Broken_Shoelace said:
federberg said:
3, That isn't evidence of anything mate :nono Nadal can move better and play more aggressively without it having anything to do with injury. You're inferring a lot. Front and I have always maintained that he was hitting a lot of short balls. This is not disagreeing with anything Norman said. Obviously the next year he was hitting deeper, a more Rafa like ball. Conditions were very different as well. Next point please... :snicker
No no no. He clearly said "moving a lot better." That's not an evidence of anything? Forget the injury for a second. You have always maintained that he was moving fine against Soderling in 2009. It's actually your whole point of contention.
So you're telling me Nadal was moving well at the 200 FO, but was moving THAT much better in 2010? So he took his already elite movement to a whole new level? He might as well have competed in the Olympics a couple of years later then.
Only you would say "moving a lot better" is not evidence that he wasn't moving great.
Also, this is a Cali argument: His movement was fine but he was hitting the ball short. Uh...why do you think he was hitting the ball short? Maybe because he was getting to it a touch later than usual? But oh, it's Soderling's weight of shots? That's fair. Did Soderling's weight of shots somehow decrease the following year? Also, conditions were actually quite cool in the 2010 final as well.
I don't see any inconsistency here. He could easily have moved well enough to beat one player, but been exposed against another player. You look good when you win easy generally. And at that time Soderling was clearly the 3rd best player at RG. Nothing wrong with having any deficiencies exposed by a guy like that. But let's focus on what Norman said. It was a relative statement. No talk of injuries, he just made his qualitative assessment of Rafa's performance. Let's face it, if it wasn't to do with RG, where Rafa has always been king, the fact that he got taken out by a basher like Soderling wouldn't be that much of an issue. It's happened time and time again. There just seems to be this emotional belief held by Rafa-fans that no one should beat him there. I have an entirely neutral (indifferent?) perspective on it. Even top players lose occasionally, I see no reason at all to make anything of it, and I'm certainly not going to have any Nadal-fan reverence for Rafa's putative dominance at Roland Garros.
As an aside.. the season that Roger had the 5 setter against the Russian guy. Can't remember his name but begins with an 'A', at Flushing, and he went on to win the title. I want to say 2009, but that can't be right as that was the Delpo fiasco, so probably 2008... He was stinking up the place on hardcourts all year, but got it together at Cincy I think. His movement was a shocker, something was badly wrong. This might have been the year he smashed his racquet in Miami, playing against Novak. He wasn't injured, but something was wrong technically. It happens. Doesn't
have to be injury