Because you don't all get the New Yorker:
The Tenacity of Rafael Nadal
At the Australian Open, two great champions, Nadal and Ashleigh Barty, showed what tennis can be.
By
Gerald Marzorati
January 31, 2022
There has been in recent years, and rightly so, an emphasis on the
mental toll that the game of tennis can take on a player: the anxiety; the bouts of depression brought on by strings of losses; the nagging, worrying doubt that can take hold and drift down into a loathing of the game, and then of the self. But this crucial awakening to the psychological should not obscure what professional tennis, as played today, does to the body. The hard courts, the long season, the rallies that can go on and on, the pace and spin that racquets and strings (and fitness) now provide and force a player to absorb—the physical toll of the game is greater than ever before.
No player has embodied and endured that harsh modern-day reality like
Rafael Nadal. His unorthodox technique and grinding, unyielding style of play have worn out his muscled body and forced him out of tournaments and off the circuit with injuries to his elbow (2003), wrist (2004), and left foot (2005). Throughout this past fall, he worked to recover from yet another recurrence of that foot injury which he has had to painfully manage, or try to manage, for most of his career. Whether he would even play in this year’s Australian Open, in Melbourne, was in doubt. This past Friday, after he defeated Matteo Berrettini in the semifinal, he said that, in the months leading up to the tournament, he’d had conversations with his family and his team about how it might be time to “say goodbye” to tennis.
So I can imagine—or maybe I can’t—what flashed in his mind Sunday night after he struck a backhand volley that did not come back over the net, flipped his racquet to the ground, and covered his smiling face like a boy surprised by a longed-for Christmas present. He had beaten Daniil Medvedev, 2–6, 6–7 (5), 6–4, 6–4, 7–5, in a match that lasted nearly five and a half hours and will be remembered as one of the greatest hard-court major finals ever played. It will also be remembered as the match that allowed Nadal to edge ahead of his great rivals,
Roger Federer and
Novak Djokovic, by winning his twenty-first major. And many fans, including this one, will remember it as the most improbably remarkable display of Nadal’s peerless tenacity, his unwavering spirit and fight. Has there ever been a player with a stronger will not to lose?
It sure looked like Nadal would lose. Twice in the opening set he was broken at love. The second set was tighter, often brilliant, with long rallies—including one forty shots long, which Nadal won—and lots of think-y variety from both players. Nadal’s forehand was savage; Medvedev, with his slappy backhand, was sending balls precisely where he wanted them to go. The set went to a tiebreak, and there, as throughout the first two sets, it was Medvedev’s big first serve, a weapon Nadal has never possessed, that made the difference. Nadal had come back from two sets down in a major before, at Wimbledon. But that was a long time ago, in 2007, and not in a final. No player in the Open era had ever won the Australian Open final after dropping the first two sets.
An inkling that Nadal just might do it came at the very end of the third set, when he held serve by unleashing three clean winners. Then, after three wearing sets, Nadal, in the fourth, somehow began moving like someone a decade younger, opening the court in ways that kept Medvedev on the run. Nadal’s topspin forehand gets a ball to not only bounce up but penetrate deeper wherever it’s headed, and he sent Medvedev chasing angled shots that bounded beyond the sidelines. He moved Medvedev forward and back with short slices, followed by deep, out-of-reach groundstrokes. He hit twenty-three winners in the fourth set alone. When he broke Medvedev’s serve to send the match to a decisive fifth set, the crowd rose and roared for him.
Fifth sets of major finals are an excruciating pleasure, and this one was particularly, deliciously agonizing. Nadal had a break-point opportunity in the first game, but Medvedev saved it with a deep forehand down the line, and went on to hold. Nadal held his serve; Medvedev held his again; then Medvedev summoned a trainer to massage his overworked quads. Nadal held once more, and in the following game—after failing to convert a break-point opportunity—he earned another. He broke Medvedev with a forehand down the line that had just enough sidespin to bring the ball back inside the court, like a curveball that catches the outside corner. The next game went to six deuces before Nadal held, to go up 4–2. But, serving at 5–4, he could not hold, despite going up 30–love. Then it was Medvedev’s turn to crack. He saved one break point when a Nadal backhand drifted wide, and a second when a Nadal return sailed long, but lost a third when his backhand sent a ball beyond the baseline.
Nadal would not be broken again. When he slid an ace past Medvedev to go up 40–love, the crowd rose, and they were still on their feet, cheering deliriously, when he punched that backhand volley which proved unreturnable and brought the match to an end. During the trophy ceremony, Nadal spoke again about being uncertain, before the tournament, that he could physically prepare himself to get back on the court, never mind to win another major. It was clear enough what he meant. The adrenaline and sheer will that had carried him to victory had dissipated. A chair was brought up onto the dais for him, and he spent much of the ceremony seated, spent. His body had held up, but barely.
Nadal spoke before the tournament began about how majors are bigger than any one player, and how generations of players come and go but the game remains. He also talked about how tennis is, as he put it, “zero important” compared with the pandemic that has swept the world. This was his way of talking about Djokovic, whose arrival, unvaccinated, in Melbourne, and subsequent deportation dominated coverage of the sport in the week before the Australian Open began, and threatened to cloud it afterward. That it didn’t—that the tennis was just too good not to become what mattered—was due in great part to Nadal and to Barty. That’s what the greatest champions can do.
