PARIS: After all of those Grand Slam finals between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, a record eight in all, there’s a new tantalizing tennis rivalry.

This one, between Nadal and Novak Djokovic, offers the added benefit of being more competitive.

And given the participants’ ages, it should last a while.

Nadal and Djokovic played each other to decide the titles at each of the past four Grand Slam tournaments, most recently the French Open, where Nadal won a two-day, rain-interrupted final 6-4, 6-3, 2-6, 7-5.

No one should be surprised if they make that five in a row in less than a month’s time at Wimbledon.

Which would be remarkable, considering that before these two came along, no pair of men had met in more than two consecutive major finals since the start of the Open era in 1968. Not Borg and McEnroe. Not Sampras and Agassi. Not even Federer and Nadal.

“We are very young, and we played over 30 times against each other,” said Djokovic, who trails 19-14 overall in their series, “and hopefully we can have many more battles in the next years.”

The No. 1-ranked Djokovic turned 25 last month; No. 2 Nadal is barely a week past his 26th birthday.

They’ve already accumulated more head-to-head meetings than Nadal and the 30-year-old Federer (Nadal leads 18-10), and are gaining in the Grand Slam final department (Nadal leads Federer 6-2; Djokovic leads Nadal 3-2).

If they do meet again at Wimbledon next month or the U.S. Open in September, there will be those who will wonder whether Nadal’s current three-match winning streak against Djokovic – at Monte Carlo, Rome and Paris, all on red clay – says much about who has the upper hand in general at the moment.

Right now, there’s such a tiny sliver separating Djokovic and Nadal.

They’re probably the sport’s two best returners of serve, two best movers and two best retrievers of opponents’ shots. They’re also capable of switching from defense to offense in a blink as well or better than anyone. In the French Open final, they played more than 60 points that lasted 10 strokes or more – lengthy, complicated exchanges that resulted not from conservative, keep-the-ball-in-play tennis, but rather an extraordinary ability to force the other to come up with the goods over and over – and each won more than 30.

Wilander pointed to the puzzle of the top three men in the sport, Djokovic, Nadal and the No. 3-ranked Federer, a trio that has combined to win 28 of the past 29 Grand Slam titles dating to 2005 (the exception: Juan Martin del Potro beat Federer in the 2009 U.S. Open final).

Nadal always seems to have the edge over Federer. Until recently, Federer had the edge over Djokovic, who beat the Swiss star in the U.S. Open semifinals in September and the French Open semifinals last week. And for a stretch of seven consecutive wins that began in 2011 and was capped by the 2012 Australian Open final – a 5-hour, 53-minute epic – Djokovic had the edge over Nadal.

“If you’re going to build a player that’s going to trouble Roger Federer on every surface, you build Nadal. And if you’re going to build a player that’s going to trouble Nadal, you build Robin Soderling with the movement of Novak Djokovic. And suddenly, Novak Djokovic at No. 1 is hitting the ball like Soderling, but he moves like Novak,” Wilander said. “So it’s amazing how they all fit each other really badly. The one big thing is Novak has now maybe turned the corner on Federer completely after here. … He’s the one to beat (at Wimbledon) – Novak is still the one to beat, for sure.”

Djokovic had won 27 consecutive Grand Slam matches until his setback against Nadal in Paris, falling one win short of becoming the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to win four straight major titles. Nadal, beaten by Djokovic in London, New York and Melbourne, avoided becoming the first man to lose four straight major finals.

Now they start over at Wimbledon, where play begins June 25.

Nadal already has 11 Grand Slam titles, Djokovic five. Put those numbers together, and you get Federer’s 16, the record.

The question isn’t whether Nadal and Djokovic will continue to add to their totals. The question is how many more times they will do it at the other’s expense. (Agencies)

MOSCOW: Maria Sharapova will be the Russian delegation’s flag-bearer at next month’s Olympic opening ceremony in London, Russia’s tennis chief Shamil Tarpishchev said on Tuesday.

The Russians have broken with tradition by choosing Sharapova, who won the French Open title last weekend.

Carrying the flag is considered a great honour in Russia and, until now, it was given only to famous athletes, mostly men, such as Greco-Roman wrestler Alexander Karelin and swimmer Alexander Popov, who have won numerous Olympic titles.

Sharapova, 25, will be making her Olympic debut in London after failing to qualify for the 2004 Games in Athens and missing the 2008 edition in Beijing with a shoulder injury.

“The Olympics has been a dream of mine since I was a young girl,” Sharapova, who was born in Siberia but is now based in Florida, said earlier this year. (Agencies)

SAN FRANCISCO: With former world number one Tiger Woods seemingly back to his best, and defending champion Rory McIlroy not far off, this week’s US Open at the Olympic Club has whetted the appetite of fans and players alike.

A host of other in-form players can lay claim to being genuine contenders for the year’s second major, though an unpredictable winner is also likely given Olympic’s uncanny habit of delivering the unexpected in past Opens staged here.

Jack Fleck upstaged tournament favourite Ben Hogan in 1955, Billy Casper prospered from Arnold Palmer’s late collapse in 1966 and the plodding Scott Simpson dashed Tom Watson’s hopes by one shot in 1987. In 1998, the popular Payne Stewart seemed to be on track for a third major title when leading by four strokes going into the final round but his bid was derailed as Lee Janzen stormed back to victory after falling seven behind. On all four occasions, the third-round leader at Olympic was denied and there is every chance history could repeat itself this week as the game’s leading players vie for supremacy.

Woods and McIlroy are capable of electrifying the galleries with their power and precision and both are itching to return to the major winner’s circle in the championship widely accepted as the most grueling of all.

Long-hitting American Dustin Johnson completed his US Open preparations by winning his sixth PGA Tour title at the St. Jude Classic on Sunday, a day after Briton Lee Westwood had clinched his 22nd European Tour victory at the Scandinavian Masters. Other likely candidates for success include world number one Luke Donald, fellow Briton Justin Rose and Americans Phil Mickelson, Hunter Mahan, Matt Kuchar and Masters champion Bubba Watson. (Agencies)

London: The 2012 London Olympics will open with a glimpse of the British countryside, past and present from cows and sheep to meadow and mosh pit.

Danny Boyle, the artistic director for the games’ July 27 opening ceremony, today unveiled a model of the set, which will transform the Olympic Stadium in gritty, urban east London into a rural idyll.

Cows and sheep

The Olympic set will include grass and fields, sheep, cows and horses, a cricket match, picnicking families and a hill modeled on Glastonbury Tor, a landmark in southwest England.

Below the hill spectators will fill a mosh pit, evoking the raucous Glastonbury rock festival and other rural music events that are a major summer motif in Britain.

At the other end of the stadium is a more genteel standing-room-only area — one wag dubbed it the “posh pit” — that is meant to evoke the annual classical music fixture the Last Night of the Proms.

There are even real clouds that Boyle says can produce real rain — in case the British weather fails to comply. The meadow is surrounded by a circular parade ground for the 10,500 athletes taking part in the games. Boyle has nicknamed it the M25, after the often-clogged commuter highway that rings London.

Back to childhood ideals

Boyle, the filmmaker behind “Trainspotting” and the Academy Award-winning “Slumdog Millionaire,” said the set for the opening ceremony will evoke the “green and pleasant land” of William Blake’s poem “Jerusalem,” an emblem of Englishness.

He said the opening ceremony would be a “reflection of part of our heritage,” but would also depict Britain’s present and look to the future. The set is designed to evoke the site where the stadium stands: once countryside, then industrial land, bombed during World War II and now being regenerated as a park.

Boyle unveiled the model to reporters at 3 Mills Studios, near the Olympic Park, where craftspeople are working to create almost 3,000 props and 23,000 costumes for the Olympic and Paralympic opening and closing ceremonies. Boyle said even though most Britons now live in cities, “it’s in our brains as part of ourselves, this ideal. It’s like a childhood ideal, in a way.”

Ring the bell

The opening ceremony will begin with the tolling of a 27-ton bell forged at London’s 442-year-old Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which made London’s Big Ben and Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell.

The bell is inscribed with a line from William Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest” — one of Boyle’s main inspirations for the ceremony — in which Caliban says: “Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises.”

“It’s a wonderful thing that we’ll be able to open our games with a symbol of peace, the ringing of a bell,” Boyle said. “You will feel different when you’re in there and you hear it ringing.” (PTI)