Imagine a world without Rafael Nadal. It isn't too hard, since on multiple occasions over the past five years we have had such a world. Tennis moved on. Andy Murray rose up and finally won a major when Nadal removed himself from the tennis world after the shock 2nd round loss to Lukas Rosol in last year's Wimbledon. It may well happen again, because Nadal always seems to be one slide, one heavy moment, one wrong turn away from another injury. It will probably happen over the next 18 months. Rafael Nadal is not long for this tennis world. Thankfully he was here, because no one, not even Federer, has meant more to tennis than Rafael Nadal.
Rafael Nadal is what tied the Federer era to the Djokovic era (or Murray, or Big Four) together, he was what helped tennis through a time where it could have become a nothing sport. Much through 2004-2007, Federer was so dominant, so ridiculously good that tennis wasn't an alltogether dramatic sport. Federer was rarely challenged, winning 11 of the 16 majors during that span. Only one man could get him, only one man could add any sort of drama to the tennis world. A common what if in tennis is what if Federer never came along, how the careers of Andy Roddick, Lleyton Hewitt and Marat Safin, who were Federer's true age-appropriate contemporaries, would have turned out differently. Of course, what if Rafael Nadal never came along?
How many majors would Roger Federer have today. He's lost six major finals and one more semifinal to Nadal over his career, and since the guy who Rafael Nadal beat in the match following his 2005 French Open semifinal win was named Mariano Puerta, we can reasonably assert that Nadal directly cost Federer 7 majors, putting Fed at 24 (double the guy who is currently at #3 all-time). Federer could have won a silly 11 in a row. Tennis may never have recovered from a guy so dominant. This isn't Golf, where Tiger's dominance carried that sport. A Federer dynasty of such endless dominance probably would not have served tennis well.
Then let's look at how Nadal has impacted the rest of the sport. He changed the way tennis was played even more than Federer did, with Nadal's once peerless strength and conditioning. Back in the sleeveless and cargo-pants days of Nadal's career, there was no one faster, no one stronger and no one who could run as endlessly as Nadal. This physical advantage forced Novak Djokovic to redidicate himself to conditioning, and Andy Murray, who lost a terribly one-sided Quarterfinal against Nadal at Wimbledon 2008, to fitness. He's helped the same people who have become his biggest rivals. Rafael Nadal has changed the way tennis is played, changed the way the sport is viewed.
Rafael Nadal has been crucial to the development of tennis as a mainstream sport because of his presence in some of the greatest matches of the past ten years, let alone all-time in some cases. He's been involved in a match considered by many to be the greatest of all time, with his stirring five-set win over Roger Federer at Wimbledon 2008. He just played what some consider to be the best clay-court match with his five-set win over Novak Djokovic at the French Open. He played what was the longest Men's final of all time, another five set thriller against Novak Djokovic at the 2012 Australian Open (he did lose that one). His semifinal win over Fernando Verdasco at the 2009 Australian Open, and the Final against Federer that followed are beloved matches, albeit ones remembered more by tennis fans than the other. For a man with a style many tennis fans - mostly all Nadal haters - call 'boring', no one has been involved in more all-time classic matches.
Rafael Nadal, arguably, is one-half of the two of the five best rivalries in the history of men's tennis. Despite the, because of age increasingly, one-sided nature of the Federer-Nadal rivalry, it is probably the most important, meaningful and exciting rivalry of All-Time. Here you have two players who are basically pure opposites. One a clean-cut Swiss master, the other a brash, cargo-short wearing, fist-pumping gym rat from Spain (the Nadal description would, purposefully, change over time as he got older). One was a righty with a pure one-hand backhand, the other a lefty with a powerful, if erratic, two-hand backhand. One loved quick points, the other long points. It would be a lie to say Nadal brought out the best in Federer, and in recent years, he has started bringing out the worst as they've played some terribly one-sided, boring affairs the last few years. However, Nadal brought out the human in Federer. No one saw Federer struggle back in 2005-2008, but Nadal made Federer fight, Nadal made Federer sweat. Nadal made Federer fight.
Nadal does bring out the best in Djokovic, something he did even before Novak turned into a superman in 2011 (a level of play he, unsurprisingly, has failed to reach since). The pair are one match away from tying John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl for most matches against each other, with Nadal and Djokovic having played 36. Nadal leads 21-15, but so many of the games have been classics. Even outside the slams, they've played some utterly amazing Masters 100 matches, like Nadal's three hour 3-6 7-6 7-6 match in Madrid in 2009, a match both cite as ruining the rest of their years because of how exhausting it was. Even the match this past weekend at Montreal, a 6-4 3-6 7-6 win for Nadal, was another three-set classic. Nadal-Djokovic is a rivalry that should get more play. It will never beat Nadal-Federer in terms of impact, but should exceed it in pure numbers of high-quality matches.
Tennis needed Rafael Nadal to help save it from a tyrannical existence where Federer won everything (instead of him in the end winning everything not on clay). Tennis needed Rafael Nadal to force Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray (who still has yet to beat Rafael Nadal in a slam match since 2010, losing their last four meetings) to be better. Tennis needed Rafael Nadal to kill the boring serve-and-volley era once and for all. There is no knowing how many more years Rafa Nadal will be able to play. I'll cherish him, but I'm a huge Rafael Nadal fan. I just wish more fans would. Nadal has a giant fanbase, second to only Federer's, but while the Federer fans generally value his brilliance (none more so than Federer himself, who recently told interviewers that despite his less than stellar record against Rafa, misses the large matches they played against each other), Djokovic fans don't, and many other fans dislike him for various reasons. He's too boring, he's too OCD (which is true), he hams up his injuries. All those things are fine, but value him for what he did for tennis.
