Rafa not sold on need for shot clock

LONDON — Rafael Nadal said on Tuesday that plans by Wimbledon to introduce a 25-second shot clock will kill the sport’s capacity for epic Grand Slam confrontations.

The US Open will have a shot clock for this year’s tournament with Wimbledon poised to follow suit.

World No 1 Nadal is routinely warned for slow play between points.

However, he believes players need time to compose themselves between points and to ponder tactics over five sets.

“If you want to see a quick game without thinking, well done,” said Nadal.

“If you want to keep playing in a sport in which you need to think, you need to play with more tactics, you want to have long and good rallies, then of course you are going the wrong way.

“But it seems like sometimes it is only about the business. I can’t support this because I don’t feel the matches that stay for the history of our sport went that quickly.”

Nadal has been involved in epic confrontations down the years en route to winning 17 Grand Slam titles.

He famously vanquished Roger Federer in 2008 for the first of his two Wimbledon titles in a final that took the best part of five hours and ended in near-darkness.

In 2012, he lost the longest final at a major to Novak Djokovic in Australia, a five-setter that stretched to five hours and 53 minutes.

“I don’t remember any emotional match that the total time was two hours,” added the 32-year-old Nadal.

“All the matches that have been important in the history of our sport have been four hours, five hours.

“To play these kind of matches you need time between points because you cannot play points in a row with long rallies, with emotional points, having only 25 seconds between points.”

Despite his objections, the All England Club confirmed a shot clock is on the agenda.

“There’s a general feeling that we should speed up when a match begins and ends,” said the tournament’s chief executive, Richard Lewis.

“The shot clock isn’t a rule change, that’s just something visible.”

Nadal had no cause to worry about getting caught up in a marathon match on Tuesday as he opened his Wimbledon campaign with a 6-3, 6-3, 6-2 win over Israel’s Dudi Sela, the world No 127.

Meanwhile, Djokovic also weighed in on the shot clock debate, claiming the full opinion of the players has yet to be sought.

“I understand what they are trying to do with the shot clock,” said Djokovic after making the second round with a 6-3, 6-1, 6-2 win over Tennys Sandgren.

“Everybody is trying to get this new generation of people and the attention span is not maybe as it used to be, except if you’re a real, real tennis fan.”