Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Federer–Murray rivalry


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. Mark Arsten (talk) 16:07, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Federer–Murray rivalry

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Per WP:NSPORTS "Sports rivalries are not inherently notable." Tennis guidelines say the same. There seems to be a steady stream of these rivalry pages lately. Tennis is a sport that inherently has players near the same ranking playing each other on a regular basis. See also WTA Big Three and Azarenka–Sharapova rivalry for other recent arrivals. We've also had deletions for Agassi–Rafter rivalry, Davenport–V. Williams rivalry, Davenport–Hingis rivalry, Becker–Sampras rivalry, Federer–Hewitt rivalry, etc... It's one thing to list this on a page like List of tennis rivalries, but to make a separate article seems like a poor choice to me. One can always find a few news sources for two tennis players describing a rivalry... it's easy, but it's not encyclopedic.

One would assume that once or twice a decade a special rivalry will come about that lifts a sport to amazing media coverage...Laver–Rosewall, Borg–McEnroe, Sampras–Agassi, Navratilova-Evert, Federer–Nadal, and several others. But just because they are the hot item right now doesn't give Federer/Nadal/Djokovic/Murray and disproportional piece of the rivalry article pie. We have Federer–Murray here, but we also have Federer–Djokovic Rivalry, Djokovic–Murray rivalry, Nadal–Djokovic rivalry, a proposed Nadal–Murray rivalry. Where does it end? This is the nature of tennis throughout it's history. Do we create rivalry pages for any players that play 10x? Anyone that wins a major and plays another that has won a Major gets a rivalry page? I would say no. We have an article here on wikipdedia that lists rivalries where sheer number of times met at important tournaments is the criteria. It's at List of tennis rivalries. Very few require stand alone articles but it gives readers a chance to see a list of tennis personalities who played each other a lot. That's all we really need here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 00:42, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * This deletion epidemic is getting a little ridiculous I created the Federer-Hewitt and Federer-Murray pages. Now I can understand why you deleted Federer-Hewitt, but this Federer-Murray is a legitimate rivalry. They have played multiple Grandslam finals against each other and if you delete this one you might as well delete Djokovic-Nadal and all the rest of them except Federer-Nadal for obvious historical reasons. Deletion of wikipedia articles for the soul sake of deletion is an atrocious policy in my opinion. Praline97 (talk)


 * For the most part I would say this rivalry creation epidemic is a little ridiculous. Most can be handled in a paragraph on the individual players pages. Plus most Grand Slam tournament winners have a career statistics page that includes wins or losses over all players, not just players they have played a whole bunch. But hey, I have nominated articles that the wiki community has decided to keep. I'm totally fine with what consensus decides on these many rivalry pages as we look at them one by one. I feel it does not belong here, but if most others love this page then I move on with no hard feelings. Most of the individual player pages should be cut in half in summarizing (which I try to do), and most rivalry pages could be folded in and removed from being a stand-alone article imho. Fyunck(click) (talk) 01:42, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Editors evaluating notability should consider not only any sources currently named in an article, but also the possibility of notability-indicating sources that are not currently named in the article. Notability requires only the existence of suitable independent, reliable sources, not their immediate citation. Wikipedia articles are not a final draft, and an article's subject can be notable if such sources exist, even if they have not been named yet. However, once an article's notability has been challenged, merely asserting that unspecified sources exist is seldom persuasive, especially if time passes and actual proof does not surface. If it is likely that significant coverage in independent sources can be found for a topic, deletion due to lack of notability is inappropriate. Theworm777 (talk) 04:22, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep WP:NRVE It has 99,600 results on google. Articles for deletion/Lendl–McEnroe rivalry has about 20,500 results on google and was a keep. Theworm777 (talk) 15:05, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The pretty much non-existent "federer sampras rivalry" gets 40,000 hits on google so that is not a good indicator of whether it should be an encyclopedic entry. I agree that we have to be careful that over time sources disappear and we can't hold that against an existing article. All I'm saying is that by consensus of wikipedia editors "Sports rivalries are not inherently notable." The reason is because sports like tennis are filled with hundreds and hundreds of players that play each other a lot. It's the nature of tennis. It's also the nature of the media to try and blow these things out of proportion. You say that it's not fair to judge an earlier rivalry because those old sources may not exist anymore and that's a fair point. However we also have to remember that wiki articles are forever... once they pass muster they stay, even 20 years from now. So we have to look at the big picture of tennis rivalries and whether they merit inclusion. Do we start creating all sorts of rivalry articles from the 50s, 60s and 70s just because the players played a lot and some news sources talked about it for a few months? I'm sure we could create a hundred without sweating much at all. The floodgates would be open. Or we follow WP:NSPORTS guidelines and try to capture the most famous couple of rivalries over every decade or so. To this day people still talk of Laver-Rosewall, Borg-McEnroe, Sampras-Agassi, Navratilova-Evert. 20 years from now will they still be talking of Murray–Nadal or Federer–Murray or Azarenka–Williams? There's nothing special about those that I can see. I'm not sure where we draw the line and maybe most editors will agree with you on keeping this article. Heck when we had to decide on how many yearly articles players should have I wanted a low number and lots of summation. I was outvoted so that the consensus is now if a player has ever won a Major they are entitled to a yearly article on their stats, and those yearly articles also include yearly articles from before they won their first Major. They are also entitled to "Jane Doe the early years" and "Jane Doe the Jr years." You'll see there are plenty of those types of articles now. I was outvoted but I follow the policy that was set that day since it's what editors at wikipedia wanted. Same here. I'm for following the minimal rivalry pages but if most editors want lots of them then we can do that too and I won't have to nominate so many for deletion. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:42, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sports-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 13:29, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete - Consensus has been that these sorts of articles are generally not notable enough. If 90% of finals were contested between these two in a set period, a la Nadal-Federer, then maybe it would be. This? No more notable than any of the deleted ones. There's a reason that football, rugby, horse racing, etc. rivalries, which generally are widely known, don't have articles. I don't understand why tennis fans insist on writing these, to be honest - I can't see anyone writing a Plato-Neal rivalry, despite that being an actual rivalry with proper bad blood between the two. In fact, there's no mention of their rivalry in their own articles. Luke no 94  (talk) 13:58, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * This is more notable than any of the deleted ones because it has significant media coverage about the rivalry. Murray is one of the very few players that has played Roger Federer (a all-time great in tennis) at-least 10 times and has a winning record 11-9 vs him or has beat him over 10 times. Theworm777 (talk) 14:19, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Playing someone a lot shouldn't be REMOTELY a grounds for notability. More and more tennis tournaments are cropping up, so the likelihood of them meeting increases. And again, I raise the point that there's a reason these lists aren't regarded as notable, and it's the fact that we would be littered with inappropriate comparisons. From that list, only 4 of the 20 matches are majors, so it's not a massive rivalry, unlike Nadal-Federer, whom have met in 10 majors and 18 other matches - the majority of which were finals anyway. All these comparison articles violate a long-standing consensus that basically every other sport's editors follow. Federer-Nadal is a proper rivalry, especially as they've played each other frequently whilst ranked at 1st and 2nd. Federer-Djokovic is a proper rivalry as they've played each other in 11 majors and in a huge amount of finals. Murray-Federer is not even close to the scale of these two, and isn't really a proper rivalry. Luke no 94  (talk) 14:36, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Rivalries WP:NRIVALRY"Sports rivalries are not inherently notable. Articles on sports rivalries, such as Yankees–Red Sox rivalry, should satisfy the general notability guideline." General notability guideline WP:GNG"If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list." This has received significant coverage in reliable sources and satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. Its plan and simple it has met the needs for a article and content is a good thing this isn't a paper encyclopedia. Theworm777 (talk) 07:07, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * It's received nowhere near the level of coverage that Yankees-Red Sox rivalry has, for example. I return to my previous point, that NO other sport's wiki editors spam a thousand different "rivalries" into articles. A rivalry actually has to be just that - a rivalry. Murray and Federer are just two competitors. You cannot have an article on every single tennis player matchup there's ever been, which is what you're trying to do as a WikiProject - tennis players will meet each other, and will do so more and more as the number of competitions increases. That doesn't make a "rivalry" any more notable. The only reason people are using the term rivalry for these players is to sell papers, because there's no rivalry there in reality, and all they're doing is discussing the history of two competitors, which is NEVER going to pass the long-standing consensus. Luke no 94  (talk) 09:26, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Almost nothing has received the level of coverage that Yankees-Red Sox rivalry has. It dont need to. The coverage in reliable sources decides if something is notable. Not what you think or what I think should and shouldn't be notable. I have looked at the afds for the other rivalry pages that was deleted and most of them are just 3 people putting delete not giving a wikipedia reason so there is really not any real consensus yet. Here is a list of 100s of rivalries College rivalry and there is many other kinds. Just cause you dont like calling them rivalrys don't mean everyone else don't. Theworm777 (talk) 10:26, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Uh, this consensus goes back a hell of a long way (literally, several years). As mentioned in the nomination, there is no issue whatsoever including this in a Tennis rivalry or whatever article, but it doesn't justify its own article. As I've said countless times, you can make a million billion different articles based on rivalries with plenty of them passing GNG, but that's not what Wikipedia is for. And again, only the tennis subproject insists on spamming all these "rivalries" that are nothing of the sort. Federer-Djokovic and Federer-Nadal, now those do pretty much justify one. Federer-Murray? No. Luke no 94  (talk) 13:17, 22 February 2013 (UTC)


 * And remember, just because there is a lot written about something doesn't justify a stand-alone article rather than an entry in a player's bio. Serena Williams shoe size gets 86,000 google hits but we don't write an article on it. If it's important we include it in her own wiki article. Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:36, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

As I wrote before, I created the page and obviously I'm going to defend it. You conceded that Federer-Nadal and Federer-Djokovic justify rivalry pages, but Federer-Murray have played in 3 Grandslam finals and Federer-Djokovic only one. Another reason you gave to delete was that Federer-Djokovic was a "proper" rivalry because they have played in "a ton of finals", in reality Federer-Djokovic have played in the exact same number (8 finals) as Federer-Murray. So how is it that you can claim which rivalry pages are relevant and which are not. Also Federer and Murray are currently #2 and #3 in the world and conceivably will play many more "important" matches in the future. Also how can you delete Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, and Murray rivalry pages which are about some of the greatest rivalries in tennis history while not deleting stupid rivalry pages like Serena Williams-Hingis (which has barely any content on it compared to the work I did creating this page) or Serena Williams-Henin? This is a golden age of tennis and rivalry pages concerning Federer (who is near universally acclaimed as the greatest tennis player of all-time), Nadal, Djokovic, and Murray are not part of the meaningless rivalry epidemic of mediocre players that will be forgotten about in several years. These are historically relevant rivalries of these four specific players and should be protected. This is not a leather bound encyclopedia and has room for these rivalry pages of these four players who are single-handedly making tennis more relevant than it has been in 40 years. Please do not delete this page, smaller and insignificant rivalries are OK but not Federer's rivalries with Nadal, Djokovic, or Murray. Praline97 (talk) 00:53, 23 February 2013 (PST)
 * No comment on anything except the crazy statement that "these four players who are single-handedly making tennis more relevant than it has been in 40 years." So that's since 1973 right? That's a joke of epic proportions. Equipment has made serve and volley tennis extinct so we have no huge variation in style anymore. It's mostly the same game. But that aside...I guess Evert, Navratilova, Graf, Seles, Borg, McEnroe, Becker, Edberg, Sampras, Agassi, Williams, Lendl, were just crap that weren't exciting? I love watching these new four but Ive seen them come and go since the 60's, this is nothing new in tennis history. And casual players filling the parks playing tennis is nothing compared to the 70's and 80's when I couldn't find a court to play on. So these guys are exciting in their own way but to say they are single-handedly rescuing the sport... that takes a lot of gall or ignorance of what's gone on in tennis history. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:55, 23 February 2013 (UTC)


 * But your point falls apart by highlighting these other rivalries that might compare because they all do have rivalry pages. Are you going to delete Agassi–Sampras rivalry? No, because there is a heavy American bias here. Also with other rivalries that include Americans such as Evert–Navratilova rivalry, Connors–McEnroe rivalry, Borg–Connors rivalry, Borg–McEnroe rivalry, Williams sisters rivalry, Hingis–S. Williams rivalry, Henin–S. Williams rivalry, Lendl–McEnroe rivalry, Connors–Lendl rivalry. With you it is the opposite of "recentism", it is a bias for the old rivalries of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and I reiterate a heavy American bias. Any rivalry that is of equal status but includes an American gets a pass, but with some of the best European v. European rivalries we must rush to delete. Tennis is much more popular throughout the world (the second most popular sport worldwide behind soccer) than it is in the United States. Just because tennis does not appeal to you and you would never read about it unless it involved an American does not mean that this article has no inherent encyclopedic value to millions of others who use wikipedia. Praline97 (talk) 19:18, 23 February 2013 (PST)


 * I have no idea where this comes from since my last paragraph mentions no rivalries, and the fact I love tennis and my favorite players are rarely American. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:16, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

There is a very heavy slice of WP:RECENTISM running through this entire concept. I tracked back and had a look at the base article of all these rivalry article - List of tennis rivalries. There is NO, none at all, substantiation of the criteria for a Tennis rivalry.
 * 1) Both players must have a career high ranking of world No. 3 or better, and one of them must have reached No. 1.

Why? Such a narrowly defined criteria should have the backing of outside sourcing.
 * 2) The players must have met multiple times in semi-finals or finals of a Grand Slam (in pre Open era also Pro Slam counts).

Again, why? The majors have come to assume an incresingly higher standard over other tournaments, but the ranking mentioned above is not drawn exclusively from majors results.
 * 3) They must have at least a total of 12 career meetings in main tour matches.

Again, why? The basis of a rivalry should be its notability, not its statistics. From Wikitionary The relationship between two or more rivals who regularly compete with each other. It makes no mention of a rivalry being bound by any form of statistics except the number of participants. In summary - if we can't even successfully define a tennis rivalry, then these definitions should not be used as a basis for creating further rivalry articles. I would like to see the List of Tennis rivalries deleted, as it fails GNG by its own definitions. --Falcadore (talk) 13:01, 23 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep - this is a difficult one, but if Federer–Roddick rivalry stays, this one stays easily. Whereas Roddick was just another guy Federer owned throughout his rein of dominance, Murray is one of few guys who has a winning record against him. He prevented Federer winning the Career Golden Slam, which would have undisputedly made him the greatest player of all time, now, because of Murray, he has something missing from an otherwise faultless career. The creation of the Big Four (tennis) article has perhaps prevented the need for this article, and I'd be inherently against a Murray-Nadal rivarly page being created for this very reason, but the rivalry does contain something a little special. Does it match up to the likes of Borg-McEnroe & Federer-Nadal, no, of course not, but it has certainly more pedigree than a lot of the others that have popped up recently, and shouldn't be discarded quite as easily as them either. Let's not forget that over the next couple of years they're bound to meet in a few more matches of importance, perhaps we'd be in better stead to decide then? There has to be some consistency here, if Federer-Roddick stays and this one doesn't, there's something not quite right there. Mwhittaker92 (talk) 14:03, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, WP:CRYSTAL. That article belongs at an AfD, and was deleted previously in 2010 at an AfD, when things were a bit less stringent than they are now. Borg-McEnroe is notable, and is notable now, as is Federer-Nadal. Federer-Murray? No chance. And I'm a Brit whose passing interest in tennis centers solely around Murray! Luke no 94  (talk) 14:23, 28 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete - Can't see any justification for this. I'm sure they both have more significant rivals in their tennis careers. Deb (talk) 19:07, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Whoa! That's a very crass comment IMO. Nadal-Murray is intresting and only goes one way. Murray-Djoker will probably end up as something special. Murray-Federer although not maybe that special was and is a decent rivalery. They are both significant rivals. Federer has beaten Murray in 3 slam finals. Murray beat him at the Olympics and they're other significant matches. Murray/Djoker/Federer/Nadal are all significant rivals. However as I concede Murray/Nadal ain't that special. From Murray POV the other two are. GAtechnical (talk) 23:06, 28 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete Athletes frequently competing against each other does not rise to our inclusion criteria. The number of hit that show up on Google search does not confer notability, and certainly the presence of other similar articles does not mean that a page in question should be maintained. True sports rivalries, that warrant inclusion, such as Yankees–Red Sox rivalry and Michigan–Ohio State football rivalry have books and countless articles written about them, and by them I mean the 'rivalry' not the games or matches. I'm not seeing any coverage that approximates this. J04n(talk page) 12:13, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   16:06, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

 
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:07, 9 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete High ranking tennis players will inevitably play matches against each other; over a period of years, they will play a considerable number. This isn't special notability for the pairing unless it becomes a=n exceptionally well commented on specific rivalry. None of the references indicate this. They merely discuss both in a match they compete with each other.  DGG ( talk ) 20:47, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.