Nole v. Rafa: Best. Tennis. Ever.
I’ve been a tennis fan and player long enough to have watched the 43-year-old Pancho Gonzales defeat the 19-year-old Jimmy Connors in the Pacific Southwest tennis tournament held at the Los Angeles Tennis Club — the club where I now do fitful battle on weekends — back in 1971.
Okay, I admit it. I was already older than Connors then and had already seen a whole galaxy of great tennis players: Lew Hoad, Frank Sedgeman, Jack Kramer, Ken Rosewall, Tony Trabert, etc., etc.
But here’s the thing. Unlike a lot of fields of endeavor (movies, theatre, art, music, etc.), tennis is better now than ever. Two men, both with an argument to be the greatest of all time, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, are going to be battling it out for the French Open title at Roland Garros on Sunday. Don’t miss it.
These guys play a brand of tennis no one would have believed twenty years ago, with a fitness the best of the NBA can only dream of. The last time they met in the finals of a Grand Slam (Australia), it went on for over six hours, non-stop, no substitutions, no real breaks. Who knows what will happen Sunday — and there is so much on the line.
Djoker is out to win his fourth Grand Slam in a row, the first one to pull that off since Rod Laver in 1969; Rafa is out for a record-breaking 7th French Open victory.
Along the way Nole (as Djokovic is called) dispensed with Roger Federer — the man Tiger Woods called the best athlete in the world — in three quick sets, while Nadal blew away everyone, barely facing a break point and losing a scant 35 games in the whole tournament. Only Bjorn Borg had done better, but that was in the days of wood rackets.
I’m with you all the way. Tennis is athletic chess. Wimbledon used to be my fave tournament, but these days it’s US Open all the way… especially first week night matches when anything can happen & in front of best tennis crowd ever.
I’ve been getting up just to catch the early action on the Tennis Channel and it’s been outstanding. It looks as though Djokovic is improved even since Australia. I thought today it looked as though he was just toying with Federer but hey, the real entertainment comes with the Bryan/Bryan doubles match. I can hardly wait for Sunday.
And yeah, since his gluten free diet and return to serious contention, I’ve been a complete fool for Djokovic.
Ten years down the road, our time may well be called the golden era of tennis. The only regret is that Federer is past his peak and surely cannot sustain parity with the Djoker and Nadal for much longer, while Murray still lacks that extra something to compete with the top 3. If Federer was just two years younger, all three would have been engaged in even more legendary battles.
I think the Rocket, Rod Laver, needs to be included in your “galaxy of great tennis players”.
Nadal and Djokovic, as great as they are, have not entered into the argument of greatest player of all time, yet. Currently, that argument includes Federer, Sampras, and Laver, but I’m nitpicking. Enjoy the final!
Well taken points, Jeff. I would agree the Rocket is in the discussion. In a way, he started it all. I watched him at the old Forest Hills when I was a kid. Unbeatable.
High-level singles is a brutal sport. The nice thing about doubles is very skilled players can be less than perfectly fit and still play at a high level..The kicker (pun intended) is that any player who wants to develop the singles game had better limit his time on hard courts or just be in superior shape to begin with, and with flexibility to take pressure off those joints.
While this is indeed the best tennis ever, I doubt the match will be terribly close. Nadal is the perfect clay court player. He bridges when asked if he plays perfect tennis on clay, but that’s basically what he does. Djokovic with his power and two-handed backhand (and ability to hit the big kick serve), can trouble him. Nadal in an average clay mood should win in four sets.
‘bridles’ – not ‘bridges.’
Fantastic players I agree. Tennis has indeed reached an unprecedented level of collective achievement. Still, in any argument of old v. new, the technology of the rackets has to be taken into account, I think. Not even the greatest server in the world could, in the days of Laver, fire off a serve at the galactically fast speeds we see today. Even average servers can often reach speeds of about 90-100 mph with massive kick and great location. The service game has always been important in tennis — it is now truly pivotal. I do think it distorts player quality. A secondary distortion caused by light-as-air rackets is the, at present, overwhelming importance of the massive groundstroke. Both issues have resulted in the virtual death of the serve and volley game and net points.
Personally, I think maybe all the three guys in the spotlight these days — but most especially Federer who has literally every shot in the book — are immune from such tech discussions. But one should add a note of caution when declaring them the greatest of all time. For example, Sampras’ sheer inability to get past the semis at the French and his absolute dominance of Wimbledon (grass favors big, accurate servers) should exclude him, in my humble opinion, from such discussions. Winning on all surfaces (so so difficult in these days of specialization and feather-light rackets) is a feat that is severely under-appreciated in the modern game. Only Federer, Nadal, and Agassi have done it in the modern era. And Federer’s French Open title (good as he is) came in a year when Nadal was injured.
And yes I absolutely loved Agassi (not so much after he quit though and we got all those “revelations”) and, though Greek-American, was never a big fan of Sampras. So I am a bit subjective I’ll admit.
Maybe we should look at “wood tennis” and modern tennis as distinct sports.
Each of them has its own greatest players, and I guess that Jimmy Connors is the greatest player in a separate class of “steel tennis”.
I am quite impressed that our distinguished host has watched live two of the greatest wood-tennis players AND the greatest steel-tennis player.
Tiger called Federer the “best athlete on the planet” years ago… using that quote to prove Djoker’s dominance is not fair. I don’t think Tiger would be saying that today… How many slams do 31 year olds win? Djoker’s win over Fed proves nothing in the grand scheme.
It’s hard to root against either man. They both work so hard, and are so likeable.
I’ll be pulling for Rafa all the way. Not a Nole fan, he gives off a strange vibe and I don’t care enough about him to figure out what it is.
He’s a Serb. Must be a serbian thing you have a problem with???
I don’t really like his personality, it’s a style thing. He’s a patriotic guy, that’s a good thing.
That would be the battle! Go Nadal!
So far it’s disappointing. The conditions suit Rafa and he’s on fire. But Novak beat him twice on clay last year so he could get back into it.
It’s been a while since I last saw a match on clay, so the length of the rallies and the number of service breaks were pleasant surprises for me.
I hope for a Djokovic victory: his record would be the more impressive, especially if he overcomes a 2-set deficit. Plus, Rafa can break his record next year; for Novak, it would be a titanic struggle.
Sorry about those of you who have to work regular hours tomorrow.
Meanwhile there is also Euro 2012 going on, though that is not so much a sport as a game of chance.
Who shives a git about tennis? … yuppie scum smacking fuzzy rubber balls with large economy size fly-swatters … in dung-loving frogland no less?