The pressure is on Nadal. I don't even want to think about it
- Thread starter MixieP
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MixieP
Hall of Fame
I certainly do. That's why I said, Bravo!Expressing an idea succintly is not something I do often so I hope you appreciate it
MixieP
Hall of Fame
It used to be true that Nadal improves with pressure. But after the last four finals against Novak, I'm not so sure anymore.
I think it is the confidence that has let him down more than anything. In Rome it seemed painfully obvious that he didn't have the confidence, when he started moonballing. You could say that he was trying to mix it up, trying a new tactic... but it smacked of desperation to me.
Sentinel
Bionic Poster
Murray has taken the pressure off Raphgla by saying he (Andy) can win French Open.
He'll tire out whichever of Raphla/Noel he meets in a long 5-set semi final, serving for the match and then DF'ing 2 times to give it away.
So Ragphla has no pressure, and Noel will be too exhausted. Ralghpa for the win.
He'll tire out whichever of Raphla/Noel he meets in a long 5-set semi final, serving for the match and then DF'ing 2 times to give it away.
So Ragphla has no pressure, and Noel will be too exhausted. Ralghpa for the win.
mandy01
G.O.A.T.
'Noel' LOOOOOOOOL! Was that a typo?
Well,at any rate Novak seems to had a fantastic 'Noel' this year :lol:
D
Deleted member 21996
Guest
ROFL x Seven days in sunny Junol
Sentinel
Bionic Poster
You been missin' lately, Mandy ?? Noel, Ralph, Alfred -- these are the current top 3 in the world of tennis. See entries 5 and 7 in urban-dict.
The mods erased my location, so i added this back hastily. So folks can find me. Yes, i am unable to get out of this dream.
Nadal does better with challenges when he is the underdog, he likes more to hunt than defend. Even though Nole has been trailblazing lately and beating Nadal, Rafa still has the number 1 ranking and the FO crown to defend, thus the pressure. Novak is still running on high confidence and wants to take as much as he can on that momentum.
A
aprilfool
Guest
"********" is so..2010. It isn't very funny any more.
Thanks
With love,
Rafail Moonball Nadle
Thanks
With love,
Rafail Moonball Nadle
ivan_the_terrible
Hall of Fame
Why are you guys 'poking' fun at Ralph's stamina issues? We all know he's an all-natural, super-talented athlete of immense resolve. He's suffering the after-effects of that dengue fever that he contracted in Doha. Remember all the sweating and lack of stamina that caused the severe hamstring pull in the right leg? Actually I could be wrong, wasn't it a groin pull in the left leg?
I will ask Dr Sanchez via email & get back to you.
cknobman
Legend
Bringing the topic of clay GOAT into play would the lack of winning RG this year allow Borg to retain the clay GOAT title or are there people out there who thing Nadal has already taken that title and nothing can change that.
Double_Fault
Banned
Nadal is tired. Don't you realise it? He is still EXHAUSTED from winning US Open 2010.
Bud
Bionic Poster
Rafa is not a record / glory seeker so I doubt he cares whether people consider his accomplishments over Borg or vice versa. You're drawing a comparison to somebody who played 30-35 years ago with wooden racquets.
Nadal's name will already be in the history books, regardless.
In the Q on a dump slow day, yes. In the final, NO!
Double_Fault
Banned
Nadal-Soderling is boring as heck. Who wants to see that?
ivan_the_terrible
Hall of Fame
MixieP
Hall of Fame
Abba Mama Mia versus Lady Caca Macarena. Ole!!!
BULLZ1LLA
Banned
(Djokovic is being called the "KING of Tennis", and he sure won't be if Rafa wins Roland Garros and Wimbledon. The Djokovic streak will look like a minor blip on the screen of Rafa dominance. If Rafa wins Roland Garros he will have won 4 of the last 5 slams, with Djokovic's Australian Open title being the only blunder which Rafa lost due to injury. That's one hell of perception change all because of Djokovic not winning Roland Garros.....Whereas if Djokovic wins Roland Garros it will confirm him as THE KING, by far!)
DeShaun
Banned
Roger said once his overall confidence flows mostly from his service success--when he is serving well, the rest of his game seems to fall into place. Rafa has read Roger's serve better than anyone. Did Rafa ever lead the tour in breaking serves? Maybe, but he certainly seems to have prioritized figuring out Federer's. He's been jumping all over Roger's serve longer than anyone has. Then there's the robotic certitude with which Rafa's always hammering away at Federer's back hand. However successful that tactic was, it actually bored many tennis fans, myself included; but that's not so important. What is, however, is that Rafa and Toni appear to have keenly studied Roger's game with the sole aim of Rafa becoming Roger's kryptonite. More importantly, I believe this aim was, for a very long time, much higher on their list of priorities than developing Rafa's game such that he might start contesting non-clay slams better. I wonder whether Toni and Rafa thought things out any further than how best to expose Federer. But I wonder, if now the hour is not just a little too late for them to see through the amount of development that he would need to make in order to hang with Novak. Novak seems poised to grab the #1 ranking and hold onto it for so long that by the time he relinquished it, Rafa's window for playing at extremely high levels, based on his great physicality and the aura that he has been able to project--which, arguably, he earned mostly for being the guy who showed everyone that Roger could be mastered--will have closed on Rafa by the time Novak has finally sated his appetite for being #1. I believe that Rafa's role in tennis history was to expose Federer's game, and now that he has played his part, the stage belongs to Novak. Strange as this may sound, Rafa now seems less motivated and slower afoot that there is no Federer in the picture, no all consuming goal to gnaw on.
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Double_Fault
Banned
Federer should serve at 100%.
zagor
Bionic Poster
Double_Fault
Banned
****** tends to play with big, jumping balls.
I wasn't talking about Nadal; I was referring to your implications about Djokovic (based on your recent assertions about him).
sbengte
G.O.A.T.
Thy wish is granted. Trollerling may be looking to keep his trollery record intact for the third year in a row.
(Nadal_slam_king, Rafa can still go for a '6 in a row when not injured' record. Vamos. )
Sweet Lingonberries!!!!!! Lotto better start making a spacesuit for Robin, the way Ralphs been launching those moonballs more than NASA has been sending objects into space.
MixieP
Hall of Fame
LOL.
I vote for Robin in Abba-like platform boots.
MixieP
Hall of Fame
Dear Senti, I'm leaving for a weekend retreat to learn how to deal with the pressure, which I experience as intense, immense and imminently injury-inducing. I shall report back on Monday. Uuhm.
Got a feeling the final will be different then expected. Federer, Del Potro, and even a guy like Gasquet will throw kitchen sink at Djokovic, while Nadal is far from playing well, and could face Verdasco, Soderling and Murray in a row. Not an easy task by any means either. I think at least one of them will be surprised.
TennisFan3
Talk Tennis Guru
I love how people are overrating Gasquet, who is one of the mentally weaker players out there, and plays with even more pressure in France. He probably won't even get through Belluci. If he meets Nole in Round 4, he will be obliterated without question.
Fed IMO isn't much of a threat to Djokovic - given that clay is the Swiss' worst surface. To me, Delpo is the only guy who could catch fire and take a set or 2 of the Djoker. Otherwise he's a given for the final, without expending too much energy.
Nadal's story is different. If he doesn't improve he'll surely be send packing by Soderling. If Rafa does improve, he'll still be pushed hard by Murray, and possibly get beaten.
So IMO Nadal is the one who looks unlikely for the Final..
namelessone
Legend
Rafa is not making finals in this s**t form.
Final will be Djoker versus someone else other than Rafa/Murray(perhaps soderling).
You just love to be making Nadal the underdog don't you? You said exactly the same thing when Nadal was down to sets to 1 twice against Haase and Petzschner at wimbledon last year.
@ Tennisfan3; you are right, Belluci is a candidate to beat Djokovic as well..
Of course Djokovic is the favourite in that section, but I think it's very possible on these relatively fast courts that one of the other guys upsets him. Federer is the main man to do that, but Delpo or Gasquet or Belluci has a chance as well.. Who knows.
Just sayin I think there's a good chance on a different final than Nadal-Djokovic.
namelessone
Legend
Some people never learn.
Gasquet put on a BH clinic in the first set against pathetic 2011 CC Nadal and still lost that set 7-5. Now Djokovic is 2-3 levels above this Nadal, how in the hell is Gasquet gonna win three sets of Novak when he couldn't win one over Rafa?
aphex
Banned
He has never looked better...
Don't let the fact that Djoko's talent is a level above Ralph's confuse you...
namelessone
Legend
And Nadal was playing pretty average tennis overall in those early rounds. He didn't play anything particularly great in the Mathieu match as well but he did come alive(and stayed that way) in the soderling match after that line call.
But that was grass.
This is clay and after four tourneys(this is fifth), Nadal's overall level on clay has not improved one iota in RG over MC. Ask most Nadal fans and they will say that they enjoyed Rafa's HC matches more this year than his clay ones even though he won 2 titles on clay this year.
namelessone
Legend
Didn't realize Djoker was on court when Nadal was fumbling about with ferrer(twice), injured Murray, ********, spartan Lorenzi, clay god Isner and of course who can forget the clay legend, Andujar?
And up next is Veic, another mythological hero of the clay realm who I'm sure Rafa won't struggle with.
Of course, I agree he's not playing well enough. But you should have learned that the legends are seperated from the greats by their ability to rise to occassions, to step it up in a best of 5 match etc. Soderling can easily be beaten by Nadal if they play today.
Because Nadal will do what it takes to win.. against Djokovic or even Federer it might be a little different and form will be important, but against a guy like soderling, Nadal will most likely find a way.
Of course you are bound to be right sometimes with pessimistic predictions, but Nadal has won many tournaments while not playing great in early rounds... He's still the main favourite in my (and the bookmakers'!) books.
Sentinel
Bionic Poster
Did you use talent and Ralph in the same sentence. Aphex, i am a little shocked. Maybe i need a prescription.
Ralph is fine. Its the balls actually. They have a Jenny Sequoia about them which makes them hard for pushers. Of course, that does not explain why Raplha has lost repeatedly to Noel. Maybe Noel has some talent which Raphla lacks.
rovex
Legend
Didn't realize Djoker was on court when Nadal was fumbling about with ferrer(twice), injured Murray, ********, spartan Lorenzi, clay god Isner and of course who can forget the clay legend, Andujar?
And up next is Veic, another mythological hero of the clay realm who I'm sure Rafa won't struggle with.
What's wrong with Ferrer? Nadal brushed past him with ease the last two times.
namelessone
Legend
Did you watch those matches?
Ferrer re-broke a couple of times in those two finals and could have snatched a set IMO but he doesn't have weapons against Nadal.
All Rafa was doing was putting balls into the court for most of these finals and he had a very big safety net in the fact that Ferru couldn't hold serve easily. Simply put, he did just enough and even so one of these finals could have been prolonged by a set by Nadal's slip-ups(being re-broken or in danger of being re-broken nearly every time he broke David).
If David actually had a serve, he could have pushed Rafa more in any of these two finals. He moved great and was almost always into Rafa's service games but was woefully weak on his own. Ferrer broke Rafa 5 times in these two finals but could have easily done it a couple more times if he had played a couple of points better.
Overall,for these two finals, Rafa had 27 BP(11 MC, 16 Barca), Ferrer 15(7 MC, 8 Barca) but their conversion rate was very similar, 36% to 29% in MC,38% to 38% in Barcelona. And it shows in the scoreline of these finals.
Nadal was just a bit better than Ferrer in MC at the end of the sets or else he could have lost a set, if not the match. He always had Ferrer's weak serve to rely on, he really didn't play anything amazing.
Talker
Hall of Fame
If Nole and Nadal make the finals I would say Nadal is having a tougher time getting through sets. Both have played a lot of tennis and going deep.
Djokovic should have more left if it goes that far.
Both have a lot of pressure, if Nole lost the first set the pressure would be tremendous for him.
The faster balls favor Djokovic.
It would be a terrible loss for Nadal having not won over Djokovic on clay for the year and hurts his great record in finals, both in masters and slams.
This is big.
Djokovic should have more left if it goes that far.
Both have a lot of pressure, if Nole lost the first set the pressure would be tremendous for him.
The faster balls favor Djokovic.
It would be a terrible loss for Nadal having not won over Djokovic on clay for the year and hurts his great record in finals, both in masters and slams.
This is big.
rovex
Legend
It is well known that Ferrer statistically is one of the best returners and on clay breaks of serve is more prevalent. This in turn does not encourage your thought process in that it's baffling Nadal was broken quite a few times and you have to remember Nadal doesn't particularly have the biggest serve either.
