Wimbledon’s Trilogy Of 5-Set Finals 2007-09: Part 2

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at Internationaled.org

Published: February 20, 2011

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As spectacular as the final of 2007 proved for tennis fans, things were to heat up a year later. One might have sworn that Nadal's narrow defeat to Federer had signalled the high point of the tennis decade, the acme of the ultimate spectator moment - that elusive and dream combination of drama and glorious shotmaking.

How wrong, or rather naive, one would prove to be.

Nothing can compare, it may be said, with the final that ensued on a rainy afternoon on the final Sunday of Wimbledon 2008. Long had been the wait for this moment, a cherished clash between the greatest players of the day, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

Their swift progress through the draw - between them only one set, one errant loss of focus, had intervened in an otherwise unflappable march to the final. The world No. 3 and Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic had bundled out disappointingly in the third round; this was to be the time for the titans and true gods of tennis to do battle.

Nadal had thrashed his Swiss rival just a month before, in the final of Paris at Roland Garros, making short work of the world No. 1, 6-1 6-3 6-0, to break wide open, it seemed, the adamantine stranglehold Federer had had on the world of tennis for the five years before. It was a watershed moment in the increasingly dramatic power struggle between Federer and Nadal.

Yet this was Wimbledon, where Federer was unbeaten for 41 matches. However badly Nadal had beaten him on clay, he hadn't won here yet on grass and had never beaten Federer. As confident as he justly may have been, the demons of 2007 would well have lingered in his mind.

But Federer may have been afflicted by a more pernicious malaise, as confident as he may have felt from his record on grass, Nadalitis. He had been suffering from a particularly bad case of it for much of the clay season, to add to the woes of mononucleosis that plagued him in Australia in January. He had lost ...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Tennis

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