Daniel Nestor must sometimes wonder about us Canucks. Desperate for homegrown heroes in world sports like golf and tennis we lionize Mike Weir and even a single win by Niagara Fall’s native Frank Dancevic can find its way onto the front sports pages. Yet Nestor usually ends up as an afterthought—a two paragraph add on to the AP wire story. …Toronto’s Daniel Nestor retained his world No. 1 doubles ranking with a straight set win over…The man’s won Wimbledon. And an Olympic gold medal. Yet he’s an agate page guy, if he gets ink at all.
So, yesterday we have Weir putting a mediocre performance in against a mediocre field at the Canadian Open, but he still gets higher billing than Nestor, who actually won a Canadian open championship in Canada. Something Weir will likely never do (he had his chance in 2004 when he was at his peak).
As a soccer and CIS guy I realize that you can’t make people care about what they don’t care about. However, that said, Nestor still gets the short stick from us. I dare you to find a Canadian athlete as under appreciated as him, actually (and there are a lot of under appreciated Canadian athletes).
A legitimate gold medal contender in Beijing (along with partner Frederic Niemeyer) Nestor will likely get some well-deserved attention in China. For a variety of reasons (hockey blindness, lack of appreciation for doubles, J.P. Ricciardi — I’m sure it's his fault somehow—etc.), we will likely forget about him by the time the U.S. Open rolls around.
And that’s a shame.
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2 comments:
Couldn't agree more Duane, I've always wondered how it happened that Daniel Nestor never got any attention for consistent results at the top level of Tennis. It's funny when one can't even say "well with a star tennis player in the world who is Canadian maybe the country to tennis." It's all about the names, and unfortunately Canadians are waiting for something other than Nestor. I do hope that he gets attention in Beijing, he most certainly deserves it!
Wow, let me fix that statement I was trying to say, over-edited:
"Well with a star tennis player in the world who is Canadian maybe the country WOULD RELATE BETTER to tennis"
Now it's all good! :)
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