Men's tennis does rivalries rather better than most sports. With the top players meeting so regularly, the major duels – McEnroe-Connors, Becker-Edberg, Agassi-Sampras, Federer-Nadal – build up a sense of continuity and a sizable body of work. Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer have played each other ten times in Grand Slam tournaments alone, 28 times in total. How many times did Muhammad Ali fight Joe Frazier? Three. George Foreman? One. Not really the same, is it?
The Federer-Nadal era, though, is over. When Nadal handed Federer's backside back to him on a silver salver at the Australian Open earlier this year, it had the feeling of a curtain call for tennis's most engrossing rivalry of all time.
And yet it was Federer who won Wimbledon, with Nadal crashing out to Lukas Rosol. Indeed, that balmy night when the unheralded Czech blasted Nadal off centre court – has there ever been a match when a player simply hit the ball so consistently hard? – remains Nadal's last tennis match of note. It is testimony to Federer's genius that, even on the wane, he came back to win Wimbledon, despite the fact that Andy Murray played so well in the Final.
With Federer aging gracefully, what of Nadal? Has his left knee turned into blancmange? To miss half a year's tennis will leave doubt in the mind of even the most dedicated of the Spaniard's disciples. Perhaps the French Open, comfortably the least interesting of the four majors in recent years due to the sense of it being little more than a two-week coronation, will be competitive at last.
Perhaps, then, it is time to acknowledge that, in place of Federer-Nadal, we now have Djokovic-Murray. That the latter pair are now the two best players in the world is becoming harder to refute. Murray has been a different animal since the Olympics, which looked and felt like the fifth Grand Slam championship that, if the ATP have any sense, it will officially be – in ranking point terms – come the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016.
Inferiority complexes are everywhere in sport. It doesn't matter how good Germany are, they will always lose to Italy. Murray never used to quite believe he deserved to be contesting best-of-five Finals with Roger Federer, which is probably why he won just one set in the first three. The Olympic Gold Medal Final, though, was a rout. Even against Nadal in that Melbourne semi final, Federer never looked quite so inferior as he did in the Wimbledon re-match. The poverty of his performance was staggering and, were it not for a patriotic desire to see Murray win gold, would have been a little heart-breaking.
Murray or Djokovic will almost certainly win the 2013 Australian Open; their best chance of avoiding each other in the Final seems to be being drawn in the same half. Federer will be there or thereabouts at SW19 but, when talented but decidedly second-tier players such as Tomás Berdych and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga are capable of knocking him out in the quarter finals, he is far from the favourite.
Murray-Djokovic has the potential to be every bit as totemic a rivalry as Federer-Nadal. Both players have their best years ahead of them and their meetings are now genuinely in the balance. Who won matches between Federer and Nadal often depended on which surface they were playing. On grass and hard courts, Djokovic and Murray look pretty much neck-and-neck. Clay tournaments are a whole different story and the fitness of Nadal looks like being the key question in men's tennis in 2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment