Tennis Atlantic

One response to “US Open: Coach’s 6 reasons why Nadal beats Djokovic today”

1. 

   Darwin

   March 4, 2012 at 2:19 am

   oops 🙂 Had to look at the comments scotien before putting in my two bits 😦 Only to find that someone has already beat me to it . Agree with Srikanth totally.For some (or obvious ) reasons , I tend to support players only when their careers seem to be on the wane 🙂 .Happened with Sampras, happened to a certain extent with Becker ,with Courier/Edberg …Sometimes ,the wait is pretty futile .Once down,some of them never regain the form and confidence they once had .(Edberg and Courier ).But occasionally , just occasionally , you get moments of sheer magic , where the player shakes of years of bad form ,age , self-doubt and manages to make that wait worthwhile .For instance Becker in the 95 Wimbledon semis (ageing and then no longer one of the leading giants of the game ) .Down and out against an imperious Agassi who kept smashing winner after winner leaving Boris standing at the net (Boris of course was never that fleet of foot ).I had almost given up on the match , when at some point in the second set Boris falls down (trying to roll back the years with a trade-mark dive volley (he was only 27 though 🙂 ) (or maybe he was on the baseline , time tends to add to the mytho I’m afraid ) , the crowd goes “aaaaah… ” and goes silent.Agassi walks up to see if the old man is ok .Boris shrugs off his query and then proceeds to show him what grass court tennis is all about defeating him in 4 . Try as Agassi might , he couldn’t break the boom-boom serve again . (and the match was still pretty close,Boris at his peak would still have struggled against Agassi in the rip-roaring form he was in ) .But Boris just wouldn’t give up . It was tear-inducing stuff :)>Of course he did go on to get thrashed by Pete in the finals .But that one match made it all worth it .(Not to mention that he did manage to defeat Pete twice the same year and the next and won a grandslam to boot ).The same goes for Sampras . Never was a big fan of Sampras (as a character ? ) though his tennis was abeautiful(and it still is , the serve , the running forehand , the sublime volleying skills …he was a master of his craft ) his dominance (though it was nothing compared to the Fedex) bored me . Until he started losing ..and badly at that ..Time came when he lost even at Wimbledon to a George Bastl in the fading light .He looked utterly crushed .Broke my heart.Only for him to come roaring back at the end of the year to win the U.S and retire on a grand note.It was terrific stuff .( how many have the luck to retire on such a high ?)…phewww…sorry for that bit of verbal diarrhea..hope Federer comes back again and thrashes that spanish kid …at the French open no less 🙂

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