Nadal Suffers a Humbling Home Defeat
By Bill Simons
Rafa Nadal is a totally different player on clay. Confident, calm and imposing, he becomes a force of nature. His topspin is brutal, his mo
vement is astounding, his confidence unshakeable. He’s already pocketed six French Open titles. Fifteen of his record 20 Masters 1000 titles came on clay. He’s won eight consecutive Monte Carlo Masters titles. No other player has won a tournament eight times, yet alone eight straight times. BTW: Rafa hasn’t done so poorly in Barcelona. He’s won seven straight times. Bjorn Borg was good on clay. Nadal is the best of all time. And after
Sprinting through the first two big tournaments of the Euro clay season without losing a set, tennis nerds started throwing stats in all directions. His winning percentage on clay, a lofting .935. He was 44-1 at Monte Carlo. 34-0 at Barcelona, and 45-1 at Roland Garros. Still going into the high altitude of Madrid, he incessantly complained about the new slippery blue court, with its unconventional color, problematic footing and and too harmonic sight lines. Sounding like the grumpy, but beloved Tevye in “The Fiddler on the Roof,” again and again Rafa raged: tradition, tradition! The blue court in the “Magic Box” arena was an affront to tradition. “The earth is red, not blue,” he insisted. The sky was falling. But there’s been one certain tradition recently in tennis. Rafa rules on Spring clay. Okay, in his third round match against Madrid’s own Fernando Verdasco (who is one of his favorite foils) Nadal dropped the first set 6-3. But no problem. He promptly won the second 6-3 and went up two breaks in the third set and held a 5-2 lead against the No. 15 seed. The fat lady was singing. But then something happened. Michael Jordan missed a dunk. Casey struck out. And the our fierce bull – lad Nadal – netted the sleepiest of sitters; a gimme overhead just five feet from the net which would have brought him within two points of the match.
But not to worry. Nadal is one of our best closers. Then Verdasco bravely took heart from Nadal’s mind-boggling blunder and mounted a lights out counter-attack. He won thirteen of the next sixteen points, and even broke Rafa’s serve at love to even the match at 5-all. Slipping and out of sorts, Nadal flubbed simple rally forehands, while Verdasco was on fire as he won five straight games to claim his first victory in fourteen attempts over his fellow Spaniard 6-3, 3-6, 7-5.
As a final decisive winner whizzed past Nadal, Verdasco – stunned and amazed – fell to the controversial clay. Tears flowed as commentator Robbie Koenig said, “I would’ve put my house on it that, up 5-2, Nadal would have served the match out.”
Nadal has suffered some setbacks this season. There was his epic loss to Novak Djokovic in a marathon Aussie Open final and he was whomped by John Isner at Indian Wells. And then there was the biggest loss of his career to Robin Soderling in the fourth round of the ’09 French Open. But this was different: losing in the third round in his homeland when he was up two breaks in the deciding set to a countryman he had owned in there 13 previous meetings.
No wonder Rafa got the blues. Then again, in the end, it may be the Madrid Masters which gets the blues. Rafa said, “If things [with the court] continue like this, it will be very sad. Next year this will be one less event for my calendar.”
