Rob McLean - Nadal lays down a marker for Roland Garros
Just when you thought it was safe to step back on the clay, Rafael Nadal rediscovers his form in a way that will send his rivals scurrying for cover, the Spaniard ending his 11-month drought without a title in emphatic style.
Nadal has now pulled out of Barcelona to have further tests on his knees but he is again the man to beat on the red stuff at Roland Garros next month and the rivalry with Roger Federer can hopefully resume although on clay, it has to be said, it is not much of a rivalry with Nadal dominating.
Federer will be glad to have got the monkey off his back by winning his first French Open last year. Of the remaining targets left in his extraordinary career, high on the list would be getting the better of Nadal in the French Open final. He has never beaten Nadal in Paris.
When Greg Rusedski defected from Canada to Britain, he was jokingly referred to as Canadian when he lost. Scot Andy Murray would have been amused to hear that the BBC's 24 hour news channel recently referred to him as English after his recent defeat in Monte Carlo.
It is the least of his problems. Murray now needs to find his form quickly or his ranking, which has now dropped to five, will tumble further. He has a huge amount of ranking points to defend in the next couple of months.
By Wimbledon he could have a very difficult draw. Another worrying aspect of Murray's worst run of form for four years is that it affects the tennis coverage in our national press.
Without a high-profile Brit getting to the latter stages of events, the knock-on effect is less column inches in the papers. The only event that is always guaranteed blanket coverage, no matter who is playing, is Wimbledon.
Murray's early exit from the Monte Carlo Masters meant that in one quality newspaper the final was reduced to one paragraph on Monday morning - this for one of the most famous events in the world. If his slump continues, god forbid, and he ever decides he has had enough and quits (with his bank balance he is not playing for the money anymore), the ranks of unemployed tennis journos would be swelled.
As Jonathan Overend, the BBC correspondent, says in the introduction to his blog: ''I started as the BBC's tennis specialist in 2003, expecting to see off Henman and Rusedski and then be made redundant. But a lad called Andrew Murray came along, I was made correspondent.''
Lleyton Hewitt aside, Australian tennis has been in the doldrums for a long time. The halycon days of Laver, Hoad, Rosewell and then more recently Cash and Rafter are a distant memory. There is simply no male player who looks capable of carrying on the tradition.
On the women's side there was a chink of light over the weekened when Sam Stosur, captured her second career WTA title, beating Russian Vera Zvonareva 6-0 6-3 in the final of the Family Circle Cup in the United States. It isn't quite on the par of the achievements of Margaret Court and Evonne Cawley, but it's a start.
READ ROB MCLEAN EXCLUSIVELY AT TENNIS.CO.UK
Date published :
22 Apr 2010 - 08:01:03
