'What Rafael Nadal does at Roland Garros is incomparable', says ATP legend

Rafael Nadal, together with his colleagues at the top of the ranking Novak Djokovic and Dominic Thiem, therefore arrived in Adelaide, with a flight from Barcelona-via-Doha chartered by Tennis Australia. It will be his base for phase 1 of approaching the first seasonal major, welcomed in the extra-luxury bubble designed for famous tennis players, divided by common colleagues following the refusal of the Westin Hotel Melbourne to welcome the entire group on site. Taking advantage of the places left free under the famous threshold of the Thousand total authorized to go down under for the event, and taking on the not insurmountable problem of paying out of his own pocket room and board for the companions in excess of the two guaranteed by the organization, Rafa will be accompanied by a brigade no less numerous than the ordinary. In recent days, the twenty-time Grand Slam champion had to accept the "no" from coach Carlos Moya in the first place, unwilling to spend a month in Australia away from loved ones, given the complicated period. "After discussing it with Rafa, I decided not to follow the team, and I will watch the tournament from home - Moya said -. Due to the pandemic, the moment in Spain is very difficult, I prefer to stay with my wife and children." In a recent interview with Mundo Deportivo, Sergi Bruguera, now aged 50 and the captain of the current Spanish Davis Cup team, claimed it is not possible to talk about his and Nadal's achievements in the same breath.

Bruguera on Rafael Nadal

"At that time it was unthinkable for me to win two Roland Garros. Until then, only seven or eight players had won two Roland Garros in history. It was an extraordinary thing. Obviously today what Rafael Nadal does at Roland Garros is incomparable. You cannot talk about both things in the same sentence," Sergi Bruguera said. Tennis has seen a lot of eras, but the current era of the ‘big 3’ is something else. The big 3 of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic have dominated tennis for more than a decade, and no one comes close to them in terms of various records. Now that they have set the bar very high, their retirement is a h*t topic and who comes next after them is unknown. But the current ATP Chairman, Andrea Gaudenzi, isn’t concerned about the big 3’s retirement. He cited the rivalry between Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi and implied that tennis survived their retirement so it will also survive the retirement of Djokovic, Nadal, and Rafael Nadal. “I started playing tennis during the era of Pete Sampras and André Agassi. Many people said that tennis would have not survived their retirement and it would have been very difficult to match between Sampras and Agassi,” Gaudenzi said in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport.

 

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