Roger Federer: The Greatest of All Time, Must Be the Best in His Era, Surely?

Roger Federer suffered yet another body blow yesterday when he took a straight sets loss to his compatriot, Stanlias Wawrinka, in the third round of the Monte Carlo Open.

With the emergence of players like Andy Murray, and with Novak Djokovic showing a return to form, many experts feel that Federer is done.

I find such comments disrespectful to a man who has been such a great champion of the modern era.

The reality is that despite Federer's slight dip in form on the ATP Tour and in the Masters 1000 events, his record in the majors is second only to world No. 2 Rafael Nadal over the last 12 months.

Nadal truly has proved to be Federer's nemesis, the Spaniard has won 13 of the duo's 19 encounters and he has defeated Federer five times in a Grand Slam Final.

While few would dispute that these two players are far and away the best in their era, questions must surely be raised as to whether we can classify Federer as the greatest player of all time.

Even when Federer was at his most dominant and appeared to win practically every tournament that he entered, I felt people were too quick to start labelling him as the greatest of all time.

Many still hold the belief that as long as Federer can somehow manage to win a French Open, which is extremely unlikely, as long as Nadal is around, then he can still be regarded as the greatest player to ever play the game. I quite frankly do not buy this argument .

Quite simply, how can you be regarded as the greatest player of all time, if in reality you are not even the best in your era, and make no mistake Nadal's record against Federer (13-6) is as emphatic as they come.

It is almost as though, when Federer was dominating the game and making it look so   ridiculously easy, people were not appreciating the greatness of his predecessor Pete Sampras.

Sampras was year end world No. 1 for six consecutive years, Federer's dominance over a four period is very well documented, but to be the best in the world year in and year out for six years against some of the greats of the game is a truly remarkable achievement.  It is a record that I don't believe will ever be eclipsed.

In addition to his dominance over such a considerable period of time, Sampras also managed to maintain winning records against all his main rivals, he defeated eight time Grand Slam Champion Andre Agassi in 20 of the pairs 34 meetings.

To be fair to Federer, he has twice been one match away from completing the Grand Slam, which is to win all four majors in a year, in both 2006 and 2007 Federer won three of the four majors, and also reached the French Open final where he lost to, you guessed it, Rafael Nadal.

In all likelihood were Nadal not around, Federer would have completed the Grand Slam a couple of times, and been a very strong contender to be considered the greatest player of all time, but as it is Nadal is playing better than ever on all surfaces, he now holds three of the four majors and seems set to create more history each time he plays.

Some of you may not agree, but to my mind, you cannot be classed as the greatest of all time if you have such an emphatic losing record to a player in your own era.