Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Nadal vs Borg

If you could have any two players from any time period play each other 1 match, who would it be and why? It's a tough question for me. There are so many fun match ups: Nadal vs Sampras, Federer vs Laver, Edberg vs Borg, Roddick vs Tilden, Federer vs Budge etc. It's hard to pick just one. I guess if I had to I might go with Nadal vs Borg, two of the greatest clay court players of all time. Nadal and Borg have similar birthdays, and playing styles. They even look similar because of the long hair with the bandana/headband. If they were able to play each other on the European red clay it would be hard to say who would win (assuming that Borg was using and adept with a graphite racquet.)

Bjorn Borg, stopped playing the majors in 1981 and later completely retired from tennis in January of 1983 (with the exception of an unsuccessful return to the tour, in the early 90s.)
Years before I was born and about 22 years before I saw my first tennis match. I had actually never seen a Borg match until last year when I found one of his Wimbledon finals on You Tube. I had read about him and had heard that he was one of the greatest clay court players of all time (maybe more so than Nadal.) So, I was very curious to see how good he really was. I was impressed with what I saw. Borg was able to generate tremendous topspin with a wood racquet (very difficult to do because of the small head size.) Borg, lacked some of the power that Nadal has and looked less intimidating because of his smaller size but he was still extremely fast. My opinion is that Bjorn Borg deserves most of the praise that he gets. I wouldn't say he was the greatest player of all time but his French Open and Wimbledon achievements were amazing.

Despite having similar styles, there are noticeable differences between Borg and Nadal. Borg came to net a little bit more than Nadal and was probably more reliant on his serve than Nadal is. Nadal plays almost all of his points from way behind the base-line, where as Borg was more willing to step into the court and put more aggression into his ground strokes. Actually, Borg reminds me more of Federer on clay than Nadal. Both Nadal and Borg were incredibly fast runners.

If they were to play a match, in their primes, with the technology staying the same (both with a graphite) and Borg was able to master the newer technology, I think it would be an extremely close match. Nadal, would probably would have a strength advantage over Borg. I would probably go with Nadal in a very close 4 or 5 set match.

Who do you think would be the winner?

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