Just like Julien

by Pete Bodo

Don't you all love the way Rafael Nadal returned to the business at hand last week at Monte Carlo, winning that Masters 1000 event for the fifth time? One of the things that most struck me about the effort takes us back to Miami, and the puzzling way Nadal left us at the end of the early hard-court season. He ventured closer than he ever had ever before to excuse-making when he cryptically cited "personal" reasons as an explanation for his noticeably dampened and surprisingly out-of-focus performance against Juan Martin del Potro in the Miami quarterfinals.

Well, Nadal put the kibosh on any notion that this curious end to the US swing was somehow going to morph into a soap opera (that other top player has provided us with more than enough fodder to please the most eager overcomplicators; can conspiracy theories be far behind?).  This is one of the reasons we love Nadal, right? He's all about cutting to the chase:  Let's get on with it. Time's a wastin'. I got things to do and people to see. Personal reasons? Oh, that!  Hey, who do you think I am, Jennifer Aniston? I've moved on!

So Rafa's performance in the closest place we have to Disneyworld for unhappy princesses, international arms dealers, and extremely rich but really, really boring people was vintage in more ways than one. This ordinarily would be a good reason to feel cheerful - how could you not be moved to celebrate a guy whose cumulative record in clay-court Masters and Roland Garros is an off the charts 69-2?

But it's time for me to 'fess up. I've been having lots of trouble "connecting" with Rafa ever since he dropped the clamdiggers and sleeveless sausage-casing tops. I know it's pretty late in the game to be making this confession, but I thought the discomfort would pass. And, hey, this is not an easy thing to admit for a guy who's never been particularly interested in getting in touch with his feminine side. What does it say about me that I'm bummed out about what amounts to. . .well . . . a wardrobe change? Should I feel weird about this? Do I need to see a therapist (and if so, any chance Rafadoc will give me a discount?).

Anyway, it's time to face the music. I can no longer duck the job of writing the Nadal post on the grounds that there's really no news, or that his recent history is fairly uncomplicated. But that happens to be true, as hungry as y'all may be for all things Rafa. He's a fiercely burning star arcing toward a peak, a point not yet in sight and therefore not yet subject to the "what ifs" or "if onlys" that will later shape and enrich any conversation about him - giving the likes me of me something a little more thought-provoking to contemplate.

Right now, Nadal is at about the same point in his own trajectory that Federer passed, in his, sometime around July of 2006. And always keep this in mind -  the higher you go, the easier it becomes in one critical, counter-intuitive way: the force of gravity actually decreases the farther you are from the earth. It's strongest for those still struggling to get off the ground (just ask Donald Young, or Fabio Fognini). Life in the stratosphere  - it's a beautiful thing. Enjoy it before you pass the peak of your trajectory and the gravity you've defied for so long inevitably begins to pull, and pulls faster and faster until you re-enter the atmosphere, burst into flames, and lose your Nike contract.

So, speaking of Nike, I'm still discontented that shoe-and-apparel giant decided to present us with what I think of as a new version of Rafa, or, in my mind, country-club Rafa. Oh, I know, everyone has to grow up. Besides, how much money can you pump out of all those pimply teen-agers who, gazing upon Rafa's guns, identify with and long to emulate him? There are always new marketing worlds to conquer, and no matter how much paunchy Dr. Rabinowitz or concave-chested Forrest Harbinger III wants to look younger, more vigorous, stronger, and even slightly . . dangerous. . .those guys aren't totally deluded. Can you picture either of them walking through the door with an armload of piratas and muscles shirts, causing his wife to burst into tears and scream: Honey, what were you thinking??????

No danger of that anymore. A Presbyterian minister could wear Rafa's current kit without a trace of self-consciousness.

Personally, though, I'm a little sad that we have a new, conventional Rafa. I'm not really into fashion, but I try to be observant about everything, including fashion, and enjoy trying to work out the signals and messages we all send with our actions and tastes.  Years ago, I dismissed the original Nadal fashion statement as a cruel joke played on this poor Spanish kid; I thought Rafa looked dangerously like the newest member of the Village People in those clamdiggers, sleeveless shirts and the thick bandana that would have been appropriate dressing for a head wound incurred during the War Between the States (it was a particularly gruesome and violent war).

That "look" seemed forced, foreign (to tennis), and too aggressively down-market at the time. Besides, the Nike sleeveless polyester Nadal t-shirt cost about fifty bucks last time I checked, but I was pretty sure you could get something just like it at Wal-Mart, or Target, for $3.99 (and that's not even on sale). That other $45, I guess, is what you paid for the oxymoronic promise that something would keep you "Dri" (that's sports-marketing speak for "dry") when you're doing something that's supposed to make you perspire like a Comanche in a sweat lodge.

But over time I grudgingly had to admit that the pirata calculation was perfect (just compare the two pictures of Rafa here). Either Nadal showed that the outfit caught something essential and true about his nature, or the sheer force of his explosive, exuberant athletic and personal style turned a costume into a symbol. Whatever the case, it worked. Nadal's outfit came to define him. It suggested that he was both a common laborer, perspiration gleaming on his bulging bi-ceps under a brutal afternoon sun, and also as a swashbuckling hero, a bold and feckless youth intent on performing impossible feats of derring-do. I'll tell you what they should have stenciled on his racket face - the Jolly Roger. But the irony would have been too cruel.

I'm not sure why the new country-club Rafa vibe bums me out. Part of it must be the degree to which it's a sharp comment that nobody, not even Jet Boy, is young forever. But who really wants an older, more mature, more mainstream Rafa? I don't want to deny him his humanity - of which he has a great deal, as we've all seen - but I kind of liked him as a comic book superhero, a young man who makes 10 and 11 year  olds (not to mention women of every age) blink, as if they're not quite sure that what they're seeing could possibly be. . . real. Am I the only one who thinks that the new outfit yields some valuable ground that Rafa earned with a hard fight, and almost seems to say: Aw, we were just kidding, Rafa's not scary or ovepowering or different at all, he's just like Julien Benneteau now, except he wins a lot more!

Rafa used to be a muscle car; now he's a Volvo. He used to be seaman, now he's a yachtsman. He used to be slightly dangerous looking; a guy who might be carrying a switchblade tucked into one of those socks. Now it looks like that thing tucked into his sock is more likely to be a little can of breath freshener.

But what I'm most bummed about is simply how old Nadal looks in his "tennis whites" a lot of the time. You can really get a sense of that if you scroll through the pictures at any of the big commercial photo stock houses. He either looks like an old, big dude with stringy hair or,  in some recent pictures, like somebody else dressed him - his sisters or someone: I know, Paz, let's dress my brother Rafa up like a tennis player. I think daddy has some tennis clothes in the hall closet!

I take comfort in one thing, though. Neither pirata nor country club Rafa is a fashion plate. And the Spanish as a group can certainly use a dude - especially a commanding dude - to leaven the hair gel and square-toed shoe factor with a dose of blissful ignorance of all things Calvin Klein. When you see a bunch of Spanish players together, you could be forgiven for mistaking them for guys auditioning for roles in a new reality show: Andalusia's Top Male Models.

Oh, vanity - thy name is Roland Garros contender! Check out this photo of Feliciano Lopez and Fernando Verdasco. How about that belt buckle Feli's rockin' with his hip hugger jeans?

Anyway, this change of outfit has really messed with the way I think about Nadal. I'm a little spooked, worried that whatever "feel" I had for his nature as either a competitor or a person is severely damaged, or going to evaporate. And it's made me realize that over the past few years I really developed a lot of "feeling" for Nadal - something that's a mixed blessing in my line of work, where you're rarely more than one compound sentence away from outright prejudice or an off-putting degree of favoritism.

So in the long run, maybe it's a good thing that swashbuckling Rafa has morphed into country club Rafa, but like a lot of other people, I don't necessarily want what's  best for me.

PS - Gentle reminder that posting here is not a right, it's a privilege - and one that you'll lose if you make a comment that serves to ruin the generally friendly, collegial atmosphere.