Spanish players ranked are Nadal at 2 (who Pete Bodo nominated for Davis Cup player of the decade); Verdasco 9; Robredo 16; Ferrer 18; Juan Carlos Ferrero 23; and Nicholas Almagro 26; Albert Montanes 31; Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 41; and Feliciano Lopez 47.  For comparison, the US has four in top 50; only France comes close with six, and Gasquet lurking right outside top 50 at 52.

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First there was the S.L. Price piece in Sports Illustrated detailing “How Rafael Nadal Humbled Federer” that ran in the magazine the third week of May.  On May 17, of course, while the magazine made its way to mailboxes, Federer beat Nadal 4 and 4 in the finals at Madrid.  A few weeks later Federer won the French Open to have John McEnroe and others declare him the greatest of all time (and also make the Sports Illustrated cover on June 15). 

Also in May, the Men’s Journal cover article on Nadal appeared, and this past Sunday, two days after Nadal pulled out of Wimbledon, he made the cover of the Sunday New York Times magazine  (coincidentally, both articles begin with a scene from Nadal’s win over David Nalbandian in Indian Wells). 

I don’t believe in jinxes — if anything, these are testament to the ridiculously long lead times that magazines require for their copy.  At the moment that Federer is poised for the Grand Slam record, it’s his injured rival getting much of the premier press. 

But maybe do jinxes do exist. All they hype and coverage for the Centre Court roof, and it hasn’t rained yet (perhaps it’s similar to the likelihood of rain decreasing whenever I remember to take an umbrella).  

In other roof news, UK’s star player Andy Murray has condemned its long shadow.  Surely there was a better way for Wimbledon to spend 100 million pounds.

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Roger Federer, pictured here after the Australian Open final, is clearly not, but Rafael Nadal, talking with the last man to complete a Grand Slam, Rod Laver, is poised to win all four majors this year.  Nadal has already won in Melbourne, is a heavy favorite to win the French, proved last year that he can win Wimbledon, and showed by winning the Australian Open and Indian Wells this year that he can win on hardcourts, the New York surface where the Grand Slam season ends in September.

Only one man other than Laver has won the true Grand Slam, meaning the four majors in order, and that was American Don Budge in 1938. (Three other players hold “career slams,” meaning they have won all four but not in order — Fred Perry, Roy Emerson, and Andre Agassi.)  The term Grand Slam originated, according to Bud Collins’ indispensable and encyclopedic History of Tennis, in 1933 when Australian Jack Crawford won the first three legs and sought the U.S. championship.  Collins wrote: “The prospect of his winning that one, too, intrigued a New York Times columnist, John Kieran. If he did, wrote Kieran, it would be something like a ’grand slam’ in bridge.” Crawford lost in a grueling five-setter in the final to Perry, including a second set by the pre-tiebreaker days score of 11-13, but the Grand Slam was born.

 Laver in his 1973 memoir The Education of a Tennis Player (the prose of which bears the hyperbolic stamp of Collins, his collaborator) wrote: “I like to think the tennis Slam is the hardest of all because you have to get your game up to the top level four times over an eight-month stretch, and of course your’e playing other tournaments in between, too. Much travel and changing conditions are involved. In 1969, I started in the tropical summer heat of Brisbane and wound up in the autumn rain of New York.”

And those varying conditions are even more varied now.  When Laver won his Grand Slams — as an amateur in 1962 and in the Open professional era of 1969 — only the French was not played on grass. Today, there are two on hard courts, the fast courts of Flushing Meadows and the slower blue hard courts of Melbourne, as well as the red clay of Paris and the grass of Wimbledon.  The modern Grand Slam is as difficult as it has ever been. 

Nadal has a long way to go, with the two most difficult for him coming last, but if he pulls it off, he’ll have to rank atop the list in the perpetual argument of who is tennis GOAT — the greatest of all time.

Sorry, Roger.

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