Roger Federer vs. Rafael Nadal, Roland Garros No. 5

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at Internationaled.org

Published: June 4, 2011

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All the world is in uproar, and for no bad reason at all. Roger Federer faces Rafael Nadal in yet another grand slam final.

This time, it is familiar territory: the French Open, the scene of so many of their former battles, and indeed the scene of their first-ever meeting at a grand slam.

For purists of Roger-Rafa, there could hardly be a more fitting locus for the 25th meeting between the two.

More so, because the last time these two met in a title match at this very highest level it was in the new world, and in the newer territory towards which their rivalry had brought them by 2009, at the Australian Open.

Well, yes, Wimbledon will always trump the French Open for Federer and Nadal, for being the place where their very greatest matches were ever played. Which would leave, in fact, Paris wanting for its own share of the epic.

The amazing thing is, Roland Garros will be, even had they not made it both the final, the grand slam they have met most often in. Four times it would have been, but five it will be, tomorrow.

It will be their fourth meeting in the final, and in that knowledge there is perhaps a deceptive sense that it will mark a return to normality, a decisive re-assertion of that glorious, harmonious parity for which Federer and Nadal had been known: Rafa takes the French, and Roger, a month later, Wimbledon.

Only that there has been some equally decisive evidence in the last three years that such 'normality' has perhaps been irretrievably lost.

2009 and 2010 saw Federer and Nadal trade French-Wimbledon doubles, while this year, of course, we have witnessed the much anticipated Final Struggle, between that great challenger, Novak Djokovic, and these said great kings.

The whirlwind conjured by Djokovic's compelling and seemingly imponderable 43-match winning streak seems to have stirred up something odd, too, in the relationship between Roger and Rafa (in the ...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Tennis

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