With Roger Federer having been crowned almost unanimously by the greats of the game as the greatest tennis player of all time, Nadal fans, veteran tennis enthusiasts, and even casual fans (who like a little spice in their sport) are wondering, What Next?
That Federer has been dominant is beyond the realm of the subjective now. It is as clear as day as an objective fact could possibly be. And dominance is something that pales in all sports and is detrimental to the sport in more ways than one.
Nobody grudges Federer his success, let there be no mistake about that.
The man is a genius, a true one of a kind sportsman. The likes of which tennis hasn't seen in a long time. His style is unmatched in the long history of this game. There is no more aesthetically pleasing player to watch in the game (again, a subjective claim, but one almost unanimously agreed upon).
The man is a champion, humble, and pleasant, both in the locker-room and outside of it. He is mindful of the legacy of the sport and of his career in it. He understands his role as an icon in the sporting world and has been a responsible statesman for the game. He's won everything in sight and more, but one only wishes we could make it harder for him to do so.
His triumphs would only be sweeter and the sport and its audiences the richer for it. In this regard, there is no greater service Rafael Nadal could do to the game of tennis than to come back to the tour as fit as he can, and make it as hard as hell for Federer to do what he wants to do.
It has been made abundantly clear that, apart from Nadal, Federer has no equal on the tennis court. With his win yesterday, he became again in the eyes of everyone the best tennis player in the world (a title he had temporarily lost to Nadal in the last 13-14 months), and quite rightly assumed the No. 1 ranking too.
The rest of the field has been shown up as merely pretenders to the throne, with no semblance of consistency from Novak Djokovic or big game mentality from Andy Murray. Andy Roddick had to play the match of his life simply to go five sets and lose to a far from on song Federer.
All this leads everyone to believe that there is only one man who can do anything about the Federer juggernaut, and it is in the interests of us all that he come back to the game as quickly as possible.
Nobody should doubt Nadal's credentials for the job as champion beater. If there is one man who can make a match of it with Federer and challenge for each and every title and make this an interesting few years, it's him.
He has beaten Federer (more often than not) on all surfaces, and especially in the big matches. McEnroe once said he would chase Borg to the ends of the earth; Rafa has done much the same with Federer.
As one sports writer put it after the Australian Open Final, where Nadal beat Federer in the fifth set, “Rafael Nadal is not the No. 1 because Federer is having an off year. He is not the No. 1 because a champion is fading. He is No. 1 because he has taken on and beaten the best, time and again on the biggest stages tennis offers.”
Nadal may no longer be No.1 (which is probably how things should be as his manager Carlos Costa says, “Inside him, I don’t think anything has changed—he still thinks Federer is the best,”), and Nadal is comfortable being No. 2.
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