Roger Federer's stats are off-the-charts in so many areas that you hardly know where to start.
0ne few people were probably aware of is that, until he lost the opening set against Igor Andreev in his first-round match at this year's Australian Open on Tuesday, Federer had not lost a set in a Grand Slam first round for six years - since the 2003 U.S. Open. That is 24 first-round matches without not only losing, but without not losing a single set. That is 72 sets in a row!
So, was that first set lost on Monday significant? Many people think so, but only in that it represents a general trend to Federer being a little more mortal as a tennis player.
Letting the 2009 US Open final slip away against Juan Martin del Potro, when he led by a set and was serving at 30-love for a two sets lead, only to lose that second set and then the match in five sets, was another red flag for those looking for vulnerability in Federer's game.
Then, there were those two losses to Nikolay Davydenko, a player he had beaten 12 times in a row - one in the semi-finals of the year-end ATP World Tour Finals in London last November, and the second in the semi-finals of the ATP event in Doha, Qatar, two weeks ago.
At 28 years old, and now a father of seven-month-old twin daughters, life is entering a new phase for Federer, both on and off the court.
While it does not appear to have had any traction with the legal TAB bookmakers here in Australia, there is a widespread feeling he is now on almost equal footing with No. 2-ranked Rafael Nadal, No. 3. Novak Djokovic and No. 5 Andy Murray - and probably also with No. 4 del Potro. With TAB, the odds on Federer to win the title are 2-1. Nadal, Djokovic and Murray are at 5-1. As for del Potro, he is 9-1 and Davydenko 10-1.
According to those odds, Federer is more than twice as likely to win the Australian Open than each of Nadal, Djokovic and Murray. That does not make sense, but the thinking must be as it is with a heavy-weight boxing champion - you're the champ until someone dethrones you.
Not that journalists covering tennis necessarily know that much about the sport, but of six of them who write tennis for ESPN.com, not one chose Federer in their pre-tournament predictions for the men's singles title.
Federer is fully capable, as the record shows, of proving everyone wrong. But it is probably makes more sense not to view him in light of the past, better to try to situate him in the pecking order of the near future.
Federer did get a nice tip-of-the-cap when Fabrice Santoro, 37, played his final Grand Slam event match on Tuesday, a 7-5, 7-5, 6-3 loss to No. 14 seed Marin Cilic. It marked Santoro's 70th Grand Slam tournament, which is a record that will be very hard to surpass.
Afterward, he said about the players he has faced in a career that goes back to 1989, "it's always really difficult to compare generations. But when you look at (John) McEnroe, he was a genius on the court. What he was doing on the court was amazing. But when you look at the matches, we were lucky to see in the past two years with Roger and Rafa, the big Grand Slam finals we had - Wimbledon (2008) and here last year. When you look at Sampras. It's very tough to make a ranking. But I will say that the best opponent I ever played against is Federer."
The Canadian contingent in singles at the 2010 Australian Open is no more after early-day action on Wednesday as Aleksandra Wozniak was beaten 6-4, 6-2 by No. 4 seed Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark, and Stéphanie Dubois was ousted 6-3, 6-2 by Agnes Szavay of Hungary . On Monday, Valérie Tétreault was beaten 6-0, 6-4 by Kim Clijsters.