Your Call, 2.19

Hi everyone. Here's today's thread for your match commentary. It's also OK to go mildly off-topic here.

Tournaments are ongoing in Marseille, Memphis and Buenos Aires for the ATP, and Dubai, Bogota and Memphis for the WTA.

In light of the events of recent months, I'd like to ask TW'ers to weigh in on the following question: should we, as observers, place much weight on the physical condition of top-ranked players when assessing their perfomances versus other highly-ranked peers, especially in key matches? And if so, how does this work? I ask this in the context that (for example) we know that Roger Federer was affected by the mono virus for at least part of last year. We also know (most recently) that Rafael Nadal was affected by a knee injury during the Rotterdam final, though his opponent (Andy Murray) had an ankle niggle to deal with. And we know that Roger Federer has been dealing with a back injury recently. In terms of manners, tennis-wise, what is the best way to handle these situations, and how important is it?

I guess what I'm really asking is this - as tennis fans, is the most important thing to acknowledge the winner above all, however it came about (which appears to be the traditional solution to the question), or do we prefer to analyse the situation by giving most weight to what happened on the day in question? Would we really prefer to analyse a favourite's strengths and weaknesses relative to how we think they should be, in light of experience?  Is it better just to focus on who the hail won, regardless of what occurred? Do we need to know what the mitigating factors might be for the loser (most especially in a big match)?

I pretty much think that in most situations "the winner is the winner" whatever happens, but I'd love to see this oft-debated question debated further.

-- Rosangel Valenti