Rafael Nadal: Undisputed

I’ve never set my alarm at 3:30 a.m. watch a tennis match before yesterday but something just told me this Federer-Nadal was not to be missed. These two have officially surpassed McEnroe and Borg in the rivalry department. Their Wimbledon final in 2008 was the greatest match of all time, surpassing the McEnroe/Borg battles in drama and quality. Now they’ve played against each other in  more grand slam finals than any male pros since Bill Tilden and Little Bill Johnston. Their regard for each other as human beings is reminiscent of Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. But to truly appreciate the historical dimensions of what Rafa has done to Roger – and what Roger cannot seem to stop him from doing- you have to consider the Seles/Graf rivalry we were discussing as the tournament began.  The only player as dominant as Roger for as long as Roger was Steffi Graf. She plowed through everyone, she won a Golden Slam in 1988. Her forehand was the biggest shot in tennis and is still right up there with Pete Sampras’ serve in the all-time weapon department. She was unbeatable…then along came a teenager named Monica Seles, who quickly blew Graf right off the map.

How can someone as dominant and perfect as Roger lose five straight to his younger rival? I don’t know. Ask Graf. Hers was a beautiful game too, and Seles was unorthodox, also a lefty like Nadal, finding weird and crazy little angles from all over the court. We are witnessing the very same thing now. Roger spent four years playing better tennis for longer than anyone thought was humanly possible. It looked perfect. Rafa burst on the scene and challenged Roger from the get-go, rapidly gaining ground every year.  Here’s a damning statistic = Roger is 6-13 against Rafa. That’s almost not a rivalry – it’s a rout.  

Can you be the greatest of all time if you have a losing record (2-5) against your best rival in grand slams? Comparatively, Pete Sampras was 4-1 against Andre Agassi.

Yesterday was Roger’s big chance to win another title. Rafa was coming off of the third-longest match in the Open Era. But I never felt Roger was the favorite. He had revealed himself to be mentally fragile right away Down Under (which I’ll address in a separate post). Meanwhile, Rafa was his usual mesmerizing self, displaying over and over again the mental toughness that has become his trademark. He’s only 22, but I would put him right up  there with Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors in terms of mental toughness. Here was Rafa, visibly whipped as early as the second set, yet his focus was razor sharp. He didn’t just focus on one point at a time. He was dialed in on every stroke.  There was a moment in the third set, near the end, where Rafa saved five break points and a handful of set points to take the set. It was astonishing. He was physically shot but mentally he was outclassing Federer. You could just sense Roger thinking that Nadal couldn’t hang on too much more, that if he could win the third set, Nadal would topple like a house of cards and it would be over. That did not happen. Rafa played out of his head, and even though Roger won the fourth set, I thought Roger looked more and more terrified out there, like he had thrown his best punch and Rafa wasn’t going to go down. All of this culminated in the strange spectacle of Roger playing a bad fifth set, going down with a wimper.

It should be obvious to everyone by now – Federer and Fed fans included – that Nadal is a physically and mentally powerful foe and the undisputed number 1. That aura of invincibility that the greatest have never comes back once it goes away. That doesn’t mean the player won’t win another major – Graf, Sampras, Serena, all of them won more after they lost the mojo – it’s just that it is never going to be that easy anymore. Roger will never step on court again with a set and a half lead becuase the other player is quaking in his boots. That’s a fact.

Tipping Point

Last year, after Wimbledon, I wrote this:

Finally, in the near dark, at the last possible moment before the dying of the light, Nadal broke serve. Fittingly, he still had to serve it out at 8-7. I thought about all the times all the tennis players all over the world had stayed on the court a touch too long, playing right up until dark, not wanting to go inside. When Nadal earned his third championship point Roger unleashed his best backhand of the day for a clean return winner. Maybe we would be seeing tennis again tomorrow after all. Then at last, Nadal finished it off, flashbulbs popping the way they did for Pete Sampras when he won his fourteenth, a spectacular sight. Nadal fell to the court in shock, the King deposed.

Long live the King.

Where Nadal rates as a tennis prodigy is overlooked because he toils in the shadow of The Mighty Federer. He seemed physically and mentally a man from the moment he burst onto the scene, winning his first French Open at age 18. With bulging biceps and massive energy, Nadal scared the hell out of half the field. Now with four French Open titles at just 22 years old, he still hasn’t lost at Roland Garros. 

…

Unlike his [Spanish] predecessors, Nadal announced he wanted to win Wimbledon right away, and he meant it. Nadal’s declaration was an awfully lofty goal considering what appeared to be the limitations of his game: big loopy groundstrokes, a soft serve, no net experience and a penchant for playing ten feet beyond the baseline. But Nadal proved to be an exceptionally quick study, and you could watch him improve at a rate that had to be alarming to the rest of the field. Flattening out his groundstrokes, bolstering his serve, discovering he had good hands at net, and bending the laws of physics to his will, Nadal made two Wimbledon finals. The first time he was overmatched (2006); in the second, he fought valiantly, making Federer step it up a notch to regain control and win in five; it was a modern classic (2007).

The third Wimbledon final for Rafa was destined to be a match for all time.

We will have plenty of time to talk about Mr. Nadal. He has exceeded my expectations so many times that now I’m going to stop thinking about any limitations. Can he win a Grand Slam? I think not in this calendar year. But I think he has a good shot to win four in a row at some point, a Serena or Martina slam, if you will, because he’s a threat to win on all four surfaces. He hasn’t done it in New York yet. Having witnssed him demolish Federer and win Wimbledon, I am 100 percent sure that the US Open is his next holy grail. And we’ve all seen what he’s capable of when he sets his mind to it.

For anyone who thought Wimbledon was a fluke, listen close. Nadal is your undisputed new King of Tennis.

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