Roger Federer has done it all in tennis except one thing - winning the French Open.

And to be quite honest I don't think the great Swiss master ever will. He simply cannot keep his clay court game consistent enough to win rally after rally for two weeks at Roland Garros.

He likes quick points and opponents to make mistakes, but on clay this is not always possible. It's true that Federer has upped his game over the past few weeks. With good performances in Miami and Indian Wells, Federer came into the clay court season without a tournament win, the same as Rafael Nadal.

'Nadal is the king and will be very hard to defeat in Paris'


However in his fist tournament Federer won in Estoril though very unconvincingly. He was in trouble in most of his matches and lost to the out of form Olivier Rochus of Belgium and German Denis Gremelmayr. Federer was also lucky that Nikolay Davydenko retired in the final as I am sure the Russian could have come back and defeated the world number one if he had been feeling better.

Players are not scared of Federer anymore on clay. Some clay-court specialists can play long rallies all day long, the best of them making hardly any errors. They love the surface. There are too many clay court specialists for Federer's liking and the clay court season can go on for most of the year with the South American clay court season as well as the European one.  Clay courters therefore can practice all year on the red and green surfaces and therefore have an advantage over the likes of Federer.

In Monte Carlo last week Federer was again very lucky in his early match with Ruben Ramirez Hildalgo of Spain.

The qualifier had Roger in deep trouble at 5-1 down in the third set but failed to capitalise on his chances and like a true champion Federer came roaring back.

The world number one admittedly did improve in the later stages of the tournament and did well to reach the final although again the retirement of Djokovic in the semis helped his cause.

In the final the Swiss master faced non other than Rafael Nadal and although Federer had chances and was leading on many occasions the superiority of Nadal on clay showed through.

Federer cannot cope with the consistent play of the Spaniard and cannot be classed as a true contender at Roland Garros. I think he will do well to even reach the final on current form. Nadal is the king and will be very hard to defeat in Paris.

Another name I would class as a true contender would be Nadal's compatriot David Ferrer who has also had good success on the surface and is trying to break into the top three this season.