Nadal defends Fed

fed and his team faced criticism from Halle organizer over his decision to withdraw from Halles tournament, and nadal firmly stands behind his rival and friend, federer.

“It’s not fair from the tournament of Halle, in my opinion. Roger was very important in that tournament. He won (five) times. But in my opinion, a great champion like Roger, if he doesn’t go to Halle this year he’s not playing because he cannot play.”

“All the plans throughout the year were almost exclusively focused on Roger’s start here,” said Ralf Weber, the Halle tournament director. “He also never indicated that there could be health problems there. I made my disappointment clear to his management.”

considering the nadal-tsonga match yesterday,,its quite obvious why nadal in defend of fed.

who is the one to b blamed? fed or halle organizer or atp schedule?

Hmm....

If you say so, but then the flip side shown in an on court interview with the queens boss guy showed just how much appreciation there is for Rafa at the club. Rafa supposedly rang just before he boarded his plane home yesterday apologising and saying he felt he'd let them down. At the end of the day he went down in the QF to some one playing well. The guy has been to the final of every tournament for the last x months and yet still showed up to a tournament when the other two of the top 3 took some time off. Whilst its clear Rafa is defending Federer i don't think for one second he is thinking about himself in that comment. You also should ask yourself what Rafa should say given that he was asked the question - its not like he rang up a journalist requesting to say something about the Fed situation.

Given how tired Rafa looked all this week and how he battled in his 3rd round match, i don't think he can be accused of throwing a match - yes he didn't scratch as hard as we know he can, but it wouldn't ultimately be sensible to do that in such a tournament, considering the slam is around the corner. I think he gave as good an account of himself as we could reasonably expect this week. The Queens boss guy clearly had much respect for him beyond the normal sucking up you might expect from a 250 event organiser.

You can understand Fed pulling out too and you can understand the tournament organisers being unhappy, but the whole thing is understandable from all views if a bit of rationality is taken.

I agree with Tom here, Fed is doing the right thing from his persepctive and the Halle organizers who stand to lose a lot of money because Fed did not show are right to be upset, because frankly Federer probably could have played. Djokovic did the same thing to Monte Carlo, Rotterdam, and Queens club this season. I think the players are doing whats right for them, the tournaments if they want to attract the right types of stars should find away to throw out large appearance fees. Afterall, players like Fed and nadal are the draws and deserve a large part of the take. From what I understand Halle has been paying Roger a good appearance fee, but i guess knowadays Roger doesn't really need the money.

... but the whole thing is understandable from all views if a bit of rationality is taken.

Agreed Tom. The players have just gone through a situation where they had to play back to back Masters with only a week's break and then there was the French Open. Nadal reached the final of all those competitions, Djokovic 2 finals and a semi, Federer 1 final and 2 semi's and Murray with 2 semi's,

And yet the very next day after the end of the French Open and with Wimbledon round the corner, the grass court competitions start. Its madness really. Federer and Djokovic withdraw from their respective tournaments and are criticised. Murray and Nadal turn up for theirs, but then there's disingenuous accusations leveled of tanking at Nadal. I suppose a call to the tournament director was all fake too.

Its a real pity all of this, and I wonder if its really so hard to build a week of non-competition in between the end of the FO and Queens/Halle.

It would appear to me that it would be easy to push Wimbledon back by a week than to bring the other tournaments forward.

I would be good to see a grass masters, or at least see 500 pts rather than 250.

It will never happen though, because everything is very stiff

I suppose you could reduce the break after Wimbledon by a week and push Wimbers back. But again, I don't know how this would work due to the DC and when the hardcourt tournies in the US start.

ATP schedule should hold the blame, they should add some gap between the two slams, this will give enough recuperation time for players to play in the 250 grass tournaments.

I would also like to see a bigger gap between wimby and the french with a grass masters event in the middle. The whether would even be better for wimbeldon and by the time you get to Ny it would still be late summer early fall and the whether would be good. Might have to drop cincy as masters and I think that is where all the problems come in.

invisiblecoolers wrote:ATP schedule should hold the blame, they should add some gap between the two slams, this will give enough recuperation time for players to play in the 250 grass tournaments.

thinking the same..

at least make it a 3-week gap btwn FO and wimby,,tourneys in the 2nd week,,tht should be better