Rafael Nadal is back to No. 1 world and Roger Federer has fallen to No. 2 following the latter’s loss to Borna Coric in the Gerry Weber Open final on Sunday afternoon. Federer failed to defend his 500 points from last year’s title in Halle, where Coric upset him 7-6(6), 3-6, 6-2.
The two all-time greats have now traded the top spot back and forth an incredible six straight times since anyone else held it (Andy Murray last August). All six changes have taken place in the last five months–not including, of course, Nadal’s takeover from Murray in the summer of 2017.
They had most recently flip-flopped earlier this month when Federer triumphed in Stuttgart, marking their fifth tradeoff during this stretch.
on Monday, Federer and Nadal will have alternated the No. 1 ranking five times since anyone else had it. That is tied for fourth most all-time with Safin-Kuerten, Edberg-Courier, and Connors-Borg.
all-time leader is McEnroe-Lendl at 11
McEnroe-Connors & McEnroe-Borg are T2 at 7 pic.twitter.com/Y2laNI0rOY— Ricky Dimon (@Dimonator) June 16, 2018
With Federer defending champion’s points at Wimbledon, as well, he will be hard-pressed to retake the No. 1 ranking following the upcoming festivities at the All-England Club. The 36-year-old must win the tournament and have Nadal lose at some point during the first week. Nadal reached only the fourth round last season, suffering an upset at the hands of Gilles Muller.
For now, it’s one week of rest for Federer and another off week for the Spaniard.
“I’m definitely looking forward to some recovery time now next week and just some easy preparation,” Federer commented. “[I’m] really going to love going to Wimbledon. Being the defending champion always creates pressure. So regardless of whether I won or lost [in Halle], I will be one of the favorites there. But all of that stuff doesn’t matter; I just really need to make sure I play great tennis from the get-go and hopefully I can do that there again.”
back and forth they go
And that switcheroo won’t end anytime soon. But the ball is now in Fed’s court, since he needs to defend his Wimby title in order to have a chance to regain the pole position. We will soon know if he can keep up the race. Rafa hasn’t all that many points to defend from last year’s Wimby.
If you look at the numbers of tournaments played, it’s interesting to note that out of the top ten players (Singles Ranking and also Race to London, which Rafa comfortably leads) Rafa has played the fewest numbers of tournaments. So much for the bitching that Fed would be the comfortable No 1 – if he had only played the clay court events. While that ist true, it’s also true that Rafa has missed many more tournaments because of his multiple injuries. Before his glorious clay court season, he had played only one tournament (the AO 2018) since Shanghai 2017. And he had to give up in the quarterfinal of the AO 2018 because of another injury. But he managed to hold onto the No 1 position despite playing so few tournaments and not being able to defend his many hardcourt points from early 2017. So, I’d say that Rafa’s No 1 position is well earned, even if Roger’s absence during the clay court season helped.
Anyone who ever tries to claim that anyone at #1 is not well-earned is a complete moron and shouldn’t be paid any attention to. 🙂 To me, if someone is #1 even if they’ve missed a bunch of tournaments like Rafa and Fed, it only makes it MORE impressive that they’re #1! While other top players might have a lot of their points from having many sub-par results that have added up to a lot, I find it much more impressive that Rafa and Fed are able to play less tournaments and do really well st almost all of them.
Just my opinion, but it drives me NUTS when people try to claim that a person who has earned more points than everyone else is somehow “not deserving” of being #1… You don’t get to #1 (at least in ATP, Marcelo Ríos aside perhaps) without having been the best player in the world for at least a large part of the previous 52-weeks. I can understand when someone might personally feel like a different player has had a better year, relative to what they look for in a player’s season. But saying that someone just flat-out doesn’t DESERVE to be #1 at all just doesn’t make sense to me.
Absolutely correct. In fact, if Roger played on clay, he would put his back at risk, which could cause him to have worse results at his more successful events, so the argument by some of the more volatile Fed fans that Roger would be #1 if he didn’t skip clay is stupid and pointless.
And with all the swapping back and forth, Fed sets a new “oldest to become #1” record each time.
I’m not so sure the Age of the Big Four is over quite yet. Andy seems to be on the comeback trail, Novak looks like he’s getting close to his best and seems to be hungry again. Roger will have to choose his schedule more carefully I think. No Rogers Cup for Roger this year! Rafa may have to deal with more injuries, although he says he’s learned not to go all out on every point any more – which makes me a bit sad – but no doubt he’s wiser now.
Both these guys are #1 in so many ways in my humble view…class acts in every way…our sport is lucky to have Fed and Rafa at the top!
Can Roger Federer do it again at the Wimbledon this year? http://www.138mph.com/2018-wimbledon-tennis-roger-federers-draw-analysis/
I’m used to see Federer fans praise Rafa. I ignore insults. However I very rarely see Rafa fans on this site praise Roger.