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Roland Garros
Nadal v Federer - less a slugfest than a dissection
Article published on the 2008-06-08 Latest update 2008-06-08 17:01 TU
Rafael Nadal bites his trophy after defeating Roger Federer
(Photo: Reuters)
And so the Roland Garros fortnight came to an end. The grand slam circus rolls into London in a few weeks for the culmination of the grass court season at Wimbledon.
Roger Federer has reigned there for the past five years and the last man to achieve that was a certain Bjorn Borg.
He was at the Wimbledon final last July between Federer and Rafael Nadal to watch either Federer equal his five triumphs on the trot or see Nadal equal his feat of a Roland Garros/Wimbledon double.
For Borg it was a win/win kind of afternoon.
Borg has been in Paris over the last few days and was chatting away to the assembled hacks giving his views on the current crop of players and movers and shakers.
It is Borg’s belief that if Federer had won in Paris then he could have been acclaimed the greatest ever. Nadal's win merely confirms him as one of the best clay court players ever.
Equally a defeat for Federer would see him with only a few more years to realistically win the title.
With Federer’s latest loss in the final here at Roland Garros, he’ll have to put career grand slam on hold – more worryingly now as time is starting to run out.
But if he can place that in the to-do tray, he has the chance to go to Wimbledon and sear into the grass court roll of honour his own legend.
No one has won six consecutive titles at Wimbledon since tennis became a professional game in 1968.
The last chap to get six straight was William Renshaw between 1881 and 1886. And we can assume tennis was a vastly different affair then.
Increasingly it has been becoming clear that those who love tennis are extremely fortunate to be alive at a time when we have an artist among players in Federer and a supreme technician of the clay court game in Nadal.
It is Federer’s misfortune that he is exercising his brilliance at a moment when only a superhuman could eclipse him, just as much as it is a woe for the band of very talented players who are unable to bridge the gap to him.
Latterly Novak Djokovic has managed to infiltrate the Roger and Rafa show and that’s likely to continue. One of the most disappointing matches of this year’s Roland Garros was the semi-final between Djokovic and Nadal.
I, like the many thousands in the stands, was expecting a humdinger of a slugfest. What we saw was a dissection.
Nadal played brilliantly. And the watching Federer must have been thinking if I get through my semi-final I’ve got to go and face that.
Credit to him for advancing to his third consecutive final.
But you knew after the Nadal/Djokovic carve up that the writing was on the wall.
Maybe he will win Roland Garros title one year. And even if he doesn’t, you’d be skirting insanity if you said to him: “It didn’t quite go well did it Roger?””
With 12 grand slam titles and 40 million dollars prize money in the bank, that would do most players.
