wimbledon for Men

It's hard to think of a rivalry that captured the imagination of the tennis world more then the one between Roger Federer and Rafeal Nadal. Pete Sampras vs Andre Agassi and Bjorn Borg vs John Mcenroe are some of the other great rivalries that comes to mind.

Those were awesome rivalries in their own right, but may be Federer-Nadal is the best yet. The contrast in their styles and their mental make-ups are just a couple of things that makes this such an interesting and appealing rivalry.

i will give a detailed review of this rivalry and explain why it is so good.

Nadal leads Federer 13-7 in career meetings.

Federer has beaten Nadal only twice out of eleven career meetings on clay.

Nadal beat Federer in the 2008 Wimbledon final in an epic match that is considered by many as the best match of all time with a score of 6-4 6-4 6-7(5) 6-7(8) 9-7.

I've touched upon the contrasting styles and mental make-ups of Federer and Nadal in the introduction. If you look at all the great rivalries this was one of the key ingredients.Borg was the emotionless, calm base liner, while everyone is aware of the antics ofJohn Mcenroe, his emotional outbursts is the stuff of legend.

But not only was their psychological make-ups a stark contrast but so was their playing styles. Mcenroe was the attacking serve-and-volley player. Same thing for the Sampras-Agassi rivalry. Sampras had the big serve and the attacking serve-and-volley game, while Agassi had the best return and ground strokes maybe in the history of tennis.

Sampras was quite and calm, while Agassi was intense and flamboyant, also known as the showman from Las Vegas. Just like these great rivalries Nadal-Federer is not short of any contrast. Federer is the ultimate gentleman. He plays with a considerable amount of grace, finesse and touch. In a game that is mostly dominated by power he shows that it is still possible to outsmart opponents with skill and finesse.

Its only a player with the genius of Federer that can achieve this rare feat though. Not that he has his fair share of deadly weapons in the arsenal. Federer plays with a combination of power and grace that has probably never before been seen in tennis. The same goes for his personality, you would be hard pressed to find a more popular player among fans and opponents alike.

On the other hand Nadal is robust to the extreme. He can intimidate an opponent with the sheer desire to win that he shows out on court. Nadal is all about muscle and guts. He NEVER gives up and plays every point as though his life depended on it. He is mentally maybe the best in the game.

When it comes to sheer natural ability he is light years behind Federer, but he makes up for it with desire and physical presence. His forehand is unorthodox, with the follow through ending up over his left shoulder instead of the right! But then again Nadal never cared as much about appearances as about winning.

Both Roger and Rafa have a chance to become the GOAT(Greatest Of All Time). Roger probably has another 2-3 slams in him while Rafa is piling up grand slam titles at a fierce rate as well. Who do you think will win the most grand slam titles and how many?

Premier Events - We supply concert tickets, sport tickets, theatre tickets, music tickets, opera ballet tickets, Wimbledon tennis tickets, rugby six nations tickets. We are specialists in Wimbledon Hospitality and tickets to the worlds most sought after events. We can offer you every
Solution to meet your personal or corporate needs.

Wimbledon Tickets

Rafael Nadal was born in 3 June 1986 is a former World No. 1 Spanish professional tennis player currently ranked No. 3 in the world. Nadal has won six Grand Slam singles titles, the 2008 Olympic gold medal in singles, 16 ATP Masters Series tournaments and also was part of the Spain Davis Cup team that won the finals in 2004 and 2009.

Nadal was ranked World No. 1 from 18 August 2008 to 5 July 2009. Nadal was ranked World No. 2, behind Roger Federer for a record 160 weeks before earning the top spot. In 2009, he became the first player to simultaneously hold Grand Slam titles on clay, grass and hardcourt. His success on clay has earned him the nickname "The King of Clay".

In 2008, Nadal was given the Prince of Asturias Award for Sports, in recognition of his achievements in tennis.

In April 2002, at 15 years and 10 months, the World No. 762 Nadal won his first ATP match, defeating Ramón Delgado, and became the ninth player in the open era to do so before the age of 16.The following year, Nadal won two Challenger titles and finished the year in the top 50. At his Wimbledon debut in 2003, Nadal became the youngest man to reach the third round since Boris Becker in 1984.

During 2004, Nadal played his first match against World No. 1 Roger Federer at the 2004 Miami Masters, and won in straight sets. He missed most of the clay court season, including the French Open, because of a stress fracture in his left ankle. Nadal at 18 years and six months became the youngest player to register a singles victory in a Davis Cup final for a winning nation.

At the 2005 Australian Open, Nadal lost in the fourth round to eventual runner-up Lleyton Hewitt. Two months later, Nadal reached the final of the 2005 Miami Masters, and despite being two points from a straight-sets victory, he was defeated in five sets by World No. 1 Roger Federer.

In September, he defeated Coria in the final of the China Open in Beijing and won both of his Davis Cup matches against Italy. In October, he won his fourth ATP Masters Series title of the year, defeating Ivan Ljubičić in the final of the 2005 Madrid Masters. He then suffered a foot injury that prevented him from competing in the year-ending Tennis Masters Cup.

Both Nadal and Federer won eleven singles titles and four ATP Masters Series titles in 2005. Nadal broke Mats Wilander’s previous teenage record of nine in 1983. Eight of Nadal's titles were on clay and the remainder were on hard courts. Nadal won 79 matches, second only to Federer's 81. Nadal won the Golden Bagel Award for 2005 with eleven 6–0 sets during the year. Also he earned the highest year-end ranking ever by a Spaniard and the ATP Most Improved Player of the Year award.

Nadal missed the Australian Open because of a foot injury. In February, he lost in the semifinals of the first tournament he played, the Open 13 tournament in Marseille, France. Two weeks later, he handed Roger Federer his first loss of the year in the final of the Dubai Duty Free Men's Open. To complete the spring hard court season, Nadal was upset in the semifinals of the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells, California by James Blake, and was upset in the second round of the 2006 Miami Masters.

Nadal and Federer have been playing against each other since 2004, and this rivalry is a significant part of both men's careers:

They are the only men in the open era who have played each other in 7 Grand Slam finals, with Nadal winning 5 of the 7 finals. Three of these 5 wins were on Nadal's best surface, and he has beaten Federer twice in non-clay major finals: Wimbledon 2008 and the Australian Open 2009.

Their 2008 Wimbledon final has been lauded as the greatest match of all time by many long-time tennis critics.
Premier Events - We supply concert tickets, sport tickets, theatre tickets, music tickets, opera ballet tickets, Wimbledon tennis tickets, rugby six nations tickets. We are specialists in Wimbledon Hospitality and tickets to the worlds most sought after events. We can offer you every
Solution to meet your personal or corporate needs.

Wimbledon Tickets

This was the day when Andy Roddick’s serve was broken just the once, in the 77th game of a 77-game Wimbledon men’s final. That one break of Roddick’s delivery, after more than four and a quarter hours of play on Centre Court, was all that Roger Federer needed to take the fifth set 16-14, to become the first man to win 15 grand slams, and to regain the world No 1 ranking.
“Roger is a legend, an icon and a stud,” said Pete Sampras, who had flown in from California to sit in the front row of the Royal Box to see his 14 slams being superseded.

It would seem that winning the men’s Wimbledon singles final in straight sets, or in anything approaching a straightforward manner, has gone out of tennis fashion.

Federer’s 5-7, 7-6, 7-6, 3-6, 16-14 victory meant that, going on the number of games that had been played on Centre Court, this was the longest Wimbledon final of all time, plus the longest final played at any of the four majors, and the 30-game fifth set was the longest played in a title-match at the majors.

Just a year ago we had the longest Wimbledon men’s final, if you measure a match with the clock, as Rafael Nadal required 4hr 48min to beat Federer 9-7 in the fifth set, when the stadium was so dark that the umpire should have provided night-vision goggles.

This was half an hour shorter than last year’s final, and last summer’s Nadal-Federer match remains at the top of the leaderboard of greatest finals contested on these lawns. Though Federer started slowly on Sunday, he won a sixth Wimbledon trophy, putting him just one short of Sampras’s record seven titles – something to aim for next summer.

Roddick turned in one of the sharpest performances of his tennis life, and yet when he returned to the locker room he had pink-tinged eyes, and he was holding the silver runner-up’s plate, and not the champion’s golden, pineapple-shaped trophy.

This was the third time that Roddick had lost a Wimbledon final, after defeats to Federer in 2004 and 2005, but this was the most difficult for the American to accept. “Tennis is cruel,” said Federer, who was in Roddick’s position last summer; emotionally battered. Now Federer is the happiest that tennis has seen him. This month, he and his wife Mirka will become parents for the first time.

If Federer had not broken Roddick in the 30th game of the fifth set, they might have ended up playing through the night and into this morning.

The fifth set was extraordinary. Serving at 8-8, Federer found himself at 15-40, but he produced a couple of big serves to get back to deuce, and he held.

When Roddick came out to serve at 14-15, it was the 11th time that he had got up off his chair to serve to stay in the match. Roddick had won his previous 37 service games. A forehand error from Roddick’s racket brought up match point for Federer.

Another forehand mistake from Roddick, and the match was over. Federer had served 50 aces in the match, just one fewer than Ivo Karlovic’s Wimbledon record.

Federer’s reaction to victory was to leap into the air. Roddick’s reaction, after an embrace with Federer at the net, was to fling his racket on to the grass, and to then sit down on his changeover chair, and to put his head in his hands as he waited for the prize-giving ceremony. Meanwhile, Federer put on a white tracksuit with a golden “15” embroidered on the back.

It was not just the closeness of the fifth set that would have been so upsetting for the American, it was also the fact that he had held four points in the second-set tie-break to go two sets up, and on the fourth of those, when he had most of the court to play with, he could not keep his backhand volley inside the lines.

Sampras had jumped on a plane to watch Federer, a close friend. It was the American’s first visit to Wimbledon since he lost early in the 2002 Championships to a Swiss sub-journeyman player, George Bastl. This was not about Federer confirming his place as the greatest player to have picked up a racket and swished it at a tennis ball, as he had already done that by winning his first French Open last month. This was about the accumulation of grand slam titles, about Federer becoming the most successful player in history.

There were two very different tennis players out there on the grass. Federer walked out to play in a white-and-gold outfit of jacket, trousers and man-bag. If Sacha Baron Cohen’s camp Austrian fashionista, Bruno, was into tennis, he would not dress that differently to how Federer did.

Federer peeled off the jacket and trousers, and showed that he is a smooth and sophisticated presence on court.

Roddick emerged wearing his baseball cap, and then started banging down his serves. Roddick led 6-2 in that second-set tie-break, so holding four set points, only to then lose six points in a row. Many other players would have faded away. Roddick did not.

Roddick’s performance was a fine one; people have played tennis of a much lower quality and won Wimbledon’s Challenge Cup.Premier Events - We supply concert tickets, sport tickets, theatre tickets, music tickets, opera ballet tickets, Wimbledon tennis tickets, rugby six nations tickets. We are specialists in Wimbledon Hospitality and tickets to the worlds most sought after events. We can offer you every
Solution to meet your personal or corporate needs.

Tickets for Wimbledon

Roger Federer began playing tennis when he was eight years old. By the time he was ten, people were already talking about Roger's sweet touch with the racket and his competitive attitude. Roger would sometimes beat other kids his age so badly they would start crying and Roger would often cry and smash rackets himself if he ever lost a match. Roger left home when he was 13 to train at a top-rated tennis academy in Switzerland and was the number one ranked junior player in the world by the time he was 16.

In 1998, Roger Federer began playing on the professional tennis circuit. He won his first ATP tournament in Milan in 2001 and quickly worked his way up the men's world tennis rankings. In 2003, he won six tournments including his first Grand Slam tournament by defeating Mark Philippoussis at Wimbledon. By 2004, Federer was the number one ranked tennis player on the planet and won three of the four Grand Slam tournaments that year including Wimbledon, the US Open and the Australian Open. Federer has since gone onto win twelve more Grand Slam titles, bringing his grand total up to 13. Roger has won the US Open five times and the Aussie Open, three times. The only major tournament that he has not won is the French Open in Paris.

Roger Federer's professional tennis career is still quite young, but some are predicting he could beat Pete Sampras' record of 14 Grand Slam tennis titles in 2009. Federer is an extremely intelligent tennis player who's known for his dominating forehand and rarely making mistakes on the court. He has already won 13 Grand Slam titles and his smart, consistent play means he'll be a favorite to win several more before his career is over.

Roger Federer speaks three languages - English, German and French.

Roger Federer is one of the few professional tennis players in the world that does not have a full-time coach.

Roger Federer's favorite music is anything by AC/DC or Lenny Kravitz.

In 2007, Roger Federer became the first living Swiss person to be featured on a Swiss stamp. The postage picture features Roger holding the Wimbledon trophy.

Roger Federer is dating former professional tennis player Mirka Vavrinec. Ther pair met at the 2000 Sydney Olympics where they were both representing Switzerland.

I can't stay No. 1 for fifty years, you know. We'll see what happens.
Premier Events - We supply concert tickets, sport tickets, theatre tickets, music tickets, opera ballet tickets, Wimbledon tennis tickets, rugby six nations tickets. We are specialists in Wimbledon Hospitality and tickets to the worlds most sought after events. We can offer you every
Solution to meet your personal or corporate needs.
Wimbledon 2010 Tickets

spencer gore winner of 1877

Spencer Gore is immortalised in history as the first winner of a Grand Slam title. Gore, an old Harrovian, was born and bred in Wimbledon and was a good all round sportsman. He played the game of rackets, real tennis and played cricket to a good standard as well. Tennis was always inferior to cricket in Gore's mind. He is famous for saying "That anyone who has really played well at cricket, tennis, or even rackets, will ever seriously give his attention to lawn tennis, beyond showing himself to be a promising player, is extremely doubtful; for in all probability the monotony of the game would choke him off before he had time to excel in it." In the inaugural Wimbledon championships in 1877 Gore came through a field of 22 entrants and some time after half past four on Thursday 19th July 1877 he beat William Marshall in the final to become the first ever Wimbledon champion. The following year Gore stood out until the Challenge Round, where he met Frank Hadow. Hadow used the lob successfully, beating Gore at the net and Gore surrendered his title in straight sets. That was the last time Gore played tournament tennis. He died in 1906 at the age of 56.

Frank Hadow winner of 1878

Frank Hadow only entered one Grand Slam event in his career and he won it. Hadow, an old Harrovian, had emigrated to Ceylon to become a tea planter. He was visiting England in the summer of 1878 and learnt to play the game of lawn tennis, having previously played the sport of rackets to a good standard. The Wimbledon championships were being held so Hadow entered the event, along with his brother. Despite the fact he was suffering from the effects of a flu-like virus he had acquired, Hadow made his way through to the Challenge Round, where he met defending champion Spencer Gore. The bug Hadow was suffering from reached its peak on the day of his match with Gore. Hadow saw no point in trying to pass Gore down the line over the high part of the net, which at that time was four feet nine inches high, so he lobbed instead. Hadow won in straight sets. Hadow is the only man to have never lost a set in the Wimbledon championships. He went back to Ceylon in the autumn of 1878 and did not return to Britain until 1926, when he attended the Jubilee championships. He may have only played the game of tennis for a few months in 1878 but Hadow is immortalised as a Wimbledon champion. He died in 1946 at the age of 91.

JOHN HARTLEY winner of 1879 and 1880

The Reverend John Hartley was an old Harrovian who graduated from Oxford. The 30 year old Hartley, who also played the game of real tennis, first entered the Wimbledon championships in 1879. He had not expected to do very well in the tournament so had made no arrangements for anyone to take over his Sunday sermon. Consequently he found himself scheduled to play the final on Monday when he had made no provision for his Sunday duties in church. He rushed back to his parish in Yorkshire to give his sermon, then got up at the crack of dawn on Monday and caught the train down to London in time for his Wimbledon final later in the day. In that All comers final Hartley faced the Irishman Vere St. Leger Goold. Hartley's great retrieving prowess provided a great spectacle, many onlookers rating this match the best ever seen up until that point. Hartley won in straight sets. Frank Hadow was not defending his title so there was no Challenge Round that year. In 1907 Goold was convicted of murdering a Danish widow in Monte Carlo. How ironic that Hartley, the only clergyman to win a Grand Slam title, and Goold, the only tennis player convicted of murder, should have faced each other in a Wimbledon final. Hartley successfully defended his title in the Challenge Round the following year beating Herbert Lawford. In 1881 Hartley defended his title in the Challenge Round once again, but this time he found William Renshaw's power game far too good. Hartley managed to win just two games. Hartley didn't enter the event the following year and made his final Wimbledon appearance in 1883, where he lost in the second round to Herbert Wilberforce. Later he became Canon Hartley and was Rural Dean in the Ripon Diocese for 25 years. He died in 1935 at the age of 86.

Premier Events - We supply concert tickets, sport tickets, theatre tickets, music tickets, opera ballet tickets, Wimbledon tennis tickets, rugby six nations tickets. We are specialists in Wimbledon Hospitality and tickets to the worlds most sought after events. We can offer you every
Solution to meet your personal or corporate needs.

Wimbledon 2010 Tickets