Rafa’s New Dimension: Opportunistic Peaking

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: June 8, 2010

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As Rafael Nadal buried himself for the fifth time into the dirt of Philippe Chatrier that he so cherishes, absorbing every possible particle of clay that he could after his most emotional and important Grand Slam victory, I was left wondering as to what will be the biggest take away from the year’s second major. Will it be about Roger Federer’s streak finally being broken, or will Robin Soderling’s continued success story at the major be more worthy of discussion? Did Thomas Berdych and Jurgen Melzer did enough to make themselves notice, or Novak Djokovic’s quarter final exit after he blew a two sets lead did enough to garner more attention?

 Grand Slams are about winners, though, and the biggest take away from the tournament should belong to Rafael Nadal who has come one step closer to equal Bjorn Borg’s record of six French Open titles. But it will not be about the first major he won in nearly one and a half years, or how he regained his world No. 1 ranking after having failed to win a title for nearly 11 months.

This tournament will be special to the King of Clay not only for the extra-curricular reasons, but also with regards to his development as a player. It feels that it took him the seventh major to finally attain maturity as a tennis player having the potential to win majors in double digits.

For most of the two weeks at Roland Garros, Nadal did not seem comfortable at this place. He played, to put it bluntly, a bad first round match against an unknown opponent, and he himself admitted of the nervousness coming into his first match. His second match was only a marginal improvement as he served better (OK, improvement in serve is tremendous progress—ask Djokovic, Ana Ivanovic or Dinana Safina) as he was still spraying errors from both wings.

As he reached past the quarter final stage, there were serious doubts about his reclaim of the title as he faced off a tough encoun...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Tennis

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