French Open 2013: The Rafael Nadal legend continues to grow

As Fabio Fognini, dressed in an all-blue ensemble, pummeled yet another crosscourt backhand past a scampering Rafael Nadal, one of the TV commentators had this observation to make: “If you were told that you’d be seeing a 7-time French Open champion in action today, a man whose vicious forehand gives nightmares to the rest of the field, you’d be scratching your head right now. Who is that player, exactly?” To which the other commentator replied, in an apparent bid to be funny (or smart, I’m not sure), “You’d probably think it was the man in blue”. Never mind the fact that Nadal was, at that very moment, leading by two sets and a break. What had Nadal done to deserve this?

Every player has bad days, and today wasn’t an specially rip-roaring one for Nadal. But it’s still interesting to note how objectivity can sometimes be thrown out of the window, even by the most balanced of observers, when it comes to talking about the greats of the game. And when it comes to Nadal, the observations can sound even more strongly wedded to unreasonably excessive expectations than usual. I don’t think any 11-time Grand Slam champion has ever been handed as much criticism or been handed as much ‘advice’ as Nadal has through his career.

Today, Nadal was almost continuously reprimanded for his unwillingness to stand closer to the baseline. He was berated for dropping the ball too short off the forehand wing, and for playing too many passive slices off the backhand wing. And at one point he was even admonished for merely spinning his serve into the box rather than go after it. But how much of all this was due to Nadal’s lack of urgency, and how much because of the peculiar circumstances surrounding Court Philippe Chatrier?

Fognini had come out of the blocks going for broke, pretty much the way Daniel Brands and Martin Klizan had in Nadal’s first two matches of the tournament; for much of the match he dictated points by taking the ball early and aiming for the lines. Add to that the fact that Nadal wasn’t having a particularly easy time finding the court with his offensive forehand (the strong winds swirling around the stadium may have had something to do with that), and it was only natural for the Spaniard to retreat a few metres behind the baseline and wait the storm out.

It may have seemed like a strangely passive match from the consensus greatest claycourter of all time, but from another, slightly less coloured perspective, it could also be viewed as an instance of shrewd game-management by a player not in the best form. Fognini played out of his skin, and out of his comfort zone, to put Nadal on the defensive today; he had to practically red-line his game just to make one set out of three competitive. And he lost that set too. What else could he have done, really, to bring about any other result out of the match?

Leaving Fognini’s misfortunes aside, though, there was another interesting observation made about Nadal that merits mention here. One of the commentators noted that whenever Nadal was in a relatively ‘safe’ position on the scoreboard, like, say, when he served for the match at 5-2 in the third set, or when Fognini was serving at 4-5 in the first set, his intensity tended to drop, with the defensive side of his game becoming more pronounced. That’s not a groundbreaking observation, exactly; Nadal has always been known to produce his most electrifying offensive tennis when pushed into a corner, and the numerous stirring comeback victories he’s registered in his career are already the stuff of legend. But Nadal has also always been known as a terrific closer, and the fact that he failed to serve out the match at the first time of asking against both Fognini today and Klizan yesterday does provide some food for thought.

They say tennis is as much a physical contest as it is a mental battle, and perhaps no player exemplifies that better than Nadal. For all of his baseline solidity and mind-numbing consistency, his mind is in a constant state of flux, with his emotions ebbing and flowing each passing minute. That may sound hard to believe, considering how renowned Nadal is for treating every single point of every match the exact same way. But think about this more carefully for a second. Does Nadal really play every point of every match the exact same way? Maybe the effectiveness of his tennis remains more or less the same on every point (he does win a majority of the points he plays, after all), but the construction of his points differs greatly from one moment to the next.

Look back to the most memorable points you’ve seen from Nadal over the years. Those would almost invariably be characterized by aggressive, almost dance-like footwork, an insatiable eagerness to go down-the-line with the forehand, a loud, visceral grunt on every shot, and a violent urge to flatten the crosscourt backhand. And the icing on the cake, of course, is that bellow of ‘Vamos!’, with a vigorous fist-pump to accompany it. Clearly, Nadal goes on a different emotional plane at these moments, which helps him produce spectacular, unforgettable tennis – the kind which makes performances like today, during which there was barely half a fist pump and maybe one cry of ‘Vamos!’, look like junior-level tennis.

There’s a big difference in the Nadal that we saw today and the Nadal of the Rome Masters a couple of weeks ago, but his robot-like consistency in both versions can make anyone blind to that difference. Nadal’s tennis is influenced by his moods, just like every other player; it’s a credit to his mental strength that he hardly ever lets that show. He is as prone to lapses in concentration and sudden bouts of disinterest as the next pro, but he’s more skilled than any other at masking those indifferent periods with stubborn, repeated usage of his set playing patterns – patterns that he’s carefully perfected over the years. He lacked his usual intensity for much of today’s match, but it was only in a few moments, like the game at 5-4 in the first set, or the one where he served for the match at 5-2 in the third, that a hint of that detachment was betrayed.

Nadal didn’t play the most spectacular match against Fognini today, but he still got the job done. We know that he is hard to stop when he gets on a roll, but today’s match showed that even when he’s not on a roll, he finds a way to win – at least on clay. That, more than anything else, is what makes him a champion, and what makes the job of his Paris successor so incredibly, incredibly difficult.