Roig: 'Without Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer would have stopped'

Until now, Roger Federer leads all the most important statistics: 20 Grand Slam titles against Rafael Nadal's 19 and Novak Djokovic's 17; 103 ATP tournaments against Nadal's 85 titles and Djokovic's 79 titles; the Swiss Maestro is also a recordman for the weeks at the top of the ranking.

The trio drives each other to be the best they could possibly be on the court.

Nadal’s coach Francis Roig also explained that the ‘Big 3’ are still playing at the same level at the later half of their career as they are running this race together. “All these three guys Novak, Roger, and Rafa maybe because they are together on this run in this race, one motivates the other one. Probably if Rafa didn’t exist Roger would have stopped playing tennis five years ago,” Roig said on Tennis Legends at Eurosport.

“But because of this, I think one makes the other one better. And the ambition is huge. I mean, I can see sometimes with Rafa, he’s winning a tournament, a 250 tournament in the ATP and he’s so happy about that. I mean a guy who has won 12, 13 Grand Slams when he was like this and he was playing sometimes small tournaments, not anymore. And he was so happy about that,” he added.

“You can see how much he likes to win, still winning. Otherwise, there is no chance at this age after such a big success to try to keep winning tournaments. You need this ambition,” Roig concluded. Nadal, unlike Federer, has started practicing, though only very recently. The Spaniard would have been favored to win a 20th major and tie Federer had the French Open been played as usual given he has collected a record 12 titles at Roland Garros.

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2X2a6W1