Nadal can be a runaway winner, feels Ken Rosewall
Fifty years after accepting his second Coupe des Mousquetaires, Australian great Ken Rosewall will bestow the French Open trophy on the men’s singles champion next month and sees only one grateful player ready to claim it -- Rafa Nadal.
“Unless anything unforeseen happens to Rafa -- his reputation is scaring everybody -- so I’m just going to go over there and give him the trophy and come home,” the eight-times Grand Slam champion said.
The 83-year-old has been impressed by Nadal’s rampaging claycourt season, which included an eighth Italian Open title over the weekend and the heist of the world number one ranking from Roger Federer.
Nadal will head to Paris in search of a record-extending 11th title and his 17th Grand Slam win overall, with Federer watching from the sidelines.
The 31-year-old Spaniard’s rivals, young guns and battlescarred veterans among them, would be playing for second if the champion could stay on two legs, said Rosewall.
“He looks like he’s enjoying his tennis. He’s had a few physical
MELBOURNE:
problems and it seems like he’s recovered from that,” added the Australian, a left-hander like the Spaniard.
“Right now he’s playing as well as he’s ever played. He’s the one to win it.”
In the era of Federer, who will turn 37 in August, tennis players have been ageing like fine wine.
Fans have been spoilt, their cups running over with the longtime rivalry between the Swiss great and Nadal, even as ‘Big Four’ contemporaries Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray have fallen by an injury-induced wayside. Rosewall also came from an impressive vintage, and had to beat compatriot Rod Laver, the 11-times Grand Slam champion, to win the 1968 French Open, 15 years after his first at Roland Garros.
Toting a wooden racket on a clay practice court at Melbourne Park on Tuesday, Rosewall was honoured by Tennis Australia in a low-key ceremony on the golden anniversary of the 1968 win, which was also the first Grand Slam of the professional era. He remains the oldest men’s Grand Slam champion in the professional era after lifting the 1972 Australian Open at 37.