INDIAN WELLS, CALIF.—When you’ve watched and written about a player long enough, sometimes you can tell that he’s playing well, and is probably going to play well, even if he might not be so sure himself, and even if the scoreline would suggest the opposite. Such was the case when I saw how Rafael Nadal opened his semifinal with Juan Martin del Potro here on Saturday.
I’d seen Nadal practice a few times this week. Practice for him consists primarily of belting every ball on the rise as hard as he can and not missing all that often. That’s what you get when you take an all-time great and remove all the pressure from his strokes. The biggest difference between his practice play and his match play is that in the former, he hits a lot more on-the-rise backhands than he does in the latter. So it was notable to me that he came out attacking his backhand in the first game today. He attacked well enough to earn a break point in that game, but lost it when he hit a backhand—an on-the-rise backhand—into the net. Still, I thought Nadal had “good energy,” as they say in the NBA. He was bouncy and playing at an unusually fast pace—he even came out on changeovers before the chair umpire called time. Always concerned about setting the tempo of a match, he set a brisk one today.
It took awhile for Nadal’s game to catch up. He was off with his forehand. He hit it, as he had been hitting it earlier in the week, over the baseline. At the same time, del Potro was sharp. His forehand was heavy and deep and moving through the court, and he counterpunched well with his backhand, handling Nadal’s topspin, as he handled it the last three times they played, and sending it back flatter and faster than it came it in. When del Potro went up 4-1, I started to wonder whether we’d found Nadal’s kryptonite. It seems like every top player has to create their own version of it. Borg begat McEnroe; Agassi begat Sampras; Federer begat Nadal—had Nadal conjured up his own killer in the form of the towering two-handed backhand of del Potro?
Fortunately for Nadal, he wasn’t thinking along these lines. He was finding a way out of the del Potro trap. He said that his early errors from the forehand side were “not usual,” and may have been the result of his lingering poor form and bad rhythm from earlier in the week. So he made an exceedingly simple but effective change. “I started to put more balls inside [the court]," he said, "play higher to his backhand and try to get the right rhythm, no? I think I did well.”
He did well at a number of things, beyond just hitting high balls to del Potro’s backhand. I had said before the match that it would be a matter of Nadal trying to move the ball side at the same time that del Potro would be trying to move it straight ahead. From 1-4 down, Nadal started to get the upper hand in that battle. He stretched del Potro wide with his serve in the ad court, and he looked to construct points so that he could have a look at a forehand in the deuce court. Once he was in that position, he could pull del Potro back and forth along the baseline at will.
But Nadal’s backhand remained the difference-maker. Del Potro countered him by trying to work the rallies so that he could hit a forehand wide crosscourt and force Nadal into a backhand slice. With Nadal serving for the first set at 5-4, del Potro was able to do that successfully and go up 0-30. But two points later, at 30-30, Nadal came over a backhand down the line and followed it to the net for a volley winner. On the next point, he hit an ace for the set.
It was Nadal’s backhand again that proved the difference in the second set, when he broke at 2-2 with a pass from that side.
“How many people would get to that ball?” del Potro was asked afterward.
“Not many,” he said with a smile, “not many. But for him I think it’s normal. I made my best forehand, but he made a better passing shot.”
From there, Nadal, keeping up the brisk pace, put the clamps down with his traditional weapon, his forehand, and by hitting a variety of targets with his serve. “It was the best match I played at Indian Wells,” Nadal said.
I’d say it was the best match I’ve seen from him in 2011. Or maybe it was the most vintage and characteristic Nadal performance of the year. There were the surprises he likes to spring; this time it was the backhand attack and the speedier pace of play. There was the tactical adjustment, to hit high to del Potro’s backhand. And there was the consummate closing ability. Besides the ace at set point in the first, Nadal came up with a superb wrong-foot forehand in the final game of the match, going back down the line when del Potro was sure he was going crosscourt.
“When you are not playing well,” Nadal said in his usual broken, wise English, “the important thing is keep winning.” That’s what Nadal did earlier in the week. Now he’s doing something even better. He’s playing well.
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“Oh my God, what is he doing?”
I knew right then that I had sat down in front of a Roger Federer fan. This seems to be their rallying cry at the moment. What Federer was doing was missing an easy forehand long. And it is true, you do wonder how he can miss certain highly makeable shots. As effortless as Federer can make hitting a winner look, that’s just how effortless he can make committing a heinous error appear, so effortless he can seem not to be trying.
We’ve come too far in the Federer-Novak Djokovic rivalry to continue to lay all the blame for Federer's losses at his own feet. Djokovic has won their last three matches and has passed him in the rankings. As of today, the Serb is a definitive No. 2, and he’s earned it—“the crown for my achievements this year,” he said today.
