They got engaged last May. That would be some 18 months to wedding, so it wasn't because she's pregnant. It's not DF's ideas but Rafa's own words that says he doesn't want to be away when he has kids. Maybe you just haven't been paying attention.
It's a ridiculous notion that any male player has to change basically anything about his life because he gets married, or has kids. This is why mostly everyone has sneered at Wawrinka. The pregnancy doesn't affect them physically, (unlike female players, like Serena, Vika, Kim, etc.) They have wives to look after the kids, and the money to employ nannies and nurses. For sure kids shift one's focus. Darth's complaint is motivation, and I'm not sure he's right about that, vis-a-vis Roger. Roger's problem is that he's 37.
The wedding is scheduled for October and in his town. And Mary is 30 years old already so I think that maybe they don't want to wait too long to be parents but still they could wait a couple of years perfectly well
I agree that Roger's issue is that he's 37. Nothing to do with family. But in general even men's priorities and motivations can change when children come into the picture. Even relationships can be beneficial or hurtful. That's just life. It's certainly not the same type of physical situation that can affect women after child birth, and I don't think anyone is saying that are they?
Stan is a terrible example. Stan wasn't much before he had a wife and kid, either. And he didn't ditch his wife and baby to "focus on tennis." It was to focus on Donna Vecic, we later learned. Agassi/Shields is an even worse example. Two-celebrity relationship, oh, and he had a meth addiction which broke up their marriage. (This from her book.) I bet that didn't help his tennis.
I don't think we need to go too far down this rabbit hole, just because Rafa decided to 'put a ring on it,' but I do think Agassi/Shields is not really comparable to anyone in tennis I can think of. Two high-visibility celeb careers and a crystal meth habit. Perhaps the pressure of one contributed to the other, but again, hard to compare them to the situations we're talking about in the now. Also, Andre did a much better job of being married and playing while he had kids the second time around, so it was clearly a much more grounded situation for him.
No, no one is saying that. Just saying that elite men who can afford to pay for the help, and they can manage to absorb kids into the equation without missing much of a beat. However life distracts a player is another question. Roger's boys were born in May 2014, and you can look at his activity...he didn't really miss a tournament. By which I don't mean much of anything. GSM started this line of conversation by wondering if Rafa's fiancee might be pregnant soon. Unanswerable question.
Maybe the ATP will later retroactively have them count as single matches.
I bet it is. Makes sense for him...as he loves the sea. He really hasn't spent much of his money on material things. One other thing was his Aston Martin, which he bought after he'd won his 5th Major and first Wimbledon.
