Rajiv Mordani

Australian Open

February 2nd, 2009 Rajiv Mordani No comments

Unlike Superbowl XLIII where I wasn’t particularly rooting for any particular team, for the Australian open I was rooting for Federer. I haven’t seen the match yet so this post may be a little premature, but I thought I should write this anyways. Federer, who now has lost his number one ranking was trying to tie Pete Sampras’ record of 14 grand slams, played like a champion throughout the tournament specially beating Roddick convincingly in the semi-finals was all set for the “epic” show down between him and his nemesis – Rafael Nadal. Nadal, who before this match had never reached a final on hard court, was also playing great tennis and played well against fellow Spaniard, Fernando Verdasco, to finally win the semi-final in 5 sets to setup the epic final.

Once that happened I started to think about where else have I seen such rivalry, and given my love for football (yes I admit it – American Football), the two teams that come to mind are the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots. To draw an analogy, in my mind, Federer is like Peyton Manning and the Colts who kept losing to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in 3 championship games before finally going on to win the Superbowl against the bears 2 year ago. Similarly I feel that Federer, has been losing a lot to Nadal and I feel that at some point it becomes more psychological than anything else.

In any case from what I read (and of course I did see the score so I know that it was a 5 setter), it was a great match again between the two and I guess that Federer will just have to wait to first equal Sampras’ record and and then hopefully he can beat it ( I think he will soon – after all he is only mid-way through his career ) and move on to be one of the all time greats of the game. In the mean time however Nadal will be basking in his glory rightfully so.