US Open - Day 5 - Discussion (Men)

[Kieran]

Brother, they're all bad. They're all symptoms of the same disease. Coric could have beaten him in the first round, had he been able to persevere in the fourth. Rafa has been rock bottom in his game this year, we have never seen him play so tentatively and weakly. I'm watching the highlights now and he has the same issues he had against anyone who's beaten him this year (and that's more than a few)...

 

[Front242]

He's been hitting tentative and short balls for years, it's just that players are now capitalizing on it. It probably started with the RG loss to Soderling. The short balls anyway.

 

[Carol]

Rafa is giving us surprise by surprise, yesterday he started to play strong and sharp including with the serve and deep shots, Fog was playing well too. Later Rafa's level started to fall down quickly and obviously lost a match which was in his hands but his mind gave a trick on him again
It's clear that he can't play with constancy giving better opportunities to his opponents and it doesn't matter who is to the other side of the net, his confidence is unstable like the "jelly" and if he doesn't change that he will continue losing against anyone. Definitely he needs help, someone to remind him who he is and what much better results he can do

 

[Kieran]

Come on, Carol, let's not start with the uncle Toni stuff again. :laydownlaughing :hug

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

I just got up now and saw the result. I went to bed Rafa 2 sets up and totally expecting that my prediction of Rafa winning in straights with a bagel set somewhere in there had come true. I am totally shocked. Not that Rafa lost but from 2 sets up? This is a milestone. First, rafa does not lose from two sets up in slams, and Fabio just does not care enough to come back from two sets down, let alone against Rafa! Way too many things that do not make sense in this picture here. I can believe Fabio redlining but Rafa not finding a solution...that is bad.

I have to watch the last three sets somewhere. I read that Rafa said he did not lose the match, Fabio won it. That cannot be hundred percent true.

Pavlik...last three sets bro. Not highlights, all of it please. Thank you.

 

[herios]

I just got up now and saw the result. I went to bed Rafa 2 sets up and totally expecting that my prediction of Rafa winning in straights with a bagel set somewhere in there had come true. I am totally shocked. Not that Rafa lost but from 2 sets up? This is a milestone. First, rafa does not lose from two sets up in slams, and Fabio just does not care enough to come back from two sets down, let alone against Rafa! Way too many things that do not make sense in this picture here. I can believe Fabio redlining but Rafa not finding a solution...that is bad.

I have to watch the last three sets somewhere. I read that Rafa said he did not lose the match, Fabio won it. That cannot be hundred percent true.

Pavlik...last three sets bro. Not highlights, all of it please. Thank you.

When you predicted Rafa will feed a bagel to Fabio I smiled and I was thinking I am not sure it will happen. But, yeah I am as shocked as you are.

 

[Carol]

Come on, Carol, let's not start with the uncle Toni stuff again. :laydownlaughing :hug

I don't blame uncle Toni at all, he is doing a good job but maybe Rafa needs someone else not for training but to clear his mind which is his worst issue right now :nono uzzled

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

I just got up now and saw the result. I went to bed Rafa 2 sets up and totally expecting that my prediction of Rafa winning in straights with a bagel set somewhere in there had come true. I am totally shocked. Not that Rafa lost but from 2 sets up? This is a milestone. First, rafa does not lose from two sets up in slams, and Fabio just does not care enough to come back from two sets down, let alone against Rafa! Way too many things that do not make sense in this picture here. I can believe Fabio redlining but Rafa not finding a solution...that is bad.

I have to watch the last three sets somewhere. I read that Rafa said he did not lose the match, Fabio won it. That cannot be hundred percent true.

Pavlik...last three sets bro. Not highlights, all of it please. Thank you.

When you predicted Rafa will feed a bagel to Fabio I smiled and I was thinking I am not sure it will happen. But, yeah I am as shocked as you are.

But think about it man...the scenario was perfect! Fabio two sets down against a top player. You know he is a headcase ,he stops playing when it gets tough and he has never been much of a fighter and you know top players breeze through last sets like that... I was patting myself on the back going to bed, for my amazing prediction ! :cover

 

[Johnsteinbeck]

This is easily the worst loss of the year for Nadal. The FO loss might have carried bigger repercussions since he failed to defend his title and there was a consensus that no matter how badly he was playing, only one man could stop him (so if he'd beaten Djokovic most believed he was going to win the tournaments), whereas here, the expectations were minimal regardless (as in, if he didn't lose to Fog, he would lose to someone else). Nevertheless, the nature of the loss is easily the worst, especially given the fact that he wasn't exactly playing a world beater.

i think this might be one of his worst losses ever. i just don't remember ever seeing him slip like that.

 

[Front242]

It's the first loss in his career after being up 2 sets to 0, so in that respect it is the worst.

 

[Kieran]

It's the first loss in his career after being up 2 sets to 0, so in that respect it is the worst.

It's not. He was up 2 sets to love against Federer in Miami in 2005, and lost. Trust me, losing to Federer has to rank as an all-time low... :snicker

 

[Front242]

Ah yeah, first loss since 2005 after being up 2 sets to 0, sorry.

 

[Front242]

^ Which is a pretty amazing stat in fairness as much as I despise the guy

 

[Tennis Miller]

I woke up an hour ago and saw the result, and went back asleep thinking about other things. I wasn't disappointed, or shocked, because this isn't a surprise. I didn't feel the usual. It could have happened in the first round, to be honest, if Coric had been able to force a fifth. That kid looks like an exceptional talent. But Rafa also struggled against Peter Dinklage in round two, so losing to Fog in a rollercoaster match of mishaps and dropped serves isn't a huge shock.

It is disappointing, because it's Rafa, but I didn't feel anything remotely like sadness or disappointment. We've all seen him this year, and to be honest, he hasn't been himself since the Oz final in 2014. In fact, go back further and after he won the US Open in 2013, his intensity levels dropped and he coasted for a while. The great furnace that raged on the summer hards that year has been seen rarely since, maybe only a couple of times on clay last summer.

He's showing natural signs of physical wear and tear, it happens to players of a certain vintage, especially when they have so many titles in the bag, and so many miles on the clock. It happened to the great Pete Sampras, too. His mental toughness has been replaced by panic and doubt. He's timid in the clutch and his shots don't carry the physical force or threat they had in the past. Since he came back this year, he's worked hard but he's not the same. Everything takes its toll eventually, and though there's no cure for ageing, I suspect he'll play a lot better before his career is done.

Fair play to Fog, it seems like it was a terrible and great match, lots of spills and mishaps, and he did a remarkable thing to turn it around in his favour...

To be fair to Rafa, Federer has set an unrealistically [and to me, surprisingly] high bar for longevity at a high level. What's happening to Rafa is on par with most of the other all time greats at the same age. And considering what Rafa put his body through, winning a slam 10 years in a row was pretty unbelievable for longevity in itself.

If not for 2011 Nole and the 2014 AO final, we'd probably be sitting here talking about maybe Rafa being the greatest ever. Instead we are chewing over what Kieran correctly points out is really to be expected from an all time great who left it all on the court every time and has the results to show for it.

 

[Tennis Miller]

You may want to check Fabio's record on HC. Is not good at all. All his success in his career came on clay.

You might want to check Berdych's record against Rafa, before Oz, and Novak's record against him in Paris. All of these defeats this year are cut from the same cloth, and sure signs that Rafa isn't himself, long before he played FFS last night...

This cloth is much coarser and full of holes. Nadal was up two sets and a break against a man who is a career 52-89 and had never advanced to the USO 4th round in 7 previous tries.

I don't know. For some reason, guys like Fognini and even those ranked lower, have found a way to play the matches of their lives vs Rafa the last few years.F3 had like 70+ winners, for example. A lot of it is simply Rafa not winning anymore because guys are afraid of him as much. Once losses to lowly ranked guys started piling up, the number of matches Rafa wins before stepping on the court [you know what I mean, figuratively] drops drastically. Fed and Nole still give off that "you don't stand a chance against me" vibe. Rafa no longer has that.

 

[nehmeth]

Just because one delusional fan who wants to tell himself anything to escape reality believes in something doesn't make it a theory. Nobody really subscribes to the above, at least not this year. Yes, there was a time when Nadal was not only a different animal in best of 5 sets, but a different animal altogether.

He was like the Hulk; when it got to those key points of a match, he'd take it to another level that one just doesn't see anymore. Incredible.

 

[Denis]

People attributing rafa's losses to lack of confidence or raise of confidence of opponents need to get their eyes checked. The differences between now and 2013/2011/2010 are obvious: an errani serve, a lack of intensity, movement, an ailing forehand. Players are just rallying with the guy now without any threat of Nadal turning the rally around and getting pinned down by the forehand. At times f3 was standing a meter inside the baseline and dictating play, rafa just couldn't turn it around anymore.

 

[Kieran]

Well, it's kind of a vicious circle. Having no confidence means less spite in the shot, which leads to more trouble in the rally. But suffering physical wear and tear reduces confidence. He's in a bind, either way, and it's a common problem for players at a certain stage of their career...

 

[Denis]

Well, it's kind of a vicious circle. Having no confidence means less spite in the shot, which leads to more trouble in the rally. But suffering physical wear and tear reduces confidence. He's in a bind, either way, and it's a common problem for players at a certain stage of their career...

You can have all the confidence in the world but with rafa's current game you will not win a slam. The confidence drops because of the lack of level. It's not the other way around.

 

[brokenshoelace]

He's been hitting tentative and short balls for years, it's just that players are now capitalizing on it. It probably started with the RG loss to Soderling. The short balls anyway.

Are you serious with this? Nadal has been hitting short balls since 2009 but players just weren't capitalizing?

The biggest improvement Nadal made in 2010 during his unlikely comeback (yes, it's easy to forget now, but people thought he might be done after that FO loss and subsequent layoff and terrible results) is that he changed his racket and improved his rally forehand significantly as a result, since he was getting much better depth.

In fact, the biggest evidence is his results against the so called big hitters and the so called "bad match-ups" between 2010 and 2013. Look at his record against Del Potro, Tsonga, Soderling, Murray (supposed bad match-up, not big hitter), etc.. around that time. Hell, look at the way he turned around his rivalry with Novak post 2011.

2009 marked his first real noticeable loss in movement for Nadal and he compensated with more aggressive play, positioning and a much improved serve. That carried over for more or less 4 full seasons where he was a near lock for grand slam finals, and his record speaks for itself.

Revisionist history is easily my biggest pet peeve whenever someone starts declining. You always get these implied "oh well, he was never THAT good anyway" narratives (I know that's not quite what you're saying but still).