CAMELOT FANTASIES

princess TT and general masterclass have been right all along and I am in that camp also:


it is not really a confidence crisis. rafa likes to say that these days and he means well. in a way he is even right.

how can you be confident when you are not winning and you are not as supremely fit as in the past.


in the past even a bad rafa was still plenty good for his opponents on the red clay because of his physicality and because of his fitness and speed.


lady TT has said this best: this is not rocket science. we have seen this coming for 2 years now. sure he put together a few good weeks last year at the north American hard court circuit but he has--on the average---become far more vulnerable in the best of 3 sets formats.

but I can assure you that a very big reason for his success on the hard courts last year at the north American circuit was because he was able to dominate clay.

he lost the monte carlo final to nole last year but he went one to win Barcelona, Madrid, rome and RG. and that is what gave him the confidence to do so well on the north amrican hard court circuit.


at any rate I do not see this as a confidence issue. he has dominated these players for a decade on the red clay. he is not hurting for belief.


what is costing him is that he does not work as hard as he used to. both on his ground game and his fitness.

he even boasts about the fact that he does not train more than 2 hours. sometimes just 90 minutes.  well that is not going to cut it and it is not cutting it.

players 5 years older than him are working twice as hard as he is. he needs to find his motivation.


he stands alone to be able to challenge history and yet cant seem to find the proper motivation.



I did not see the match today and I have zero intentions of watching it. I know his game too well and I know exactly what happened. I don't want to see nadal this way.

nadal lost today for only 2 reasons:

1. he has not been working hard enough on his ground game on the red clay like he needs to
2. he has let some of his fitness go. he said he was tired today. that is not acceptable at his level. he is a world #1 and in a unique position to challenge history. and still only 27. why the hell was he tired? nole played 2 back to back matches that were 3 hours long each just before the final. well almost 3 hours long each. the match against milos was slightly over 3 hours and the one against ferru was 2 hours and 38 minutes.

you don't even need legs to take your fitness to some amazing level if you want to and if you want it bad enough. why has nadal chosen to drop his fitness at a time when he can least afford to. and at a time when it is so damn clear that players like nole, ferru, and so many others are working so much harder on their fitness.


he just beat nole in montreal and at flushing meadows on nole's best surface a few months back. so nole is not that much better than nadal. nole is certainly not better than nadal on the red clay.

nadal can beat them all when he is properly motivated and properly focused on his practice and his fitness.


so that is what nadal has to do: he has to hit a million balls on the practice courts and he has to improve his fitness.


he has only 1 card left to play now: he has to get into the RG final and take down who ever he faces. he just needs 1 good match in the final as far as I am concerned.

for next year he has to try to come back a lot fitter and a lot healthier and then take it from there.


rafa is not winning montreal and cincy this year. I just don't see it happening at the current rate.

This has been a rough year for Rafa. The freak injury at Montreal? That had to be deflating. Here he was on the precipice of #14 and in the first set at least, he tweaks his back. That was devastating. So, I don't think it was a confidence issue, as much as it was an emotional letdown. Had he won that match, with the French coming, he would have felt very good about his chances going forward.

But a loss like that takes months to get over, just like it did with Novak when he lost those RG's in back to back years. He took a while to get back on track. But people tend to forget that, because they only focus on Federer and Nadal, no doubt due to their dominance for so long.

I think the slump wasn't due to confidence, but the energy zapping let down, which led to his poor play over the last few months. But. slowly but surely, he is getting it back considering last week and more specifically this week. So when you consider that Nadal played all the way through and hasn't taken off, I don't think, that's a lot of tennis in those legs, no matter how fit you are. So, for him to get to the final and challenge Nole, (who I never believed had a wrist injury) I think he was making an excuse for losing to Federer (don't write me) went off and rested for two weeks. For Nadal to take it to three sets was good. Because I find it hard to believe that Nole was playing at the level that Murray was, and it still went to thee sets.

I think Nadal got a lot out of this week.