Nadal. Federer. Nadal. Federer.

They're both fantastic and they're the only two reasons to watch men's tennis these days.

Federer was profiled by David Foster Wallace back in 2006, and it's safe to say that very few other 21st century authors could have properly captured the grace and artistry of this man's game.

Although not as splendid as DFW's piece, Cynthia Gorney wrote a wonderful profile of Rafael Nadal in this week's New York Times Sunday Magazine. As I was reading about Nadal I thought about the Federer article and I found it interesting that two of the best pieces of sports journalism in the past 5 years were written about these two tennis players who have occupied the number one and two spots in the world rankings during that time period.

Were they just particularly good subjects? Does tennis as a sport lend itself to more literary sports journalism? Was it just a coincidence?

The sports website Deadspin made the point I was searching for:

With this story, The Times Magazine — and its Play, R.I.P. — has published two of the finest long-form profiles of Nadal and Roger Federer. What's more, the authors of the profiles (Gorney, a creative writing professor, and the late David Foster Wallace, he of no further introduction), are not sportswriters but writer's writers.

And those running a sports magazine could take yet another hint from this type of standard: Sometimes, it pays to turn your pages over to outsiders. Not all the time, mind you, but sometimes, for a fresh take. They might not know anything about sports — still, DFW did — but they can make sentences cha-cha real smooth. Or squirt a variety of juices in your face.

That's what matters most.

So true. Some of my favorite pieces of sports writing were written by the likes of John Updike, David Foster Wallace and David Halberstam. While all of these writers clearly had a passion for sports, they were, as Deadspin points out, "writer's writers."