Eimear Ryan: Why are we so obsessed with the idea of the GOAT?

By what metric do we measure success? In titles, tallies or in difficulty levels? To compare two players from different eras is, in many ways, like comparing apples with oranges

GOAT?: Serena Williams waves to fans after losing in the third round of the US Open in New York. Pic: AP Photo/John Minchillo

Australian tennis icon Margaret Court (nominative determinism if ever I saw it) caused a minor kerfuffle recently when giving an interview on the occasion of Serena Williams’s announcement that she was soon going to retire. ‘Serena, I’ve admired her as a player,’ Court told the Daily Telegraph. ‘But I don’t think she has ever admired me.’ 

Court – whose heyday was in the sixties and early seventies – raised further eyebrows when she said that she would have loved to play in Serena’s era, offering that tennis is now ‘so much easier … How I would love to have taken family or friends along with me. But I couldn’t. I had to go on my own or with the national team. People don’t see all that. We didn’t have psychologists or coaches with us. It’s a whole different world. That’s what disappoints me – that players today don’t honour the past of the game.’