The ATP sees in Roger Federer their individual Muhammad Ali. And it has in Rafa Nadal to his George Foreman or Joe Frazier. The rivalry is served, elevates the level of that sport until unimaginable levels and at the present time it is reaching unusual levels of attention. It is not easy to emphasize in the United States.

But Swiss and the Spanish, both great values of the sport of the racket, are doing it and win the first positions as far as `in the last great favoritism of the season. Two different characters, two different personalities, opposite aspects and “it are young and I am the one that has experience, so the sense of expectancy is enormous”, asserts Federer.

They have been taking distributing the titles of Grand Slam for two years - from the Open of Australia 2005 that won Marat Safin has been no another two champion who not outside one of them and the thing does not seem that it is going to undergo great alterations. Federer is the great favorite of this U.S. Open, the man who could become the first tennis player who gains four consecutive titles in great American of the Era Open.

Roger, who tomorrow initiates his week consecutive number 187 to the front of the world-wide classification, is enchanted with that paper of main favorite. Tuesday arrived the past at New York knowing that “there is nothing of what worrying”. After the defeat in Montreal, the title in Cincinnati arrived. And the Helvetian considers that “sometimes it is good for losing. You begin again. As she happened after Montreal, people spoke, all thought… Soon the victory arrived and everything returned to be perfect”.

But also it is conscious that, after him, man has that tomorrow will take 109 weeks persecuting him in ranking and that in this 2007 is trying, if it is that that is possible, to overthrow to him.

For it, Nadal will have to take the rate to the match because, as Federer says, “New York is a madness. It is the nocturnal session, the humidity, the heat, the city, the wind. If desire the U.S. Open, you can gain any match”. The last Grand Slam resists to that they take the pulse him. Pero Rafa has decided that perhaps the hour has arrived already. It landed in the Great Apple the past Sunday and is been exercising since then with a view to its debut in front of the Alun Australian Jones, guest of the organization.

Rafa already has disputed five end of Grand Slam in 14 great ones disputed. Only John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors were faster than he. And of them, two in Wimbledon, on grass, the surface to which worse its game adapts. But the runway of Flushing Meadows is deceptive. Grand Slams is considered by many like the four the fastest surface of.

Not even that circumstance avoids that Federer, at the time of choosing a possible candidate to replace, does not show nor a single spying to him of doubt. “It would choose Rafael Nadal. Yes, I choose to him. If it had to bet my house by a champion who not outside I, yes, would bet it by Rafa”, espeta. Although in his internal law Roger hopes to be he it person who in afternoon of next the 9 of September is raising the trophy of the U.S. Open in the Arthur Ashe Stadium.