Posted by Peter Bodo, TENNIS.com
It was, conceivably, the most well-earned breakthrough tournament we've seen in the Open era, and the accolades and rewards were commensurate with the achievement. John McEnroe and Bud Collins both called it the best tennis match they'd ever seen at Wimbledon, and I feel much the same way. Rafael Nadal's five-set win over Roger Federer now heads the roll of the greatest matches of the Open era.
Wait, there's more. Saturday's women's final, in which Venus Williams took out her sister Serena was not the best Open-era final, but it featured the best tennis I've ever seen women play. I can't remember two women -- not Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf or Monica Seles -- hitting the ball as hard, accurately and artfully as the Williams sisters did in the match that confirmed Venus as a grass-court player second only to Navratilova (a nine-time champ here).
Taken together, the matches elevated this Wimbledon to the very top of the Open-era Grand Slam heap, and the unexpected, radical element in that is the degree to which much of the heavy lifting was done by Nadal. Three years ago, pundits were just as likely to disparage his "bolo" forehand and seemingly one-trick, clay-court game as they were to acknowledge his strength and quickness. But in the interim, Nadal has shown that his game is less surface-specific than surface-independent.
That is, while his heavy topspin and counterpunching tendencies seem to be ideally suited to clay, he employs them in a way that has made them lethal on any surface, including grass. In the Open era, Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg and Andre Agassi are the only French Open champions who also won at Wimbledon, with Laver and Borg the only ones who managed to win both titles in the same year. Now, 28 years after Borg, we have another "Channel Slam."
In the end, though, it wasn't Nadal's extraordinary ability to transition from defense to offense in the blink of an eye, the weight and zip of his topspin forehand or even the deceptive precision of his backhand passing shot that enabled him to unseat the five-time defending champion. It was his understanding that winning on any surface is less a matter of style and technique than it is of nerve and the willingness to play bold, confident tennis, even in desperate straits.
And Nadal certainly was in desperate straits on Sunday. In the fourth set, with Federer picking up momentum, Nadal failed to close out the tiebreaker while leading 5-2, with two serves to come. To almost any other player, that critical a failure, against such a great player at such a crucial stage in the match, would have been a death knell.
But Nadal weathered the storm without losing focus or confidence, and although the odds seemed badly stacked against him in the fifth set, he ultimately pulled it out. It was a testament to his amazing competitive drive and instincts, as much as to his shot-making. His reward was an epic win that has underscored something the computer rankings will not yet suggest:
Nadal is the best tennis player in the world. The race for the rest of the year will be between those who have designs on the No. 2 slot.
Peter Bodo
