CAMELOT FANTASIES

morning emma. nole is just too tough in the best of 3 sets formats on the hard courts. he has also been outworking them all and it shows.


congrats to nole and all his fans. I believe that was his 18th masters shield. the guy is an all time great. no question about it.

Nole is the best hard court player out there after all - regardless 3 or 5 sets. And it's also his best surface - just like clay is to Nadal. And he did not outwork Nadal. There were only a few long rallies. Nole kept things quite short and took it to Nadal. Nadal had to guess most times where Nole was going go next, so it didn't come to fitness at all but rather what kind of gameplan Nole brought on that day against Nadal. It definitely worked for Nole but it will be interesting to see if Nole will be able to execute it in the future in the same manner.

But if you didn't see the match then there's no point discussing, really. This meeting was nothing like their past meetings if anything.

Yes, that's quite an achievement for Nole to mark his place with 18 Masters shield but we can't forget that he had 2 walkovers and Nadal had 1 and in the semi-final at that. This era has produced a lot of mental midgets and that allows the the top players get away with a lot of things. They are better players of course but the main ingredient that really separates the two is the mental game. The lower ranked players don't go into any match with the attitude of actually winning it. Most times they are defeated even before the match. That's why we have to be very thankful to players like Nishikori, Dolgo, Gulbis, etc. since they don't care about the top players all that much and believe in their own abilities. Too unfortunate that they have to fight one too many good players to make the deeper rounds and often times they run out of juice. Hopefully great times are ahead for all these players and tennis in general.