Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Is Nadal the greatest player

Nadal is the new Wimbledon champion. Before Nadal started playing well, am talking about 2 years ago, many great players like John McEnroe said that Roger Federer is the best tennis player to walk on earth. In fact, whatever I had seen, even I thought that the world has not probably witnessed a player who can better Fedex.

I started watching tennis from 1993. I have seen game of Jim Courier, Boris Becker, Stefan Edberg, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi. I have no qualms in accepting that Fed has anyday better game than all these greats. I have never seen even Sampras being so immaculate with his returns. Sampras had a serve and volley game and he always wanted to finish the game as fast as possible by going on net. Agassi has uncomparable returns but his serve was like worse than female players.

Becker was called boom-boom becker because of his high and fast serves. But, this kind of game suited only wimbledon. Moreover, none of these greats had any chance on french clay. Sampras's best performance on clay was quaretr finals. Becker's performance on clay must have been even worse. Moreover, Becker's record at US Open is also average.

Contrasting to all these players, Federer reached the finals of French Open twice. He has won wimbledon 5 times. So, the remaining 6 grand slams are Aus Open and US open. This clearly shows that this man has game irrespective of the nature of the court. Moreover, he has great mental control which can be seen by going to www.youtube.com and typing "Best Shot Federer". This was when he returned a volley which came like a bullet from Roddick with such an ease that Roddick would have lost the match out of sheer disbelief of Roger's talent.

Moreover, Fed's classy one handed backhand is his greatest strength which was absent in any other players, I talked about.

However, Nadal started improving himself and he has beaten Fed thrice at French Open. Last year Wimbledon, Nadal could also have won the match. And, this year he has won it and dominated the match. This clearly shows that Nadal has a huge edge over Federer on clay court and even on grass, he can beat Federer.

This leads to a logical conclusion that Nadal is the greatest player of all time. But, somehow, no one is saying this. Even, I do not want to accept this. One reason could be that Nadal has still now shown his game on US hard court. But, he reached this year's Australian Open Final. This all shows that Nadal sure is the greatest player at least of last 2 decades since I started watching tennis.

But, still I am unable to accept. Seems these titles are difficult to garner for any player. As people take into consideration the aura, the personality of the player too. Hard for Nadal!!!

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