A Tennis Interlude

I watched the third set of Rafa's victory over Kyle Edmund today. Rafa wasn't brilliant, just good enough to win. It was his first match on clay this season, so maybe it's premature to expect brilliant. Overall this year, he's been the clear number two behind Federer, who isn't playing again until Roland Garros, while his other top competitors, Murray and Djokovic, have been been well below their best all season. Now we've got two months of tournaments on Rafa's best and favorite surface. It's not crazy to think that he's capable of winning a couple of the clay-season Masters 1000s (Monte Carlo, Madrid, and Rome), as well as the French. Given what Federer has accomplished so far, and with Wimbledon and the summer hard courts still to come; and given the possibility of a big year for Rafa on the clay, it's not impossible to imagine that Roger, turning 36 in August, and Rafa, 31 in June, could finish the season as the two top-rated players in the world. How would that be for a storyline about resurgent seasons?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *