Is Fed mentally not the strongest?

First topic message reminder :

As a Fed fan, I think it's correct to give the man his due, but also to criticize him if there is an objectve weakness in his game.

Now the two big finals made me wonder a lot on this issue. Wimbledon; Fed played unreal tennis against Murray and before that match, in all tournament serve was on fire, on par with the very best years. In the final: serve misfiring, few aces and easy winner. Overall Fed looked somewhat tight, fh and bh didn't flow as freely.

US final: again the serve let him down causing the loss of the first set. Many many opportunities wasted in the third and never able to capitalize when Djokovic dropped his level to get that important lead 2 sets to one. Overall Fed looked uncomfortably tight during these two finals, naver able to relax enough to let the fh flow and dictate.

Obviously , this is not the prime Federer of 2004-2007, whose edge was so vast during those years that he was able to possibly hide such weakness. On the other hand this is a player that at 34 can compete at the very top. Nadal and Djokovic certainly seems to have shown more mental fortitude on the most important matches, even when there was seemingly no edge between them.

temporary21 wrote:Haddie clearly feels the exception made to female fans is directed at her, being one of the very few female fans (and fans at all) of Rafa on the forum, I hope that isnt the case, maybe that can be cleared up.

It has been already been cleared up in previous posts - it wasn't directed at her. The fact that she follows Nadal a great deal and has a lot of knowledge about his game and tennis in general, takes the time to post about it on forums etc, would quite clearly and obviously preclude it from being directed at her.

Well thats good, so long as she understands that too

bogbrush wrote:As he gets older and the whole elder statesman thing becomes massive, I see this only becoming more extreme. Djokovic must have felt like he was playing Agassi the other day; in another two years it'll be like Jimbo is back on the Court.

Very much agree with this.

The other big factor is everyone wants that "one last slam" before he departs the scene, and they know there aren't realistically that many chances left. That's why you get this kind of madness!:

Haddie-nuff wrote:I think it is an insult, and to me in particular, to think I support Rafa for his looks, physique or anything remotely similar.. my support for Rafa is, and always will be, because of his tennis. And there are thousands like me. And contrary to most of the male posters here they are not just female either.. believe it or not there are thousands who like Rafa's brand of tennis.
606v2 has become nothing more  than a Federer fawning forum.. to dare not to be one of his supporters you can have no real interest in tennis.. Reading back through this thread its
God what with LK, BB and now Tenez is back.... what are you if not fanboyss...? :

Not sure about this, there was a time when Bogbrush and Tenez and Emancipator used to dominate the arguments a bit and some Nadal fans seem to get scared off and leave the forum. But nowadays we are having quite a civilized debate on big 4 topics I think relative to the past. We could do with 1 or 2 more Nadal fans maybe but things are never going to be perfect.

I don't think you need to take it as a personal insult.

note their age though. That might be why people only see feds support and not rafas.

Is that directed at my comment or an earlier one?
Not sure I get it. Sorry.

NoNO HB theres no directed slant at anyone. The point being is that Fed gets a lot of the older audience, the result being that they might not see all the younger generation for whom nadal has quite a lot of support.

HM Murdock wrote:

bogbrush wrote:

When I see Usain Bolt producing incredible times but spending the last 5 strides with his arms in the air celebrating, I want to scream at him. Think how amazing his times would be if he pushed himself in a more disciplined way!

Totally agree on Bolt, it drives me mad that he didn't thrash the record below 9.5.

Something to be said for not only winning, but winning with style. Or, is it something else. I mean I think about 80 metres into the Beijing 2008 final Bolt takes a quick look around, and maybe thinks, oh-oh, this is going to look suspicious, and therefore slows off. I mean all the other runners are right next to each other with the smallest difference and here he is pulling off a statistically Bradman-esque run in a sport where half of the top runners in recent years have had drug issues, and that's just the known ones. Maybe he's thinking, better make this look at least half way plausible. Even if he's clean, sad to say, it has to be a consideration.

If I was him, and I was clean, here's what I would do. I'd announce that I am going to become voluntarily and at my own expense the most tested athlete of all time. I would pay myself to have several people, including international officials if they agree to do it, and journalists, follow me around for a month drug testing (taking samples) him every day, searching my house including my bathroom constantly, and barely staying out of my sight for a month before the next Olympics. I would ask for the samples (including ones taken on the day of the run) to be kept for 10 or 20 years by multiple different indepdent sources and tested again in the future with better testing methods. I'd train really hard and run a good time at the next Olympics (9.6).

I might even retire from competition after that, and spend a year or two running on drugs in exhibitions, having openly stated in advance what I was planning to do. Would be curious to see what times could be done. If he could run 9.3 on drugs it might help prove that the 9.6 or whatever he did was clean.

Murray himself is fairly defensive and moans a lot.

Hes Scottish, thats their MO isnt it?

By The same token, Federers getting old, likes to attack, and can be cranky on occasion.

Nore Staat wrote:Fed fans tend to be highly aggressive and in your face but Nadal fans tend to be highly defensive and go on and on.  Murray fans are also fairly defensive and moan a lot.

LOL

Presumably Nole's fans are very robotic?

No they just run out of shirts and hated by americans

summerblues wrote:

Presumably Nole's fans are very robotic?

No, they are either serbs, married to a serbian, or come from countries belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement, so supporting Djoko is just a political/nationalistic thing, nothing to do with tennis, knowing that Djoko plays boring tennis and brought nothing new to tennis