Rafael Nadal: Early Exit at Gerry Weber Means Nothing Heading into Wimbledon

Rafael Nadal will have a strong performance at Wimbledon. Although he exited the Gerry Weber Open in the quarterfinals, Nadal and his fans need not be concerned.

With his career history at Wimbledon alone, expect Rafael to be one of the favorites to take home the Grand Slam tournament.

We will check out his overall success at Wimbledon a bit later but first, let's see some other factors as to why the Gerry Weber loss is meaningless.

2012 Consistency

In his first six tournaments this year Rafael Nadal made it to the semifinals each time, and to date he has won four tournaments during 2012.

Only in Madrid and Gerry Weber, did Nadal exit earlier than the semifinals and all four wins happened within the last two months. So, the momentum alone has been built up quite well for Wimbledon and Nadal still has roughly one week to buff out the rough spots on grass.

Also, for a stretch of seven consecutive tournaments beginning in Paribas and ending in France did Nadal reach the finals. The Gerry Weber Open was just a little bump in the road after coming off a seventh French Open title and making such a quick transition from clay to grass.

Falling Federer

For years Roger Federer was the man who owned Wimbledon and dominated the championships every year. Twice, he bested Nadal for the title and ultimately won six (five in a row from 2003-07) and began the 2010 year off with a win in Australia.

Unfortunately, Federer has since been extremely disappointing and bowed out of Wimbledon in the quarterfinals the past two years.

Looking at 2012 alone and we see Federer having won four tournaments but none of which were Grand Slams. He was then defeated by Novak Djokovic in Italy and France, and then proceeded to get upset by Tommy Haas at the Gerry Weber.

Grass may arguably be Federer's best surface, but he is not much of a threat to Nadal anymore as Rafael has developed well off of clay in recent years.

Wimbledon History

Five of the last six years Rafael Nadal has made the Wimbledon finals (absent in 2009) and twice he has taken the title.

The grass at Wimbledon is by far Nadal's second-best surface, and not until 2009 did he make a finals appearance on the hard court surface (Australia). Wimbledon has been Nadal's second-most consistent tournament year-in and year-out and with Federer falling, 2012 will not be any different.

All Nadal really has to be concerned with is Novak Djokovic who defeated him last year (and three consecutive times before the 2012 French Open). So, expect Rafael Nadal to reach the 2012 Wimbledon final but taking the No. 1 spot is another story.

John Rozum on Twitter.