Olympic draw is out and it doesn't favor Nadal or Federer

Their comes a time during the career of every pro athlete when they realise that their window of opportunity to win championships is beginning to close. The Olympics really seems to magnify this because every athlete will only have a few chances at best to win a gold medal. Roger and to a lesser extent Rafael are probably thinking about this as they get ready for the Olympics. Federer, has openly stated that the Olympics are as important to him as Wimbledon and at 27 years old he doesn't have many more opportunities ahead of him to win the gold medal. Although Nadal is only 22, he will undoubtedly have more severe damage done to his knees in four years than he does now. Unlike Federer, Nadal's game pounds his body into the ground and ultimately shortens the amount of time that he'll be able to play tennis at the pro level. While this may not be their last opportunity to win the gold, they probably won't have a better time to win than now.


Anyway, onto the draw. Hmmm...well the Americans didn't get a very good draw this time. Robby Ginepri's first round opponent is Novak Djokovic and Sam Querry has Igor Andreev with Radek Stepanek lurking in his corner of the draw. Blake, should be ok until the quarter-finals he may have to face Giles Simon in the third but he should be able to get through that match if he has to. If Blake, does makes the quarter-finals he could face Federer.

Federer's draw is pretty hard actually. He has Dmitry Tursunov in the first round, followed by Berdych in the third and probably Blake in the quarters. Nadal's is also tough. After the first round he could encounter Hewitt, followed by Stepanek, Murray, Djokovic, and Federer. In fact the odds look pretty good that he'll face both Murray and Djokovic because both guys have relatively easy draws and neither will have to face more than one seed on their way to the quarter-finals.

I'll go with Andy Murray to win the gold medal because Federer's draw is pretty difficult and we all know that he hasn't been rising to the occasion recently. The Olympic courts are decoturf which is the same surface they use at the US Open so that won't favor Nadal and Murray has been able to beat the Djoker the last two times they played.