Men of Iron

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by Pete Bodo

[note: because of Tennisworld's increasingly robust and expert stable of commentators, including Rosangel, Ed McGrogan and Andrew Burton, our new policy is to by-line every post that appears here]

As of tomorrow, Rafael Nadal - singles gold medallist today at the Beijing Olympic Games - will assume the world no. 1 ranking, ending what has been one of the most well-deserved and hard-earned runs to the top of the game in Open era history. As I write this, Nadal is still nominally the world no. 2, and has never seen the top number attached to his name. This is extraordinary, given his five Grand Slam titles and overall record in the most important of sub-major events and Davis Cup.

For a number of weeks now, I've been developing the theme that Nadal has faced a formidable set of obstacles and almost mythic-grade trials by fire; that he has passed nearly every one of them establishes him as an athletic personality of heroic dimensions. This undoubtedly is why so many of his most ardent fans easily see past the rough-hewn and unorthodox technical aspects of his game and embrace him as the ultimate embodiment of that greatest of virtues - courage. That he appears to be such an ingenue - boyish, sincere, unaffected - only adds spice to this coming-of-age narrative.

It was fitting that on the eve of his epic achievement, Nadal had one final test to pass at the Olympic Games - the gold medal round of the tennis event. In that, he faced one of the most unpredictable and dangerous of hard-court players, Fernando Gonzalez (in six matches, Gonzo was 3-3 against Nadal, and had put up two of those wins, as compared to none by Nadal, on hard courts). Gonzalez was also a seasoned Olympics competitor, having won bronze in singles and gold in doubles at the Athens games.

In its brief Open-era history, Olympic Games tennis has developed a unique character. It's usually a bit wild, woolly and unpredictable - like the full-blown gunfight at the climax of an old-fashioned western. But tennis is more like real life than are those flicks; the "good guys" (for our purposes, the top players) usually get taken out by wild shots flying around in all that confusion, and finally the smoke clears to leave a lone survivor that nobody would have predicted  - a Miroslav Mecir, Marc Rosset, Nicolas Massu, maybe even Andre Agassi (who won singles gold in Atlanta while he was in the midst of a horrific career depression).

Of course, tennis is a sport in which there are enough first-rate players to ensure that the actual champion at any major event is a quality competitor. To get the real measure of how volatile the Olympics tennis event is, just look at who fails to make the championship match, or the list of semifinalists. Or just look at this year's women's event. Elena Dementieva is, comparatively, a more consistent factor near the top of the game than the man with whom she shares a special Olympics gene, Gonzo. But her victory in the women's singles (in which Dinara Safina almost surreally morphed into the double-faultin' 'Lena we know and love from days of yore) is pretty emblematic of Olympics tennis. She's both a worthy and unlikely gold medalist - a bit like Andre Agassi at the Atlanta games.

But when the smoke cleared in the Chinese corral today, Nadal was the last man standing, imposing a kind of sense on the Olympic tennis event that it so often lacks. Another day, another test. But you can pin the tin star on his chest, because he's the new sheriff in town.

Well, I got kind of distracted a few 'graphs up, but let's return to this theme of the drive for no. 1 and take a quick walk through the history of the rankings to put Nadal's feat in perspective. Let's start with the Golden Age of pro tennis, when Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl and Jimmy Connors held sway and the ATP computer ranking system had been on-line for mere months. Connors stripped the no. 1 ranking from John Newcombe. Connnors then held the top spot for 160 weeks until his great rival Borg wrenched it away in a long battle that has echoes of Nadal vs. Federer. Borg had four Grand Slam titles before he accomplished his ranking mission.

Then McEnroe popped up out of nowhere to strip Borg of the top ranking with relative ease in March of 1980 - after having won just one major. Over the next few years, from 1980 to early 1983, Borg, Connors and McEnroe batted the no. 1 ranking around like a hot potato until Lendl became a new guest at the party in February of 1983.

After another 18 months of tug-of-war featuring the usual suspects (less Borg), Lendl established his authority with a 157 week run at the top. That is, there was no. first-time no. 1 for almost 11 years, but Lendl spent more weeks at the top than any of his antagonists. This was something like an old-boy network, until Mats Wilander broke up the monopoly of the Golden Age's Big Four. This was in and of itself an extraordinary saga, because Wilander had won 7 Grand Slam events (in a whopping 11 finals) before he finally rose to the coveted top spot. He would never win another major and held that precious top ranking for a mere 20 weeks before he began his career fade. It makes me wonder if, in some of his less confident moments, Nadal ever took cold comfort in this truly bizarre chronology.

The next first-time no. 1 was Stefan Edberg, who exploited the seam presented by the slow fade of the Big Four - and the quick fade of Wilander - when he took the top spot in August of 1990, with three majors on his resume.  The title was soon wrested from his grasp - with relative ease - by Boris Becker in January of 1991. Becker had to collect five Grand Slam titles before he punched through, putting him  (and now Nadal) behind only Wilander in that department. A little over a year later, Jim Courier became the third first-time no. 1 in a span of 18 months. Courier had two Grand Slam titles to his credit at time, and his cause was aided by the maturity issues that impeded the progress of the two countrymen and rivals who would end up dominating tennis for nearly a decade, Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi.

In April of 1993, Sampras managed to take the top spot from Courier - even though Sampras at the time owned just one Grand Slam title, earned more than two years earlier at the US Open.  By the time Agassi joined the no. 1 club in April of '95, he had three major titles. Eight months later, Thomas Muster crashed the party, propelled by his terrific clay-court game and a Roland Garros title. Through all this time, the rankings were being tweaked a little this way, a little that. Some efforts were made to boost the prestige of what have evolved into Masters Series events by awarding more points to those who won them. All of this helped to account for a sometimes heated controversy over the relative value of events, as well as an avalanche of first-time no. 1s.

Between the beginning of 1996 and the end of 2000, seven different men managed to secure the no. 1 ranking for the first time, however briefly. Only three of them (Gustavo Kuerten, Pat Rafter, and Yevgeny Kafelnikov), were multiple Slam winners at the time they closed the deal, and one of them (Marcelo Rios) did so without having won (or going on to win) a major. But the big guns, Agassi and Sampras, were always in the mix, too, and of the seven men cited above, the only one who ended up as the all-important year-end no. 1 was Brazil's Kuerten.

The next man to join the club was Lleyton Hewitt, who finished his climb less than a year later, with one major to his name. Almost two  years later, Juan Carlos Ferrero made a brief appearance at the top, to be replaced by the last no. 1 before Roger Federer, Andy Roddick. Roddick and Ferrero both had one major each when they landed on top.

If the no. 1 ranking history demonstrates anything, it is that the degree-of-difficulty attached to gaining the top spot is constantly in flux, and sometimes more powerfully affected by what a player's rivals are doing than by what he is doing. This can't be said for the year-end no. 1 ranking, where nobody gets to play king for a day because the game is in transition, or the big dogs are sleeping under the porch for a few weeks or months. Nobody ever earned the year-end no. 1 ranking (although Rios came awfully close) without winning at least one major.

Given all this, it's easy to see how getting to no. 1 was a far less challenging task for Roger Federer than staying there, as he has, uninterrupted, for a mind-blowing 237 weeks (since February of 2004). There will be great weeping and gnashing of teeth in Federlandia tomorrow, but let's keep in mind that his record is unlikely to be surpassed. It will stand as one of the epic "iron-man" achievements of the Open era, a thrilling parallel-universe tale for anyone contemplating the monumental effort it took for Nadal to unseat him.

I have to confess, watching Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka (should we re-consider that old chestnut delivered by Peter Fleming, who said that the best doubles team in the world is "John McEnroe and anyone?") win doubles gold yesterday almost brought tears to my eyes. Did The Mighty Fed look extraordinarily vulnerable, and therefore lovable, despite that triumphant moment, or was that just me?

But this is Nadal's day, so let's close with a final thought on his ascent. Only two men, Borg and Wilander, were so persistently and consistently forced to clear as many hurdles on their journey to the top as has been Nadal. Oddly enough, both of them expended so much energy and effort in accomplishing the task that neither was able to hold onto the no. 1 ranking for more than Borg's 46 consecutive weeks.

What, another test for Nadal? Of course, but then this a less concentrated, urgent one, embodying fewer immediate pressures. And remember, this is a kid who does tests well.