Federer Ready To Fill The Void Left By Nadal's Absence

How do you judge greatness? The question is always there, hovering in the background, when we talk about the yin-and-yang struggle between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Nadal's followers claim that, despite a deficit of 14 grand slam titles to Federer's 17, their man's dominance in head-to-head meetings marks him out as the superior player. Yet this week we have seen another side to the argument, and it concerns longevity. While Nadal has just withdrawn from the forthcoming US Open with wrist trouble - the second time in his career that he has been unable to defend a grand slam because of injury - Federer has been defying his 33 years with a series of superb results. Can you imagine Nadal, who is only 28, still contending for major titles at that sort of age? Hardly. It is a rarity for him just to make it through a year without some catastrophic breakdown. The last time he played all four majors in a season was in 2011. Compare that to Federer, who will notch up his 60th consecutive slam when he walks out on Arthur Ashe Stadium next week. To put it another way, the great man has not missed one of these biggies since 1999, when he was 18 years old and lost to compatriot Ivo Heuberger (no, me neither) in qualifying for the US Open. Remember those iconic Gillette ads of the late 2000s? Today, as Tiger Woods rests his dicky back, and Thierry Henry warms a pundit's sofa, Federer is still churning out the wins. He has 49 already this season, the highest figure on the tour, many of them against opponents who were learning to read when he won his first Wimbledon. He is surely sport's greatest survivor. How, then, does Federer manage it? If tennis can be broken down into four elements - physical, technical, tactical and mental - then each piece of the puzzle plays a part. But the starting point must be his God-given gifts, which are hard to fully appreciate unless you are sitting beside the court. "When I watch tennis, the sound tells me a lot," says Craig O'Shannessy, lead analyst for the ATP Tour and author of the Brain Game Tennis blog. "In Roger's case, the guy floats around so lightly, almost as if he's skipping rope, that you can hardly hear him. He has very elastic ankles and great strength in his calves so that the lower leg does most of the work. He's not carrying a huge amount of muscle - just the right amount to get the job done." Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/sport/tennis/roger-federer-ready-to-fill-the-void-left-by-rafael-nadals-absence-20140820-1061po.html#ixzz3Avcu7d53