Can Nadal Stay Number One?
After a record 237 weeks as the top ranked tennis player in the world, Roger Federer was finally knocked from his pedestal by Rafael Nadal this summer.
Federer was dominant for so long that people think that is normal, and will repeat with Nadal, as if this is the next Presidential administration. It's not. It's far more common throughout tennis history for the the top ranking to change hands often from tournament to tournament.
John McEnroe reclaimed the no. 1 ranking 13 times after first gaining the top in March, 1980, while Pete Sampras retook the pinnacle ten times after he first got there on April 12, 1993. Nadal's friend Carlos Moya made it to number one, but only stayed there for about one week.
Nadal is a tremendous player. His combination of strength and speed is unmatched and allows him to play a unique game that in my opinion is a new version of what Guillermo Villas used to earn a record 46-match winning streak on all surfaces, and 53 straight matches on clay.
Essentially, Nadal has taken what Villas, also a muscular left-hander, did and adapted it to use of new racquets and strings to take defensive top-spin clay-court tennis to a new level. (Click image for analysis and Flash image.)
Nadal can play far behind the baseline and use his tremendous speed to run down seemingly everything. With old racquets this would leave him vulnerable. Yet with new technology amplifying his bulging biceps, he can still hit heavy topsin that is hard to attack, even from far back on defense, or flatten out his shots to hit blazing passing shots also from far off the court.
Still, I think Nadal is vulnerable for two reasons. First, his style is tiring. Despite all the rhetoric by television bloviators (read McEnroe) that Nadal is incredibly fit and never gets tired, he quite obviously does.
When you reach Number One in tennis, you play more matches than most players. Federer has played more matches every year than all but a few players, notably work-horse Nikolay Davydenko
This year, Nadal has played over 80 matches, the most in his career, and the toll shows already with three months and a couple of major tournaments left. Just after Nadal earned enough points to later become number one, he promptly got drubbed by Djokovich in the Cincinatti semi-finals.
Then when Nadal lost to Andy Murray in the U.S. Open semi-finals, his coach Uncle Tony reportedly said Nadal was tired. Tony Nadal said the same thing when Federer beat Nadal in the Hamburgh 2007 final by blowing him off the court in ten straight games on clay.
For Nadal to stay number one in 2009, he will likely have to play more games then than ever. Perhaps he can do it, but it is a definite question mark, given his grinding, physical style. This is exacerbated by Nadal's emphasis on clay court tournaments, which plays to his strengths and helps his point totals, yet forces him to log a lot of miles.
But there is another reason, one that I haven't heard analysts mention yet. As great an athlete as Nadal is, and he can hit every shot in tennis, his game is basically one-dimensional. Nadal's game centers on using the heaviest topspin in tennis to control the center of the court. He uses his topspin forehand to an extreme, running far into his backhand corner to hit the forehand, not as an exception, but as a standard play. His A game is excellent but he has no plan B to fall back on.
His forehand, which tops out at from 3,500-to-4,400 RPMs at 80 MPH, is basically like a heavy, second serve. Nadal uses the forehand for several purposes: To wear down his opponent, to push them back to the baseline, and as a reliable crutch to get out of trouble. Opponents continually have to hit balls above their shoulders, which prevents them from hitting winners and physically wears them down, or they have to retreat behind the baseline, losing the ability to attack. Also, it is difficult to change directions on a heavy, high ball, which allows Nadal to get back into position to essentially restart a rally if an opponent starts to go on the offense.
Against his prime target, Federer, who refuses to concede the baseline, Nadal kicks the topsin up to Roger's backhand constantly, reliably getting cross-court answers, or slower shots to his backhand corner.
And that strategy has worked tremendously.
But there is a vulnerability to Nadal's one-dimensional game: Against tall players, Nadal's topspin forehand instead of leaping up to a difficult position, looks like a sitter, right in their sweet spot, landing short in the court.
Nadal's loses (aside from David Ferrer, Juan Carlor Ferrero, and Federer) primarily come when he plays tall men that can come inside the court, take his forehand on the rise, and flatten out the return, pounding it to Nadal's forehand corner. Nadal ends up running a lot of hard yards, and hitting shorter and shorter.
Among the players that have beaten Nadal are: the 6 ft 5 in Thomas Berdych, 6 ft 3 Andy Murray, the muscular 6 ft 2 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 6 ft 3 in Novak Djokovich, and 6 foot 6 Joachim Johansson (sadly retired early), Other players that have given Nadal a great deal of trouble before succumbing are 6 ft 4 Marat Safin, 6 ft 3 in Ernst Gulbis, and 6 ft 6 Sam Querry, and at Wimbledon then 173-ranked qualifier, Robert Kendrick at 6 ft 3.
The bad news for Nadal is that while taller players had been largely absent from the top ten, there are a bunch that are on the rise, including: Marin Cilic, Murray, Gulbis, Tsonga and Nadal is going to have a hard time avoiding Djokovic on hard courts.
Of course, Nadal can and occasionally does, flatten out his forehand more. But then he becomes a conventional player, and makes a lot more errors. Witness his loss to Murray where the announcers were at a loss to explain why Nadal was making unforced errors, saying he was "uncharacteristically missing". Well, it's easy to explain why he missed.
We'll see, but I expect the top ranking to change hands several times next year and the Grand Slam titles to be a much more open competition than it has seemed during the period of Fed's Domination.
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