Nadal breaks fifth-set hex with confidence-building win over Zverev

For Rafael Nadal, it must have felt like Groundhog Day and déjà-vu-all-over-again rolled into one.

Here he was, on a Grand Slam show court, facing yet another flame-throwing opponent with nothing to lose. Twelve months ago at the Australian Open, Rafa had watched helplessly as Fernando Verdasco caught fire and beat him in five sets. Then, last fall, at the U.S. Open, he had watched as 22-year-old Lucas Pouille caught him at the finish line in a fifth-set tiebreaker. Now Nadal was back in Rod Laver Arena, deep into a dogfight against another young hot shot with a cannon for a right arm, 19-year-old Alexander Zverev.

The German is the type of a player—tall, hard-hitting, with a two-handed backhand—who gives Nadal fits. For the past two hours, he had been belting serves, forehands and backhands past Rafa, and he had just won a third-set tiebreaker to go up two sets to one. At the end of that tiebreaker, Zverev, despite his inexperience, had been the bolder and more clutch player. Nadal, for all of his legendary heart and fight, had been the cautious and careful—and, at this point, losing—player.

Still, Rafa had been brilliant for long stretches of this match. He had hit and run with the panache of his glory years, and the forehand that had grown tentative in 2016 had become a reliable weapon again. While he couldn’t match the power of Zverev, who would finish with 19 aces and 58 winners, Nadal was still the savvier tactician. He had spun his serve away from Zverev’s two-handed backhand. He had flattened out his forehand and used the quicker pace of this year’s Aussie Open courts to his advantage. And he had turned the momentum in his favor in the second set by mixing spins and trajectories.

Yet Nadal had been unable, as he had been unable in so many other close contests over the last two years, to come up with the right shot when he needed it most, and win the point he had to have. The 30-year-old was unable to do what his 20-year-old self had been so famous for doing: Go in for the kill. In Nadal’s first 18 five-set matches at the Grand Slams, he had come away the winner in 14 of them. But he had lost the last three.

By the fourth set, Rafa himself had to admit that he had seen—and starred in—this four-hour movie one too many times before, and he wasn’t up for another tragic old-guy ending. He didn’t need any more meditations on the cruelty of age, and the inevitable decline of the great athlete.

“I’ve been losing a lot of these five-setters,” Nadal said. “I said to myself, ‘Today’s the day.’”

As he had against Pouille, Nadal played his best when he was in catch-up mode. He may no longer be the closer he was once was, but he’s still a world-class chaser. Immediately after losing the third set, and watching Zverev leap across the court in celebration, Rafa dug in and broke serve.

Now he was up 4-2 and struggling to protect that break; slowly but surely, Zverev had begun to creep back into the set. Rafa went down 0-15, before leveling at 15-15 with a strong crosscourt backhand. Then he went down 15-30, before leveling again with a service winner.

At 30-30, Nadal decided to serve and volley. If he had lost that point, and then lost the match, the tactic would have looked like another example of Rafa panicking in the clutch. As it was, Zverev, drawn forward, put up a short lob, and Nadal whirled, leaped up for a high backhand volley, and without being able to see exactly where he was hitting the ball, snapped it off for a crosscourt winner. When he realized that he had won the point, Rafa celebrated with a leaping fist-pump—one good jump deserves another, right? He must have suspected that he had finally found the shot he needed, when he needed it most.

Two games later, Nadal closed out the set with an ace. In the fifth, the still-skinny Zverev had little left physically, and he began to cramp. Finally, Nadal had his five-set victory, 4-6, 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-2, in four hours and five minutes. While it wasn’t an ideal way to win, Rafa knows that sometimes it’s the simple fact of winning that matters more than anything else.

“Is obviously that is an important result for me,” Nadal said. “I lost the last couple of ones, matches in the fifth. So is important for me to win a match like this, losing two sets to one.

“For the confidence, for lots of things, are very important to win these kinds of matches, no?...In terms of tennis, I think I finished the match playing much better than what I started the match, no? That’s a very important thing.”

Winning breeds confidence, they say, but you can’t gain confidence without winning. So how you do ever start winning at all? The trick is that sometimes you need a little a good fortune to intervene and help you along the way. Nadal got it on Saturday when Zverev faded down the stretch.

Now Rafa knows, for the first time in a while, that if he plays well enough to win a five-setter, fate won’t always go against him. That’s what we call confidence in tennis, and whole it may not sound like much, it can make all the difference.

Most important of all, Rafa knows again that he can make his own luck. When he needs a shot—even it’s a leaping no-look crosscourt backhand overhead—it will still be there for him to find.