Relentless Rafael Nadal focused on reclaiming his lost crown
Nadal knows that he is capable of a second back-to-back Paris-London triumphNeil Harman
The comment was delivered under his breath, but spoken just loud enough that you suspected he wanted you to catch it.
Andy Roddick was practising with Rafael Nadal on No 15 Court at the All England Club. His backhand approach was placed on a sixpence, but Nadal was to it in a flash and the forehand pass caressed the inside of the line. “The lower it goes, the better he hits it. This is f***ing weird,” Roddick said, his admiration not the least bit forced.
Contriving winners from impossible positions has long been Nadal’s forte. “I love that shot,” he said yesterday.
It is why he has won seven grand-slam tournament titles, the latest of which, in Paris a fortnight ago, rounded off another season of clay-court tennis in which he had been irresistible. It is one of the reasons you want to watch him play, to gawp at his superhuman abilities, his breathtaking intensity, to try to work out how he makes the shots he plays. And yes, it is weird.
The 24-year-old world No 1 has returned to Wimbledon to play for the first time in two years — he did have a couple of hits last year, but his knees were not strong enough and his focus had been all but wrecked by the upheaval in his parents’ marriage. He knows that he is capable of a second back-to-back Paris-London triumph. The last man to do that is the one who won the title in his absence last summer, one Roger Federer.
A Federer practice session tends to be an opportunity to relish what he can do with a racket and a ball: to spin it, caress it, to treat it lovingly. Nadal bursts forth and explodes into his shots from first to last, as if it is the real thing, because to him it is. “I like to play like it is a match — to do this is what I have done all my life,” he said. “You are then ready when it is time for the match. Except if I have some small injury problems, this is the way I am.”
There was the 15-minute session in steady drizzle at Queen’s Club, West London, on Monday of last week, when most players may have lived in dread of doing themselves a mischief. Nadal asked for the net to be put back up. Wasting precious court time is not in his DNA.
“Those 15 minutes can help me adjust and feel the surface that bit better the next day,” he said. “It can be the difference because on grass you have to remember all the time. The surface is not fresh in your mind like the hard courts or the clay.”
Which brings him neatly to those most fresh memories from Wimbledon, a tournament that not so long ago was anathema to Spanish players.
They dreaded it. I recall phoning Alex Corretja, now in Andy Murray’s coaching camp, when he had withdrawn from the championships, to be told that he was about to go shopping with his wife in Barcelona — and if that is a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon, he must have hated Wimbledon.
“It’s a new generation now, but it was hard for the Spanish players to have the motivation before,” Nadal said.
“When I first came as a junior, I loved it. This was the finest club in the world, for sure, that is easy. I had the hope and desire to win.
“For me it was a big surprise to be in the final in 2006. I was lucky with the draw and when I reached the final, it was not with a very good mentality. I did not conform to the situation. I was happy enough to be in the final [he lost 6-0, 7-6, 6-7, 6-3 to Federer].
“The next year I came back I had such a difficult draw — Söderling, Youzhny, Berdych, all very hard players on this surface, and then I started to believe I really can play well here. I was ready to win that final but I lost [to Federer again, 7-6, 4-6, 7-6, 2-6, 6-2], which was a very difficult moment.”
And so to that glorious Spanish summer of 2008. He dropped only one set en route to the final, crushing Andy Murray in the quarter-finals and playing like a man possessed. The final, of course, is a novel in itself. What images, one wondered, stuck in his mind?
“There are two,” he said. “The first is when I had a serve for the match in the fourth-set tie-break. I had a slice to the backhand of Roger, he returned the slice so-so in the middle of the court and I played that shot [he motions a forehand arc] to the backhand.
“It was amazing because when I saw the ball there in the middle of the court to my forehand, it is one of my best shots. The ball was a little low, but as I was touching the ball I was thinking, ‘I am the champion of Wimbledon.’
“No time had that happened to me in any match. I played not a bad shot but not very good — probably I played at the limit of a good shot. I thought, ‘I will play to the backhand’, because sometimes Roger, he misses the backhand.” Not this time.
“The second moment I am on the floor like this [eyes wide open, arms up], I have no control of that. I have won Wimbledon. Very emotional.
“Everybody knows how important the final was for me. If I lost three in a row, two times being very close to winning, it’s going to be very hard for me. At the same time I think I deserved it, I fought a lot when Roger comes back from two sets down. In the fifth I am still fighting until the last ball.”
The same was true of Roddick last year, a story Nadal watched unfold at his apartment in Majorca, where he had retreated to be at one with his family. It is the only match of the tournament he could bring himself to witness, but it stayed with him. He said that to lose three finals to Federer, having been so close, would have been hard for him to accept. Imagine Roddick’s state of mind.
“Andy deserved to win the title because he is a big fighter and plays so well on grass, but when you see that moment, two sets to love over Federer [he takes a big breath], when you have the chance to win and maybe are too nervous to win, it is hard,” Nadal said.
“Even after he lost the second, then the third, he came back unbelievably in the fourth with a great mentality. But he is still remembering his very big chance in the second set and being two sets up with the serve of Andy is almost the match.”
A year on and Nadal and Roddick had just walked off court together yesterday, drenched in sweat. Only a few moments earlier, completing an astonishing rally, the No 1 flung himself to score with a backhand volley. “Calm down,” Roddick shouted. But this is Nadal. He can’t. He is then deep in conversation with Toni, his uncle.
“I was happy because I had a good practice with only one bad game, but in that there were seven straight serves outside the court [faults], so I was a break down and 30-0 on his serve and Toni and I are saying that is the only thing that cannot happen on this surface because that is the set all the time,” Nadal said. “That is the grass. You have to be very focused all the time.”
Nadal is back. Let the championships begin.
Source: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/tennis/article2563159.ece
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