Nadal's Phenomenal, Unexpected, And Wonderful Achievement

First topic message reminder :

Nadal is now number one in the rankings having played for only part of the period being assessed for ranking purposes. He did not play during the period October 2012 - February 2013. As far as I know no player has ever gained the number one ranking by playing part time. To do this he has had to win virtually every tournament he has played and has only failed to reach a final once. I don't see that his achievement will be easy to repeat and it must go down as one of the greatest achievements of a single sports person.

I have edited the headline of this article as there were many objections to my use of the term "part-time". Instead I have used a description suggested by Johnyjeep. I like to please

Perhaps Nadal's incredible run was aided by something :O.
Popeye's spinach perhaps.

hawkeye wrote:

..................................................
Sigh... some supporters hate it if their favorite gets left out.

This is true.  It does happen.

But then again "some supporters" find their own preferred solution by penning numerous articles about "their favourite"  - even when he is not competing on the circuit due to prolonged periods of injury .........

Julious. I have no idea why you are comparing Murray to Nadal? What am I supposed to say? The truth is Nadal has won in just 8 months near enough the same number of big titles as Murray has won in his career. My article wasn't intended as a comparison between the two players just a celebration of the new number one

lags72 wrote:

hawkeye wrote:

..................................................
Sigh... some supporters hate it if their favorite gets left out.

This is true.  It does happen.

But then again "some supporters" find their own preferred solution by penning numerous articles about "their favourite"  - even when he is not competing on the circuit due to prolonged periods of injury .........

I know! If supporters want to talk about there own favorite player who is injured why do it here? On an article about a player who is competing and has just regained the number one position

Surely Serena's come back from a life threatening illness or Clijsters' comeback from 2 years of retirement are rather more impressive achievements?

He - methinks you might be advised to read my earlier post, 4.08pm today, for an answer to your confusion.

The expression "Physician, heal thyself" could be relevant ......  

hawkeye wrote:Julious. I have no idea why you are comparing Murray to Nadal?

hawkeoye, they're both part-timers that's all I'm saying - just noting that they have that in common. Obviously someone daring to mention Murray on your thread has touched a nerve, for which I apologise. I had no intention of dirtying your thread with his very name.

Maybe it's not just you JHM who should be offering apologies for daring to mention the name of Murray when commenting on an article about Nadal.

Intriguing that hawkeye has, at a quick glance, made more reference to Murray on this thread alone than any other poster. The temptation is clearly too much.

Oh.... the irony.....

I did wonder how long it would take for this to become a thread about Murray!

Haddie-nuff wrote:

invisiblecoolers wrote:Regarding Nadal's comeback its astonishing what he can do   , but to say this as record  , you can make more records, one of them is Rafa being the only player in the world who has never lost a match when he is fully fit according to Rafa fan club.

Well that is total codswallop ic.... he lost yesterday didn´t he ???? whilst fully fit as far as I can see so what Rafa  fan club are we talking about. ???

You can check in ATP official page as well, some of Rafa fans clearly did put the defeat as he not being fit . 

Born Slippy wrote:Surely Serena's come back from a life threatening illness or Clijsters' comeback from 2 years of retirement are rather more impressive achievements?

Nope, those achievements failed coz those to players didn't have a surname Nadal  

@iC... Tis' the Fognini Effect (aka knee scrape), I tell ya! ( H-n - could not resist!).

Just playing devil's advocate here but remember a year or so back talk was flying around that Rafa wa wishing the ranking system was changed onto a two-year cycle. Hmm I wonder if that would have altered things now and he would not have been at No.1? Thoughts? Or am I misunderstanding how a proposed two-year cycle in the rankings would have worked?

CC - Well, chances are better than even he would still be highly ranked, as he has seven Masters and three slams over the 24-month period. Truth is, I dont know if Nadal would have altered the ranking system knowing what he would have achieved, but saying that - He is 25-1 on hard court, with finals in four of the last five Majors he played on the surface and that hasnt changed his feelings towards the surface.

For me, Nadals return to #1 is more due to Nole being a rather poor #1 than Nadal having done exceptionally well (which he did).
Looking at it objectively - Of the top tier tournaments, Nadals points accumulation is:
Slams: out of a possible 8000, he has a tick over 4,000.
Masters: out of a possible 9000, he has accumulated 5,600
WTF - 0 out of a possible 1,500.

Nadal is currently world #1 with 11,160 pts. Djokovic ended last year on 12,920.

A very objective rafa fan you are KR!

Rafa has certainly been assisted by Novak's awful Masters form.

His results in the 7 Masters played so far were S, R16, W, R32, Q, S, Q.

Really not good enough for a world #1.

To put it into context, if that R16 and R32 had been even SFs, Novak would be 620 points better off, and YE#1 would still be on his racket (if he won Shanghai, Paris and WTF, he would finish ahead of Rafa whatever).

kingraf wrote:For me, Nadals return to #1 is more due to Nole being a rather poor #1 than Nadal having done exceptionally well (which he did).
Looking at it objectively - Of the top tier tournaments, Nadals points accumulation is:
Slams: out of a possible 8000, he has a tick over 4,000.
Masters: out of a possible 9000, he has accumulated 5,600
WTF - 0 out of a possible 1,500.

Nadal is currently world #1 with 11,160 pts. Djokovic ended last year on 12,920.

  Nadal has done about as well as he could considering he has only played part time!

ie Slams - out of a possible 6,000 he has 4,000
Masters - out of a possible 6,000 he has 5,600
500 tournaments - out of a possible 1,500 he has 1,300
250 tournaments - out of a possible 500 he has 400 (but cruelly the ATP are withholding 150)
and he didn't play the WTF

The only way it is possible to be number one when playing part time is to win practically everything. If that's not playing exceptionally well I'm not sure what is. Ha ha! Only Nadal could be accused of not playing well because he doesn't have a complete clean sweep of tournament wins.



(Sorry about that Doh! smiley I couldn't resist)

Just looked for a gun next to own head smiley.....

Unfortunately I couldn't find one.

Johnyjeep. Are you sad because Nadal is number one whilst only playing part-time?

hawkeye wrote:Johnyjeep. Are you sad because Nadal is number one whilst only playing part-time?

haha no not quite (or at all in fact!). I'll see if you can work out why?

YvonneT wrote:

naxroy wrote:are you really debating about this? 14 tournaments 13 finals 10 titles. 2 slams 5 masters. it doesnt matter if he was coming from injury or not. the year is historic

Wouldn't you say that 2010 was more impressive? I don't know how many titles and finals there were that year, but the titles were of better "quality" (1 Wimbledon beats several 250's and 500's).

I didnt compare 2013 with 2010. I just said 2013 is historic. and it is

naxroy wrote:I didnt compare 2013 with 2010. I just said 2013 is historic. and it is

HE's offers up for debate "it must go down as one of the greatest achievements of a single sports person". It's fair to say that is debatable, isn't it? My point was, to me, reaching no.1 last week isn't even the greatest achievement of Rafael Nadal before even considering other achievements just in the sport of men's tennis. So others agree with HE and I disagree.
As for is Nadal's 2013 being historic, in the context of tennis it is, but then I guess there many historic events in every season. In any wider sense, it's not.