Federer and Nadal GOATS.

For me one of the greatest sporting moments of the last 30 years.

Novak was just behind them and looked away with emotion.

A picture says a thousand words.

Rivals on court and great friends off court. Very few adversaries will have a realationship like them. It shows their class and respect for each other. Two giants of the game.

I will forever cherish watching Fedal playing in Cape Town.

Federers mother is South African. What a player so cool under pressure digging out winning shots and matches when all but lost. Would have loved to see him against Sampras and Edberg

CnC 306 wrote:

Federers mother is South African. What a player so cool under pressure digging out winning shots and matches when all but lost. Would have loved to see him against Sampras and Edberg

He did play Sampras once at Wimbledon...won and then lost next match to I think Henman...

Edberg had retired by the time Federer became more prominent on tour...

I was doing some reading and came across an interesting snippet...around mid 2000's, Wimbledon/US Open/Aus Open stadardised their surfaces making them a little slower and with slightly higher bounce...this hindered Federer as he preferred a faster surface which suited his serve and forehand dominated game...a higher bounce also made his single handed backhand harder as the ball got closer to this shoulder height and so started the period of less dominant Federer and more dominant Nadal and Djokovic...

Three great players but the surface change helped the two younger players more than the 4-5 year older Federer...also, Federer took long to change his racquet to a bigger head to give better control over this backhand in the wake of the surface change and when he did, he won 7 of the last 8 matches they played each other to bring final head to head to 24-16 in Nadal's favour...so it was 23-9 from change of surface to change in racquet...