Sports Then and Now

Rumors of Roger Federer’s demise in tennis have peppered the media since the early days of 2008. For that was when he failed to reach his first Grand Slam final in almost three years.

It was the Australian Open, and he fell short—in the semifinals. He would go on to win just four games in the French Open final, would lose his Wimbledon crown, and would not win a Masters title throughout the entire year.

It mattered not that he was recovering from the debilitating effects of glandular fever during the early months of that year, nor that he struggled with a back injury in the latter stages. Nor, indeed, that he had made the finals of three out of the year’s four Slams.

There was, for a brief moment, a little back-tracking when Federer won the title at Flushing Meadows for a record fifth consecutive time, before the muttering started up at his failure to pass the Round Robin phase of the World Tour Finals.

Just a month into 2009, and the clouds settled over the Federer story again. It was not so much his failure to win the first Slam of the year but that he lost it, in a long, tough final, to Rafael Nadal.

If the clay-court supremo could take the Australian title, on the surface always considered to favor the Swiss, this really did mark the handing over of the baton to the younger man, a transition to a new order.

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Miloslav Mecir played tennis in the 1980s--known as the Swede Killer.

You have to admit that there is a huge difference between sultry singing in the shower and performing live at the Met to a packed house filled with critics.

This has implications beyond being able to carry a tune…and being fully clothed.

Besides the necessity of possessing outstanding vocal abilities, you would also need to overcome performance anxieties as you stood in front of an impressive audience thinking it knows exactly what you should be doing—never hesitating to point out your perceived flaws.

The same is doubly true on the playing field.

Monday-morning quarterbacks exist in all fields of endeavor. For example, the tennis player who exhibits all the talent and ability in the world must still overcome his or her own internal jitters in order to win.

This series will highlight tennis players who should have made it to the top of the game but who failed in big moments to win the most critical matches because of (1) nerves, (2) belief, (3) prolonged injury, or (4) the special category belonging to those who won a major but could never repeat the feat.

Miloslav Mecir

The “second-best” player who stands out most in my book is the Big Cat, Miloslav Mecir. The Slovak had an uncanny ability to annoy players from all corners of the globe during the 1980s, but he never made it all the way to the top.

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A tennis pro can end up with just one major victory to their credit for a variety of reasons.

In the case of Iva Majoli – and potentially Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic – it’s learning that the sport actually gets harder when excellence is expected of you. For Jana Novotná and Goran Ivanisevic, it’s a case of early frustrations not met until later in life.

And then there’s Andy Roddick, whose best was good enough for one two-week period in 2003, but hasn’t been ever since. There’s almost always a hint of sadness to their stories (though Ivanisevic and Novotná’s end on positive notes), but some more than others.

Juan Martin del Potro is still very young, and may have many more years of success ahead of him. Before that, though, he has to be able to play again.

Del Potro’s first slam win at the US Open last year was stunning: He was the tallest major champion ever at 6’6”, and the first to demonstrate that a guy that size could trade groundstrokes with the game’s best – that’s certainly what Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer are – and prevail.

Nadal has endured losses, even lopsided ones, at the hands of hard hitters on firm surfaces, but never before looked as helpless as he did against the big Argentine in the USO semis. Federer has been outlasted and outfought by Nadal, but he’d never been outright overpowered, or lost a USO final, before he ran into del Potro. Read the rest of this entry →

Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer accepting trophies at the conclusion of the 2006 Rome Masters.

All roads lead to Rome. So the saying goes.

But none of them are easy or even navigable in the final analysis.

The prize at the end of the journey in 2006 for Roger Federer was a trophy to make him a winner at the Rome Masters for the first time in his career and in the process, allow him to have an edge as he entered the draw at the 2006 French Open.

All the Swiss had to do to secure the victory was circumvent world No. 2 nineteen-year old Rafael Nadal who, according to the media, sported a new crown––King of the Clay-Courters.

Roger Federer congratulates Rafael Nadal at the 2005 French Open semis.

In 2005, Nadal had upset Federer in the semifinals of the French Open, going on to secure his first French Open Championship––his first Grand Slam, as a matter of fact.

Just prior to Rome in 2006, Federer had been bulldozed by Nadal in the finals of Monte Carlo, playing what most would deem a sub-par match for the mighty Swiss warrior. So far in 2006, Federer had lost two matches, both to Nadal. The world No. 2 had also bested Federer in the finals at Dubai.

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It’s April, and it’s the red clay of the European swing. So it has to be Rafael Nadal.

Though some players fitted in tournaments on the red stuff in Latin America in February, this is where the clay season takes centre stage, and what a stage!

The first of the terracotta Masters is held at the Monte Carlo Country Club, with the Mediterranean as its backdrop. It is hosted by royalty: Prince Albert of Monaco was flanked by Boris Becker and three-time Monte Carlo champion Ilie Nastase. Meanwhile, Nadal held court before them, leading a phalanx of no fewer than 11 Spanish players in a draw of 56.

The weather offered up some challenges: dust storms, rain, sometimes both together. Through it all, five Spaniards made the quarterfinals, three of them went on to the semis, and two fought it out in the final.

The result had a certain inevitability about it. Nadal had ruled here for the last five years and it was a fitting place for him to take his first Masters title in 11 months.

The strength and depth of the Spanish contingent also means that this week’s Power Rankings have a certain inevitability, too. There are five in the top dozen, with two topping the field. Read the rest of this entry →

Roger Federer and Serena Williams bestride their respective tennis worlds rather as Everest and K2 dominate the Himalayas.

They may be just two amongst many world-beating champions, yet they remain the standard against which those others are measured.

They can be conquered by the fittest, most ambitious, most determined of individuals, just as those two mighty mountains can, but they remain head and shoulders above the rest. The rankings say it all.

Williams has topped the women’s tour since November 2009 and is currently more than 1,500 points clear of the field. Federer has topped the ATP rankings since Wimbledon 2009 and currently towers over the chasing pack by more than 3,000 points.

This is all the more striking because the two No.1s of tennis have been notable by their absence since they both reasserted their superiority over the competition on the Grand Slam stage of the Australian Open.

Take Williams. Though she is clear of the chasing pack in the rankings, she has played eight fewer tournaments in the last 12 months than the second placed Caroline Wozniacki: just 16 events. In fact only one other player in the top 20 has played fewer than Williams, and that is Kim Clijsters, who only rejoined the tour last August.

Even more remarkable, though, is that Williams has played just two tournaments this year, reaching the finals in Sydney and winning in the Australian Open. That’s just 11 matches, ten of them wins. She did add some court time to her year by playing—and winning—the doubles in Melbourne as well. But since then, she has been laid low by a knee injury, so has not played a single match since the end of January.

Then last week, Williams pulled out of the Premier event in Charleston. She was not scheduled to play at Rome either, but the good news is that she just announced she has taken a wild-card entry for the Italian Open after all.

The return will be intriguing. How will her fitness be after three months with no match-play? Will she be prepared for the sudden transition to clay after her intensive fortnight in Melbourne brought the curtain down on her hard court season? Read the rest of this entry →