Whatever the numbers say, Federer's artistry was unrivalled

LONDON : The vacuous debate over who is the greatest male tennis player of all time will not cease now that Roger Federer has decided to hang up his racket and bask in the glow of his dazzling career.

Hard statistics show that the Swiss maestro has already been eclipsed by his great career rivals Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic in some of the key metrics used to determine greatness.

Federer, aged 36, won a record-extending 20th men's Grand Slam singles title at the 2018 Australian Open but it proved to be his last one and in the subsequent years he has watched Nadal reach 22 and Djokovic move to 21.

It is highly unlikely either of those two would have reached such staggering numbers, however, had it not been for the Basel-born phenomenon who turned thumping a tennis ball across a net into a higher art form that often defied imagination.

Former American top-10 player Brad Gilbert once wrote a popular book entitled Winning Ugly - a prerequisite for 99.9 per cent of players in the dog-eat-dog world of pro tennis.

For Federer, however, winning appeared to be only part of the deal - even if 1,251 match wins and a success rate of 82 per cent over a career spanning more than two decades suggests otherwise.

The Swiss did not just beat opponents.

More often than not he left them spellbound at the magic he was conjuring on the other side of the net.

His game oozed elegance. His groundstroke swings were pinpoint and smooth, his power effortless, his feel other-worldly and his movement full of explosive grace.

Those in the know already had wind of a special talent emerging from Switzerland even before Federer claimed the boys singles title at Wimbledon in 1998.

Three years later, he announced himself to a much wider audience by out-playing his