Renowned coach and former player Mark Petchey has argued it is \u201crecency bias\u201d to think Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are better than the Big Four in response to Patrick Mouratoglou\u2019s much-debated statements.<\/p>\n
Mouratoglou, who has coached Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, frequently voices his opinions on tennis on his social media accounts.<\/p>\n
The Frenchman has claimed that Alcaraz and Sinner are \u201calready playing at a higher level than Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in their prime.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Mouratoglou hit back at Tsonga\u2019s comments<\/a> by saying: \u201cI don\u2019t believe for one second that today\u2019s top players are weaker or less dangerous than those of previous generations.<\/p>\n \u201cPlayers like [Jack] Draper, [Holger] Rune, [Alex] De Minaur, [Taylor] Fritz, [Ben] Shelton, [Felix] Auger-Aliassime are huge players. Really huge. And I\u2019m not even sure that anyone from the previous generation would beat them on a regular basis.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking on Tennis Channel\u2019s\u00a0The Big T <\/em>podcast, Petchey opposed Mouratoglou\u2019s claims, highlighting Nadal\u2019s achievements as a teenager as an example.<\/p>\n \u201cTo 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\u2019s just recency bias. That\u2019s all that is,\u201d said Petchey, who has coached Murray and Emma Raducanu.<\/p>\n \u201cJust because you\u2019re seeing them every single day, you just think they\u2019re the best players because that\u2019s what I\u2019m seeing all the time.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t tell me that peak Rafa on clay isn\u2019t beating those guys. Let\u2019s just take a look at Rafa as an 18, 19-year-old.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe forget that this guy was on another level, but because it was in \u201905, we\u2019re suddenly consigning it to the dustbin, saying, \u2018That doesn\u2019t matter, that was a different era, it wasn\u2019t as strong as now.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cUh, I think Roger was playing particularly well in \u201905, if I remember rightly. [Andy] Roddick was still around, there was awesome players around.<\/p>\n Rafael Nadal addresses Djokovic, Alcaraz, Sinner debate and asserts Patrick Mouratoglou is \u2018wrong\u2019<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz \u2018don\u2019t have weaknesses\u2019 as \u2018Big 4\u2019 comparison made<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWould they all beat each other on various days? 100%. Yes, they (Alcaraz and Sinner) are in the same ballpark as the Big Four, there\u2019s no doubt that they\u2019re gonna be in that kind of stratosphere. But to just lazily say that they are comfortably better than the Big Four, just doesn\u2019t sit well with me.\u201d<\/p>\n The Brit was also adamant that the ATP\u00a0top 20 was stronger during the Big Four generation than it is now.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that when you have four of the greatest players that we\u2019ve ever seen in the same era, surely if you\u2019re gonna go down the evolution route of that players are getting better, if you\u2019ve got four of them in that point of life, the backlog behind that has to be better,\u201d the former world No 80 said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd therefore, all of those players that were behind them; the [Tomas] Berdych\u2019s, the [Grigor] Dimitrov\u2019s\u2026 they\u2019re clearly getting better because they\u2019re having to butt up heads against these guys every single week.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd 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\u2019re saying is, there\u2019s two guys that are great, and everybody else isn\u2019t close to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Petchey added: \u201cThe reality is that the argument, it doesn\u2019t really serve tennis particularly well, and I also don\u2019t think it\u2019s correct.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd there\u2019s no real way of measuring it. But having watched nearly all of the Big Four matches\u2026 I\u2019m watching Carlos and Jannik play, and there\u2019s no doubt for me that what I was watching back then was equally \u2014 if not superior to what we\u2019re watching right now. It was a poor argument.\u201d<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Rafael Nadal makes \u2018it\u2019s done\u2019 comment on Novak Djokovic\u2019s hopes of 25th Grand Slam<\/a> The post \u2018It\u2019s recency bias to say Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are better than Djokovic, Nadal, Federer\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Renowned coach and former player Mark Petchey has argued it is \u201crecency bias\u201d to think Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are better than the Big Four in response to Patrick Mouratoglou\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}ATP Tour News<\/h2>\n
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