Sports Then and Now

Juan Martin del Potro wins the 2009 U.S. Open over defending champion Roger Federer.

The road to the top of the game in men’s tennis is not an easy one, just ask Juan Martin del Potro who upped his ranking as high as No. 5 in the world after defeating No. 1 seed Roger Federer during the finals of the U.S. Open in 2009.

Federer was going for his sixth consecutive U.S. Open championship.  The Swiss had not lost a match at Flushing Meadows since 2003.  It was del Potro’s first win over the world No. 1 in six tries.

You cannot make it to the top of the men’s game without going through Federer.  Few have done it.  David Nalbandian stood tall defeating the Swiss in 2003 at the U.S. Open during the fourth round after Federer won his first major championship at Wimbledon earlier that summer.

Gustavo Kuerten took Federer down in the third round of the French Open in 2004. Then Marat Safin defeated the Swiss in the semifinals of the Australian Open in 2005, going on to win the Championship.

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The Tennis Channel as well as ESPN and NBC offer coverage of the 2010 French Open

In case you have not been paying close attention, the French Open is underway at Stade Roland Garros in Paris. This event, like most tennis majors, is best seen live—which only goes to prove that you must have money to follow tennis as a dedicated and deserving fan.

The predictable patter emanating from broadcast booths follows a familiar pattern, filling the airwaves with online personalities making their typical forecasts and touting the usual analysis replete with the most probable winners.  We watch on our tiny screens as the same top-seeded players go through their paces, generally walloping their lower seeded opponents in the early rounds.

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Who would have thought it would be a year to the day before the tennis world saw another Rafael Nadal vs. Roger Federer face-off? And who could have predicted that it would, as it was 12 months ago, be in the final of the last clay Masters of the year, in Madrid?

The balance of power as they entered the home straight this year has, though, looked a little different.

2009 began with Nadal as world No. 1, winner of the Australian Slam, and dominant through the clay season. But by the time he reached Madrid, his months without a break had wreaked havoc with his knees and he was soon forced off the tour to recuperate.

This year, he was short of his best form in Melbourne. But with the clay came the Rafa of old. He won every tournament he entered, and this time he paced himself so that he looked, if anything, stronger and fitter with each passing week.

So the Nadal in Madrid 2010 was a stronger animal than the one Federer dominated in 2009, while the Federer on the other side of the net was only just getting into his stride following a month off the tour with illness.

Add in the extra factors of Andre Agassi’s Masters record, and the imminent French Open title to fight over, and this was destined to be a great occasion. It saw Nadal avenge his loss of 2009, and take the outright record for Masters titles: 18. And he is still just 23.

Looking beyond the Rafa-and-Roger showdown, the Spanish armada once more laid down its marker, as it has done throughout the spring.

Three of the four finalists in Madrid were Spanish, as were six of the last 16. And that’s without their fourth man Juan Carlos Ferrero and their fifth Tommy Robredo, both missing with injury.

So, not surprisingly, Federer is the only non-Spaniard in the top five this week. Who’ll give me odds against the Spanish reign continuing in Paris? I thought not. Read the rest of this entry →

Tennis Super Heroes Ride Again...

At the end of this European clay court season, we stare headlong into the promise of another blockbuster slam––the French Open 2010.

The drama of the upcoming event played at historic Stade Roland Garros has long been anticipated in the hearts and minds of tennis aficionados across the globe.

Secretly for each rabid fan, the favorite of choice has already been crowned champion.

The hit and miss performances of many players who normally claim the starring roles in these renowned tennis epics, however, continued to cause doubt.

One after another broad-based tennis pundit pondered this apparent anomaly unfolding in 2010. Their questions peppered all media outlets.

First and foremost is the quandary of which superhero tennis star will ultimately claim the leading role in Paris?

The company has yet to post the cast of characters and who might be filling them. The question of who will emerge as the champion fills the vast arena of speculation…

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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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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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