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?

Will Nadal's knees cause his downfall?

I recently read that Nadal, is now going to skip Dubai, because of an injury that he suffered to his knee during his match against Murray in Rotterdam. This is the second time in the last two and a half months that he's had to skip an event because of knees pains and it may not be the last time that he's sidelined this season. Nadal's, knees aren't going to get any better, in fact his Uncle has been talking about seriously cutting back on the tournaments during the hard court months.

It's really too bad that he has these kinds of problems at 22. Nadal's, knees will most likely force him into retirement at some point. It's impossible to know when but it's not a good sign if he's already re-injured them only a month into the tennis season.

What are your thoughts on Nadal's knees?

Nadal vs Federer Australian Open Finals

It's only February and I think this may already be the match of the year. I woke up at 4:00 AM to see this one. Since it was between Nadal and Federer I knew that it had to be good.

Once the match began Federer, played a horrible first game and was easily broken by Nadal. Fed got the break back the next game and from that point on the first set was very close. Both players were playing amazing points, they struck winners that would blow your mind. Nadal, eventually got a break late in the first set to win it 7-5.

In the second set Nadal got an early break to go up 3-2 but Federer managed to dig deep and win four straight games to win the second set 6-3.

The third was extremely intense and produced some of the best points in the match. I had a feeling that whoever won the third set would win the match. Neither player was able to break serve so it eventually went to a tie-break. Nadal and Federer traded mini-breaks in the tie- break before Nadal began to pull away. Rafa won the tie-break 7-3.

With Nadal, now up two sets to one and Federer's chances looking worse than ever, I thought that Nadal might run away with the match. It didn't happen. After having several chances to break serve during one of the early games in the fourth set, Nadal, let down a bit and Federer was able to keep his hopes of a 14th grand slam alive by winning the fourth set 6-3.

Nadal, broke Federer's serve in the fourth game of the fifth set and ran ahead to a 4-1 lead. Federer tried his best to fight back but was broken when he was serving to stay in the match at 2-5.

This was a classic match. Fun from the very first serve. The trophy celebration at the end was somewhat awkward. Federer, wasn't able to hold in his feelings and he started crying when he went up to address the crowd after the match. I felt badly for him but it did detract from the ceremony. Nadal, was nice about it and reminded Fed that he was one of the greatest players of all time and would no doubt break Sampras's record by the end of his career.

Some people think that Federer's reaction during the ceremony was inappropriate. I'm not sure, what do you think?