NEW YORK – Day after day, round after round, the chatter grew. The unicorn is coming! This is the year! With each Roger Federer escape, each Rafael Nadal recovery from first-set struggles, it became more insistent: Why else would the draw have been so decimated by injury? By Wednesday night it was easy to believe you were hearing hoofbeats, that tennis’ Grand Slam unicorn was galloping ever near, that Roger and Rafa would play, at last, for the first time ever at Flushing Meadow. It just had to be.
Yes, cosmically, karmically—in every way that has nothing to do with actual play—a showdown at this year’s Open made perfect sense.