2013 U. S. Open Championships...New York, New York

[stotty]

Depends where you're looking...

Sometimes the most obvious of things are staring you in the face and you fail to see it. Sometimes it is a case of denial...and man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.

A lot depends where a person is looking. We all see the same things from a different point of view...and through different spectacles.

I was looking more at Djokovic. At the 2012 Aussie Open he played two long and sapping matches back to back in searing temperatures...no problem. How did he do that? And he had less than 24 hours to recover between each match! That was the most extraordinary physical feat ever in tennis. Nowadays he doesn't have that kind of stamina. In the recent Wimbledon final against Murray, Djokovic was a physically under par after his long five setter against Del Potro. And, unlike at the Aussie Open, he had had a days rest inbetween. He tried to cut rallies down against Murray by coming to the net way more than usual, and in situations that meant he had to play volleys beyond his ability. He only goes to the net to mop up or to throw something in the mix, never as a matching winning ploy.

So that is where I was looking. Not at Nadal's physical prowess...more at Djokovic's inexplicable physical decline compared to the 2012 Aussie Open.

[stroke]

The information on the NIMH site doesn't say anything about taking performance enhancing or even recreational drugs. There are an awful lot of people who have OCD or at least some symptoms of it. While there are probably a lot of them that have problems with drugs, there is nothing that says a person with OCD is more likely to be taking PED's or recreational drugs. If they did start to take them, they probably couldn't control it enough to ever pass the repeated drug tests that Nadal and Djokovic are subjected to.

It's amazing what Nadal has done. Perhaps he did take some PED's to help him heal in the break after Wimbledon, but he certainly didn't come back quickly after last year's Wimbledon. He took 7 months and did tremendous rehab. When he came back after Wimbledon this year, he looked really rusty the first couple of matches. I believe he really rested as much as he said he did. And that is a legitimate explanation for his recovery.

He got the upper hand on Djokovic physically, but he didn't knock him out with the physical edge. He knocked him out with psychological blow of coming back from that 0-40 game at 4-4 in the third. I think he still faced a couple of break points after that 0-40 comeback in that game, but Rafa stayed tough. Just a few minutes before, he looked like he was toast. But he never stopped mentally, as he almost never does. Then, once he got the edge, he gained confidence and became more aggressive even as Novak folded his tent.

It's not fair to keep saying Rafa is doing PED's without some evidence. I think he did something in the break after Wimby 2012, but we don't know that it was illegal. He may have done what Kobe Bryant did with the German doctors for his knees. Or something similar. Not illegal.

You have to give credit for the tremendous effort Nadal put forward. Yes there is something different about him. He got a genetic gift. Whether or not he's enhanced it illegally, we have no evidence of that. That display he and Nole put up in the first three sets stands as the single best argument I've seen that the best tennis players are the best athletes in the world: strength, speed, endurance, patience, perseverance and immense skill all administered with strategy and tactics guided by intelligence. He may not be as pretty and graceful as Federer, but there is plenty of creativity in what he was doing. Some of those angles off drop shots were unbelievable. And there is no question he is constantly striving to improve. You gotta love that!

No question, Rafa is a little bit OCD, but that's not breaking the rules.



don

I like you thoughts here. I completely agree that no athlete has ever shown the mental strength of Nadal. He simply just not ever get discouraged or negative out there to the point it even effects his play for even one point. Just as Fed may be forever the benchmark for elegant, effortless tennis, Nadal has established his own benchmark.

Also, I agree completely with Don that professional men's tennis players are the best in the world. And I also agree with Don Budge about that women's final. Simply unwatchable.

[bottle]

No, it was watchable. I know because I watched it. But I would be more agreeable about the judgments in this thread leveled upon the attractiveness of the two gladiators if I knew more about the psychological makeup of each and every critic, as in, "Where you cummin from, man?"

I can see that the women's final of the 2013 U.S. Open was a good chance for certain guys to unleash their latent fear of women, fear of black persons, and fear of bad fashion.

For Vika and Serena could not have chosen costumes that were less crowd friendly. First, they both wore salmon. Where did that come from? Didn't representatives of the two camps correspond before the match? Did they think for a moment that when two opponents wear the same color they are reducing the possibility of differentiation between them? The finalists next year should each bring along a play director and a costumer of considerable theatrical experience. Or did this already happen? Did the camps decide that if both gladiators wore pink, the blackness of Serena and the whiteness of Vika would be emphasized?

And if both sweated a lot (which they did), the perspiration would show up better in salmon pink (which it did). This would suggest the sleeveless armor that the saluting slaves about to die always wore in the Roman Coliseum if we are to believe our comic books. And there was design in the Del Potro like costumes. All emphasis went to the arm pits.

I'll leave the topic of fear of women to the imagination, other than to say, "I really fear women." They have screwed me up in the most royal if often delightful way.

But about black persons, this, although it's personal (I think). One is usually better off tending toward the personal rather than stereotypes. Since my brother-in-law was a dean at Wake Forest University, and the electrical construction business where I worked was close to a good cafeteria, I frequently had lunch with a group of deans, one of whom was beautiful, black, and the only woman among the four.

She was a 4.5 tennis player, too.

She and I would often want to talk about tennis but that was difficult. The conversation, frequently enlightening, philosophical, linguistic, behavioral and educationist, could nevertheless tend toward the latest meeting with the university president or the hip replacement which one of the deans had a year or two before. (And he was limping-- man was he limping. So don't always believe what you hear.)

There was some stolen tennis conversation nevertheless, and all three male deans got to hear about Richard Williams and his different approach to junior tennis and not from me.

Eventually the beautiful, impeccably dressed woman I'm thinking about right now jumped from Wake Forest to North Carolina School for the Arts and married a black scriptwriter and became a glamorous Hollywood movie star.

And no, she declined, i.e., didn't answer my email the one time I asked if we could play.