!93030116 by Pete Bodo
Match points wiped out by an endangered player are the UXB of tennis, but I can think of, oh, five that might have a delayed fuse and produce a very welcome detonation in about two weeks time. That would be the five MPs wiped out by Rafael Nadal early this week in his match with Nicolas Almagro at the BNP Paribas Masters. Nadal and Jo-Wilfried are locked in a tight first set in Paris as I write this, with Tsonga desperate to win - a loss knocks him out of contention for the final spot in the upcoming year end championships, the Tennis Masters Cup.
This is a tough position for Nadal, who's already qualified for the TMC and is a nice enough guy not to get all fired up about the opportunity to torch Tsonga's dream (Jimmy Connors, on the other hand, would have loved such a chance!). The one thing Nadal does have going for him, motivation-wise (in addition to winning the tournament, as if that's not enough) is that by eliminating Tsonga, he can award the final qualifying spot to his buddy and Davis Cup teammate, Fernando Verdasco, who blew off his own foot a few days ago. Oh, Marin Cilic, the guy who eliminated Verdasco, had something to do with that; but however you slice it, Verdasco lost control of his own fate.
But never fear, "Dasco - Nadal is also a nice enough guy to want to get that qualifying thing done: let the man-hugs begin, and punctuate this sentence with 7-5, the score by which Nadal just won the first set.
While we've been working the abacus to figure out who still has even a remote, mathematical chance of qualifying, a much larger issue seems to be gathering on the horizon - a prospective Nadal vs. Roger Federer showdown in London, for the year-end no. 1 ranking. For if Nadal wins Paris, he'll be within a few hundred ranking points of Federer (who lost his first match at the BNP, significantly complicating his immediate future). You know what that means: with up to 1500 ranking points on the table (for a champion who runs the table, winning every match) in London, Nadal could still leap ahead of Federer to claim the year-end no. 1 ranking - and rake in a massive amount of big dog credibility.
Talk about Unexploded Ordnance!
Maybe y'all have already figured all this out, but to me it's semi-mind-blowing. For most of this summer and early fall, I'd drifted into thew assumption that this Federer-Nadal thing was a rivalry interrupted and perhaps not to be continued, at least for the forseeable future. There was Nadal's injury, and the apparent loss of his bearings (they were there, buried under all that cloth now covering his guns); Federer's commanding performance from early June until the last day of the US Open, in mid-September; the emergence of Juan Martin del Potro; and the peek-a-boo dalliances of Novak Djokovic.
Hail, I was as open as anyone to the theory that the best days of the Federer-Nadal rivalry are over - from now on, it was more likely to be a four or even five (six, anyone?)-way tug of war for supremacy.
Put that on hold, and try this narrative: a resurgent Nadal meets a not-entirely-hellbent Federer in the Tennis Master's Cup final, with the top ranking on the line. Can it possibly get any better than this, in terms of a narrative for a year in tennis, ever? What is this, the summer of 2008 all over? All of a sudden, Federer's patchy performance against Julien Benneteau in Paris earlier this week seems to have newer, deeper meaning (I have a post on that subject up at ESPN). And it can't be a particularly comfortable one for Swiss icon.
Nobody is going to take away Federer's magic no. 15, or the Grand Slam singles title record that came attached to it. Nor will any of this affect the distinction he earned back in the summer, when he finally won Roland Garros (with Nadal conveniently absent) to become just the sixth man to win a career Grand Slam. But a loss to Nadal in London would illustrate just how tricky all this greatest this, greatest that stuff can be. Throw in the fact that Federer's combative appetites seem to wax and wane, and you have one of the most juicy debates any tennis can hope for, all teed up.
That will be me, waving to you as I head for the hills to find a suitable cave where I can ride it all out.
And let's keep in mind that there's another tantalizing dimension to the scenario unfolding before our very eyes - the role that may be played in all this by the US Open champ, Juan Martin del Potro. For those seven match-points he dismissed against Fernando Gonzalez are UXB as well, and if they blow, the rivalry will be just part of the collatoral damage. After winning the first four of their matches, Nadal is 0-3 against Delpo.