CAMELOT FANTASIES

Sampras was all class all the time.

nole has matured a great deal over the years. he does not engage in much gamesmanship anymore.

nadal just has his superstitions. I don't care for some of them but what can you do.

nadal's problem is that he is obsessed with his superstitions. uncle tony has told him to stop many times but he is just going to do it his way.


I had a few of them too. all tennis players have their various superstitions.




at any rate I think this was a huge opportunity for nadal. he failed to capitalize. its not often that one gets to reach slam #14. that would have placed him 3rd in history.

he also had a chance to become the first man in the open era to win each slam twice.


I know exactly what happened: 

he is not as fit as he used to be. he also spent considerable mental and physical capital in 2013 and then he just kept on going trying to chase the #1 rank.

he played abu dhabi and he played Doha which he won.

its the accumulation of all this effort that forced his body to just quit. you sustain injuries at this level when you are fatigued.

he was all over the court and spent major physical and mental capital in order to run over Federer.

the man hit the wall final. he was fatigued and the back went as a result of that. you can just look at his face. he looks like a ghost. he is seriously fatigued.

it was not anything stan was doing. nadal lost the first set to nishikori also. and he lost the first set to dimitrov. stan played great in the first set but so did nishikori and dimitrov.


nadal's level has dropped since the u.s. open and he has to work too hard to win his matches.



take away the back injury and he probably finds his way back into the match. it would have been a tough battle but he would have found a way back.

He'll be fine. I'm just glad it's over.

The only thing is that he doesn't have a lot of recovery time. He's on his way to another tournament I thought I read.