Wimbledon 2010: Nadal and Williams ahead of their competitors
It was the Sunday afternoon at the All England Club, the championship’s conventional day off and the greatest tennis players from the men’s side were around the practice courts at Wimbledon.
Rafael Nadal was also practising along with Roger Federer who stood right to him, smashing on the next court over along with Andy Roddick on an adjoining court to his left. Andy Murray, Robin Soderling as well as Novak Djokovic were also busy in practising at the same time.
All of these players were in close quarters that Sunday.
Just after a week, it is obvious that the distance between 2010 Wimbledon winner and the rest of the competitors along with the big man Roger Federer is quite evident.
“His back hand is superb. His forehand is superb. His serve is superb. His volleying is superb. In short, the man plays every aspect of the game in a superb manner”, Murray said after being knocked down by Rafa in a straight-set semi final match at the All England Club.
He further added, “Nadal is simply one of the most spectacular players ever”.
For a long period, Roger Federer was ranked number one, Nadal number two, and rest of the players were not even close to their rankings. They joined to grab seventeen of the eighteen Grand Slam trophies in a single run. But it seems to be a dwindling competition as their previous contest against each other in a major championship was almost one and a half years ago.
So in reality, Nadal is the only one at the top in exactly the way the top ranked player from the women’s side Serena William who also won the trophy has upstaged herself from the chunk in terms of rankings as well as quality of game.
Williams triumphed in all of the fourteen sets she contested at the All England Club this season and set a championship record with a total of 89 aces. She has grabbed five of the previous eight Grand Slam trophies. The only other player from the women’s side who has succeeded in making her way into two of the big finals in that period is Dinara Safina. She however defeated in both, then made a first-round departure at the French Open back in May and extracted from the grass court Grand Slam tournament due to her injury problems.
Venus Williams who is an elder sister of Serena in now thirty years of age and the girl has not triumphed in a Grand Slam championship for the last two seasons and has not been able to step ahead of the quarterfinals at the previous four big events and fell down to number four in the world’s ranking on Monday.
Rafa in the mean time is 31-1 with a total of five trophies since April. The man has once again jumped to top ranking in the world where as Federer on the other hand dropped to number three on the very first occasion after a period of seven years.
Rafa is now halfway short to Federer's professional record. By tackling the knotty, conversion, from clay court to grass court and pursuing his fifth tournament at the French Open with his second at the grass court Grand Slam tournament, Rafa is up to eight major titles, along with the Australian Open championship back in 2009.
After comfortably defeating Tomas Berdych 6-3, 7-5, 6-4 in the final match at Wimbledon, Rafa was questioned about following Federer's Grand Slam reputation.
''Eight more? That's too difficult ... too tough'' Nadal said. ''I never thought I'd have eight Grand Slam trophies today, at just 24 years of age”.
That's absolutely right as Rafa is just 24, and he already owns the similar number of Grand Slam tournaments as Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl as well as Andre Agassi grabbed when they actually retired and in fact one ahead of John McEnroe.
What must be intimidating, for Nadal's peers, is the fact that he keeps improving day by day.
As far as the upcoming United States Open is concerned, Nadal after a few days of rest will get back to the practice courts. The US Open will start from 30th August 2010. Rafa will be hoping to grab the only title missing from his record at the moment in this year’s US Open.
Williams on the other hand, has won the US Open a couple of times in her career so far and she is still the favourite to win it this season as well. The lady already has a total of thirteen Grand Slam titles in her professional tennis career.
According to Navratilova, “Williams is head and shoulders superior than the rest’ and those shoulders are quite wide beyond any measure of speculations. The same could be said about the current top ranked player Rafael Nadal as well.
Hence, both of them are definitely going to hold the world’s attention with their high quality game for many years to come.
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