) are in the same ballpark as the Big Four, there’s no doubt that they’re gonna be in that kind of stratosphere. But to just lazily say that they are comfortably better than the Big Four, just doesn’t sit well with me.”
The Brit was also adamant that the ATP top 20 was stronger during the Big Four generation than it is now.
“I think that when you have four of the greatest players that we’ve ever seen in the same era, surely if you’re gonna go down the evolution route of that players are getting better, if you’ve got four of them in that point of life, the backlog behind that has to be better,” the former world No 80 said.
“And therefore, all of those players that were behind them; the [Tomas] Berdych’s, the [Grigor] Dimitrov’s… they’re clearly getting better because they’re having to butt up heads against these guys every single week.
“And so therefore, I would make the argument that back in the day, the top 20 was way better than the top 20 we have right now. Because basically what you’re saying is, there’s two guys that are great, and everybody else isn’t close to them.”
Petchey added: “The reality is that the argument, it doesn’t really serve tennis particularly well, and I also don’t think it’s correct.
“And there’s no real way of measuring it. But having watched nearly all of the Big Four matches… I’m watching Carlos and Jannik play, and there’s no doubt for me that what I was watching back then was equally — if not superior to what we’re watching right now. It was a poor argument.”
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