Rafael Nadal Bashes Andy Murray's Slam Hopes, Britons Angered (Satire)

Rafael Nadal may have lost his quarterfinal match to Andy Murray, but he struck a devastating blow to his conqueror following the match, virtually guaranteeing that Murray will not win the title.

When commenting on Murray's chances, Nadal said, "I think he deserves to win his first Grand Slam, and he is going to do it."

Those are some savage words from the six-time grand slam champion.

Recent grand slam stumbles by Murray had finally lowered expectations to the point where Murray might have been able to meet them, that is, until Nadal raised them.

By raising the expectations for Murray, Nadal has surely made it impossible for him to win. He's not going to be able to beat Federer in the final, and probably will be hard pressed even to beat Cilic.

Britons all over the world were angered by Nadal's unfortunate remarks.

"How dare he raise our expectations like that!" said Charles Bucklingham of London, England. "How is Murray supposed to win now?"

Arthur Canning from Manchester was one of the few Britons to defend Nadal's remarks, saying, "First of all, Murray is Scottish, not British, you reporters need to start doing your homework. Secondly, Nadal probably didn't realize the inverse relationship between expectations and results placed on Murray."

Others have been more scornful, decrying the sinister tactics displayed by the Spanish southpaw.

Murray's coaches released a formal statement on the matter:

"Leading up to the Australian Open, we had high hopes that if Andy could just play poorly enough to avoid attention, that he could actually play some pretty good tennis.

After the quarterfinals, we figured that if Andy could just fly under the radar for a few more rounds of the tournament, maybe he would just wake up Monday and find out that he'd beaten Roger in the finals.

Sadly, this is no longer the case, but we're hoping that if all the fans from the United Kingdom put in a real effort to discount Murray's chances, then we have a real possibility of undoing the damage inflicted by Nadal."

Now that the recent praise poured on Murray by pundits is likely going to put a grand slam out of reach, speculation has shifted to the motives behind Nadal's words.

The most likely possibility is that Nadal is simply trying to pave the way to victory for Federer.

Mats Wilander took time out of his busy Federer bashing schedule to make some specific remarks on the subject.

"Well, clearly Federer is a good tennis player, but I don't know if we can call him a truly great tennis player given his abysmal record against the Spaniard. I think that if Roger beats Nadal maybe four or five times in a row, like Nadal has beaten him, then we can get into the discussion of Federer being one of the players who were pretty good over a period of time.

Until then, let's just look at the record, and see that Nadal is 13-7 against Federer. Based on that record, if Nadal retired today, he would be in the conversation for being the greatest player of all time.

I mean, look at the way Federer's testicles shrink up whenever he has to play Nadal. He could really have used some testicular fortitude in the fifth set in the 2008 Wimbledon final, that's one thing we know for sure about Federer."

Federer, who still doesn't like Murray, had no comment.