Nadal and His Future

Some of you may recall my commenting on my opinion that I would be surprised if Nadal was still playing in a couple of years. Or at least would have to cut down his schedule dramatically or be out injured regularly.

The reasons I sited were two:

1/ He is brutal on his legs with all the running and stopping and changing directions his game style requires . He is already been out a couple of times with injuries to his knees and as I recall some of his early exits he commented on sore knees, not to mention that he tapes his knee's now for every match.

To help this I thought he would need to learn to volley more to shorten points and have his strokes penetrate through the court more, rather than the heavy topspin of a clay courter.

To his credit is working on this.

2/ The bigger problem was the way he so awkwardly finishes his forehand. If any of us did that more than maybe once our twice we would be out with a shoulder problem forever. He was in fact suffering shoulder issues too.

I am happy to say, he has clearly worked on the longer less abusive finish on his forehand to the extent that even the analysts have noticed. Most are just saying that it is so his ball will penetrate through the court more to make him a better hard and grass court player, which it will. But, one or two commented that the longer finish should lessen the stress on the shoulder as well. Which I agree as well.

This takes a lot of courage to change a stroke to that extent when your old stroke got you to #1 in the world, but that is how great players think.

It was not as simple as just adding length to the finish. The main reason for his old, awkward finish was that he had a contact point that was quite far back in the hitting zone. Steffi Graf also had a similar contact point that was somewhat back in the hitting zone. Her finish was often in a similar location. So what I am saying is that, for Rafa to get the different follow through position, it was just to finish a bit further across his body. No. It required dramatic a timing change. That is not easy, so hats off to him!


I am a Federer fan, but I admire Rafa too. I would like to see Federer win all the time, but the juxtaposition of their styles is perhaps the most opposite of any two rivals in the history of tennis. Perhaps the only similarly opposite match up that I can think of would be Laver v. Rosewall. Sampras v. Agassi though similar, wasn't quite so exteme to my eye.

In any case, it is a compelling match-up, and we can all hope for many more epic battles between them before one or both are done.

What do you all think?