I witnessed a tennis master class on Saturday evening.
Daniel Nestor, Canada’s most-decorated player ever, and his new partner, Edouard Roger-Vasselin of France, were playing the Serbian team of Novak Djokovic and Janko Tipsarevic in the semi-finals of the men’s doubles at the Rogers Cup.
Djokovic was coming off a singles match that had ended hour-and-a-half earlier, but the Serbs presented a formidable challenge.
Djokovic, of course, is the No. 1 singles player in the world. Tipsarevic, a tough grinder and former top-tenner recently plagued by injuries, competes wearing a pair of funny-looking glasses and a tatoo from Dostoyevsky in Japanese on his left arm declaring, “Beauty will save the world.”
The beauty on this evening was Daniel Nestor.
Tall, lithe and blond, he is the winner of 87 men’s doubles titles, including a Gold medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics, four ATP World Tour Finals, eight Grand Slam men’s doubles titles and four Grand Slam mixed doubles titles.
He’s 42 now. It sure didn’t show.
He was all over the court, playing absolutely brilliantly at times. On this night, he possessed the ability to place his left-handed anywhere he wanted, his ground strokes were immaculate, his touch at the net was wonderous.
Nestor and Roger-Vasselin, playing together for the first time, won in three tough sets to advance to the Sunday final against Bob and Mike Bryan, generally considered to be the greatest doubles team in history.
The magic ended there. Nestor, trying for his fifth Rogers Cup title, and Roger-Vasselin lost in three sets.
No matter, their performance Saturday, especially Nestor’s, will stay with me a long time.
Nestor’s appearance in the finals was a repeat of a (very) long-running pattern in Canadian tennis. Hot shots come and go in singles (and sometimes they go pretty far), but on the last weekend of any given tournament, there’s always been a pretty good chance that Nestor will still be around, playing for a title.
It doesn’t happen all that often any more. But Sunday it did.
Was it Nestor’s last hurrah or the start of something bigger, with his new partner? We’ll see.
Nestor and Roger-Vasselin are in Cincinnati this week and plan to play together in the U.S. Open, which begins at the end of the month.
For some perspective on Nestor’s past and future, RCI contacted Stephanie Myles, who many believe is the best tennis reporter in Canada.
She spoke by phone from her home in Montreal.
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