Federer vs Nadal :The race to be the best

Well, you may have deciphered my fascination for sport by now.Today i pick up a topic which is one of the greatest rivalries in contemporary sport.What is it about these nadal-federer epics that gets our adrenaline to flow and spines to tingle?Let's look at these champions one at at time.

Roger Federer's exploits are phenomenal,to say the least.237 weeks at the top.Nobody even close to him.He's arguably the greatest player the sport has ever seen.But how could a player who's the greatest ever have a record as poor as 6-13 against another player?(i'll come to this point a little later)

Now Rafa.The epitome of strength,stamina and ruthlessness on the court and a very humble person off it.The current no1 in the world and boy, he must be one real talent if he has managed to oust the great roger federer off his throne.Six grand slams by the age of 22.A prodigy.If form continues,who knows,he may leave even federer far behind.

The rivalry.

One thing i'd like to point out about the head to head is that these numbers provide a distorted image. Ten of their matches have been played on clay and nadal has a 9-1 record.Without doubt Nadal is leaps and bounds above federer on the red surface.Meanwhile Federer leads 5-4 on other surfaces.Another point i'd like to make is that early in his career nadal used to not make it past the early rounds in hard court tournaments .We would have probably seen a more narrow margin if there were more matches played on the other surfaces.

Out of 19 matches 5 of them have been 5 setters(many of the matches were best of 3).There's absolutely nothing to choose between the 2.And they produce their best tennis when they play each other.The Wimbledon Final of 2008 was hailed by many as the greatest game the sport has seen.I think federer is unfortunate to have played at the beginning of an era which has produced a player who will eventually end his career as the greatest clay courter ever.But nothing better could have happened for the sport.It has produced some of the most electrifying encounters and the two of them have taken tennis to a level which was unseen.Though we haven been fortunate enough to watch the likes of rod laver and bjorn borg, when we watch players like nadal and federer one is forced to think "Can there have been be players who were better than this?".

And the respect they have for each other is overwhelming.True connoisseurs of the game.
The next 2-3 years will probably determine where the two of them stand on the pedestal of history.One thing is definite.The battle is far from over.