Rafael Nadal has a career Grand Slam. Meaning he's won at least one of each of the Grand Slam tennis tournaments. But he has a decided imbalance on clay, where he's now won 13 French Opens.
I haven't written much about tennis for awhile -- I was happy when Caroline Wozniacki finally won a Slam, though she had to defeat Simona Halep in an epic to do it, and I was also pulling for Halep to win one. Since then, she's won two, the French and Wimbledon, leaving me to hope she can somehow add a U.S. Open. But there are a lot of good young women players showing up. So Halep may not ever win another Slam tournament. Serena Williams, sadly, may also have lost her opportunity for one more. So now we have Kenin, Swiatek, Barty, all near the beginning of their careers.
But we never know for sure.
I was also happy that Dominic Thiem, a brave and valiant player, won the U.S. Open this year after Novak Djokovic tossed himself out of the tournament with an errant ball toss. (And yes, I thought the punishment was excessive.) Thiem and Zverev ended up in an epic that nobody appeared to want to win, and Thiem gamely hung on to get to the line.
So, back to Nadal. He didn't make it interesting at this strange fall French. No epics. Simple pure dominance on clay; remarkable to watch and revere even as we wish for more drama. No problem, he has provided that elsewhere.
So, here's to Nadal. All streaks eventually end. Maybe next year this one will end, too.
...
But probably not.
No comments:
Post a Comment