Rod Laver, on the possibility of Nadal winning Australia:
"It would be a mini-slam, or whatever you want to call it but it isn’t the grand slam.
It is 40-odd years since I did the grand slam, and before that you had to go way back to the 1930s for the last time that anyone did it, so it’s not easy.
Winning one grand slam tournament is difficult enough. I’m not knocking what would be a great achievement of Nadal’s to win four in succession, but I don’t think winning four in a row across two seasons would be the same as a calendar-year grand slam.
It would be an end and a beginning. It would be a start. After maybe winning in Melbourne he could then go for the grand slam. People always used to say after winning the Australian Open: 'I suppose I’m going for the grand slam now then’. Winning the Australian Open would be a start for him.
I think Martina Navratilova once won four in a row across two years, and she said herself that it did not have the same meaning as having won all four over the same calendar year."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/te...pen-is-just-the-beginning-says-Rod-Laver.html
Is Laver right?
Discuss.
"It would be a mini-slam, or whatever you want to call it but it isn’t the grand slam.
It is 40-odd years since I did the grand slam, and before that you had to go way back to the 1930s for the last time that anyone did it, so it’s not easy.
Winning one grand slam tournament is difficult enough. I’m not knocking what would be a great achievement of Nadal’s to win four in succession, but I don’t think winning four in a row across two seasons would be the same as a calendar-year grand slam.
It would be an end and a beginning. It would be a start. After maybe winning in Melbourne he could then go for the grand slam. People always used to say after winning the Australian Open: 'I suppose I’m going for the grand slam now then’. Winning the Australian Open would be a start for him.
I think Martina Navratilova once won four in a row across two years, and she said herself that it did not have the same meaning as having won all four over the same calendar year."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/te...pen-is-just-the-beginning-says-Rod-Laver.html
Is Laver right?
Discuss.