Another Wimbledon, another Rafael Nadal loss in the early rounds to a low-ranked serve-and-volleyer who’s destined to be a trivia answer in the Who did Rafa lose to? category. Dustin Brown this year, Nick Kyrgios the year before, Steve Darcis the year before that and Lukas Rosol the year before that. Except for Kyrgios, who has a mouth on him, none of these players is ever going to be a champ.
But Rafa is – was. What has happened to him? Is it age? (He’s 29 but then, Roger Federer’s 33.) His very physical game? A new racket? Loss of confidence and his famous mental toughness? All of the above? ...
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Read MoreWhat a frigging mess.
The World Tour Finals – which some clever headline writer at Tennis magazine called “WTF, Indeed” – were a disaster with pull-outs, flame-outs and shutouts from start to finish this past week.
I blame Rafa’s appendix. It all started there. Rafael Nadal had his appendix removed so he couldn’t play in the round-robin, season-ending London tournament that features the top eight players. David Ferrer, asked to be an alternate, showed up and promptly lost to Kei Nishikori. But at least he showed up. Grigor “Baby Fed” Dimitrov, also an alternate, didn’t bother to. Steve Tignor, author of the “WTF” article, explains the Dimitrov philosophy of declining invitations with a baseball analogy.
Marin Cilic might not have bothered to show up either for all the good it did him. The US Open champ looked flat, as did Tomas Berdych, as did just about everyone, except new daddy Novak Djokovic.
And then there was the battle of the Swiss, known for their peace-loving neutrality. Apparently, Roger “Feddy Bear” Federer – who was breezing through the tourney, on track to play Nole in the final smackdown of baby daddies – and Stan “the Man” Wawrinka got into it after their semifinal bruiser, exchanging heated words in a makeshift locker room (a huge tournament and it doesn’t have a locker room?) sparked by Mirka Federer’s supposed “heckling” of Stan courtside.
But wait...
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