Rafael Nadal: Will He Win More Hard Court Majors?

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: February 12, 2011

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Rafael Nadal missed a chance at history when he fell short at the Australian Open, one short of having won four Grand Slams in a row. He’s in good company, though; in the 42 years since Rod Laver’s 1969 season, a long list of greats from Jimmy Connors in 1974 to Roger Federer in 2006-07 had fallen short of that same designation.

It’s hard to imagine Nadal playing any better than he has in last 12 months, just as it’s difficult to see the 29-and-a-half-year-old Federer regaining his form from four to five years ago. It is, therefore, unlikely for us to see anyone knocking on that door again anytime soon.

Does missing out on that bit of history, however, make a significant difference in how the Spaniard will be viewed in the record books? Not in my view, unless the injury he sustained is much more serious than indicated.

Nadal has already done so much of historical import that missing out on the Rafa Slam is just a loss of increments. The record books already show that, from 2005-07, the most (if not only) dramatic time of the tennis season was the May-July period, when a young Nadal and some soft surfaces were the only things making Federer look somewhat less than invincible.

They will note Nadal’s ungodly, unprecedented record on the clay, how in 2008 he became the first man to win the Channel Slam since Bjorn Borg, then that he did it again two years later. They’ll recall that he took a nation with an already proud tennis history and multiplied its successes many times over, playing an instrumental role in three Davis Cup titles.

And they’ll show that Nadal won three Slams on three surfaces in 2010, making him the first man to win the last three majors in one season since Laver, and the first to win on three different surfaces in one year. It’s not the Rafa Slam, but history will regard it nearly as highly.

Provided his recent injury doesn’t...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Tennis

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