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3/6/11 2:58 AM | Johan Lindahl
Jimmy Connors comes up as the best tennis player of all-time according to a computer ranking developed by an American math whiz who tried to quantify the long-running and unsolveable debate over "best in the world."
But the choice of the bad boy from three decades ago is sure to be a controversial one for today's fans, who can only find three current players - Roger Federer (7th), Rafael Nadal (24th) and Andy Roddick (29th) on the list populated with American men of a past age. Rod Laver, a calendar-year Grand Slam winner twice in the 1960s didn't even get rated as he played before the ATP rankings were begun.
The controversial list was calculated by university researcher Filippo Radicchi, who ran stats from more than 133,000 matches played in the past four decades. Connors stood No. 1 for 160 consecutive weeks from 1974-77, won a record 109 titles including eight Slams. Connors is trailed by his old rivals Ivan Lendl and John McEnroe in the Top three.
Bjorn Borg only managed tenth and Pete Sampras took eighth. "We performed a complete analysis by determining the best players on specific surfaces as well as the best ones in each of the years covered by the data set," said the academic. "Among all top players in the history of tennis, Jimmy Connors has been undoubtedly the one with the longest and most regular trend, being in the top 10 of the ATP year-end ranking for 16 consecutive years."
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