TSR Tennis Society IV

Nadal is the one who made beating Federer look easy! And Nadal is the one who set up the perfect strategy on how to beat Fed! Great problem solver, no?

A fighter no doubt - I expected him to win today in any case He has made it look easy at times, but even for him it's been very tough. Great achievement

Apart from Djokovic, who has beaten Rafa more times than Roger actually?

Yes Hmm Davedenko 6 and murray 6 but Nadal has retirements against both!

Retirement before a match doesn't count as a win for the other player, but yh no-one else has lol (RF = 10). It proves that obviously he's a very difficult opponent to take down but this guy Rafa has done an incredible job of it

Retirements during the match! Nevertheless! Nadal's strengthening his legacy?

Of course he is (once he wins on Sunday) - I am now looking forward to the rest of 2014. We will see whether Rafa controls the year on his own, whether Djokovic makes a sudden comeback, whether Murray (no. 6 after the tournament) can win another Slam, whether Federer can win another Slam or simply climb up the rankings, etc

Rafas got some more trophies coming in Feb as well 2 more! And then we have Indian Wells and Miami! Things are beginning to get interesting, no?
Djokovic will grab Dubai next month aswell!

Feb's generally an interesting month for tennis.

Regarding the February tournaments (barring wildcards) we have some notable events and players..

Zagreb - Raonic is playing this year (expect him to finish in the top 10, possibly top 8 this year - at 23 he's probably the only youngster worth watching that actually has achieved results

Rotterdam - Del Potro and Raonic here (Del Potro has been in the past 2 finals), if Fed feels confident i'd not count him out of accepting a wildcard

Argentina - Nadal should be here i think as the clay court season starts for him.

Rio - Nadal is here just a week after Argentina so a busy schedule but perhaps he will treat as akin to a grand slam and just play the 2 weeks as he would

Marseille - Raonic will be here so a busy month

Dubai - Probably the best one to watch as Djokovic, Federer and Del Potro are all here

Acapulco - Murray probably has a free run here but i'm not sure why it's become a hard court tournament

We are living in the supposed Djokovic Era where Djokovic is the defending champion of ZERO MAJORS and Nadal is 3 sets away from once again holding 3 majors

We are living in the supposed Djokovic Era where Djokovic is the defending champion of ZERO MAJORS and Nadal is 3 sets away from once again holding 3 majors

Djokovic never had an era. He only dominated for like half of 2011, and after that he was back down to earth.

True but he should hold points from now until July and will get free points and a probable SF at the FO (assuming he does not crash out early).

Federer has it hardest i think.

Just wondering, what exactly did Fed do differently against Nadal this time? He used the same crap tactics that he has always used against him. Edberg has his work cut out for him.

Just wondering, what exactly did Fed do differently against Nadal this time? He used the same crap tactics that he has always used against him. Edberg has his work cut out for him.

Depends on your definition.

My definition of dominance is winning at least grand slam per season and doing no worse than the SF over consecutive slams so by my measure we did have a period of Federer dominance from 2004 to 2010 and Djokovic dominance from 2010 to 2013 (incredibly Nadal only has 2008 to fit the bill). Who will next dominate the game is unknown and i think mathematically we can't actually know whether Nadal gets his period until the US Open 2015.

Aye, That was such a monstrous year by Nole. So if now Rafa does A0 and then coming to RG. This double is really rare and very difficult to accomplish!
Nadal has done French-Wimby-Usopen he's most likely to do Us open-Aussie open aswell but Nobody has done Aussie open-french open!Why is it so hard?

Because pre homogenised era, the courts played a lot different from each other, so you had clay court specialists, grass court specialist and hard court specialist. The surfaces have only just gone homogenised era in the last decade or so and Federer has been the closet to do the AO-FO double, but he was denied by Nadal on 3 different occasions.