{"id":3619,"date":"2017-07-17T10:12:18","date_gmt":"2017-07-17T14:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=3619"},"modified":"2017-07-17T15:27:57","modified_gmt":"2017-07-17T19:27:57","slug":"are-federer-and-nadals-dominance-good-for-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2017\/07\/17\/are-federer-and-nadals-dominance-good-for-the-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Federer and Nadal Have Been Dominant for Over a Decade. Maybe That’s not Good For the Game’s Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal won the first three Slams of the year in 2007. The same is true in 2017, a decade later. Is that good for the game of tennis? Brett Margolies claims it might not be, and that there are definite downsides to it.<\/em><\/p>\n

What Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have done this year is quite remarkable. Coming in to the 2017 season neither one really had big expectations, but have taken the tour back like they did a decade ago. I wouldn\u2019t necessarily say it\u2019s good or bad for the game, but it\u2019s more of a testament of how special these two players really are. In a sport where it\u2019s one on one and such a grind physically, and mentally I don\u2019t know if we\u2019ll ever see such an accomplishment again. In 2013 I never expected Roger Federer would be able to do what he\u2019s doing right now. He lost back to back matches on clay after Wimbledon in Hamburg, and Gstaad to Federico Delbonis, and Daniel Brands. Rafael Nadal also had a moment like that as well in 2015 when Novak Djokovic beat him on Philippe Chatrier at Roland Garros 7-5 6-3 6-1. If you were to just fast forward to this year, you would never suspect that these two legends had any moment in their career where they would be written off at the level they are playing at. <\/span><\/p>\n

It shows just how dominant these two have been throughout their career. I strongly believe in most other eras players like Gael Monfils, Tomas Berdych, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and David Ferrer would\u2019ve been able to salvage a grand slam and put together two weeks of high quality tennis to win just once in their otherwise successful career\u2019s. It\u2019s unfortunate to a certain extent as so many other players have such intriguing stories that mainstream sport fans will never get to hear. Even though there\u2019s still time for the top players in their early 30\u2019s to sneak in a slam as each passes by it\u2019s looking more and more unlikely. It\u2019s tough to place blame on the great players in the same era that won\u2019t ever win a grand slam, as the sport truly has been dominated by the same four guys for such a long time. <\/span><\/p>\n

After the last couple years seeing Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray battle out most Grand Slam <\/span>finals, it\u2019s nice for a change to see the resurgence of Nadal and Federer. You can make an argument that what Djokovic and Murray did while Federer was on the decline almost determined him to up his game to another level to get past them in 2017. With the US Open six weeks away, it would be good for the game if the \u201cBig Four\u201d of old were able to all be playing their best the second week in New York. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, this will have its eventual downside. It\u2019s hard to believe after what we\u2019ve seen recently, but there will be a point in time when the \u201cnext gen\u201d players start winning these Grand Slams. We\u2019ve seen parity on the women\u2019s side with the field being seemingly wide open the past two Slams. I\u2019m not sure when it\u2019ll happen on the mens side but it obviously will. When it does eventually happen I think it will be good for the sport. It might be an adjustment period for fans all over the world, but unpredictability on the mens side would be nice for a change. For the time being it\u2019s probably good for tennis since Federer and Nadal have the biggest fan bases in tennis and the fact that you\u2019re able to have so many people following these two players religiously week in and week out might hurt the game later down the road when there isn\u2019t a Federer and Nadal to follow. At the very least, during the gap before new players come to the fore we will probably see a huge decline in interest. As Roger Federer approaches 36 years of age, and Rafael Nadal at 31 nothing we\u2019ve seen this year would lead you to believe their time is running out. They say nobody\u2019s beats father time, but these two future hall of famers make you rethink that. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal won the first three Slams of the year in 2007. The same is true in 2017, a decade later. Is that good for the game of tennis? Brett Margolies claims it might not be, and that there are definite downsides to it. What Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have done […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2115,"featured_media":585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[1315,445,314,51,21],"class_list":["post-3619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp","category-featured","tag-2017-wimbledon","tag-david-ferrer","tag-jo-wilfried-tsonga","tag-tomas-berdych","tag-wimbledon"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}