by Pete Bodo
Mornin'. It looks like that Sprezzatura post (second one down) got a bunch of you animated, and while the celebrations of Roger Federer's historic win at Roland Garros continue on, as well they might, it's time to move along here to the yin to Federer's yang: Rafael Nadal.
Now, I understand the tensions and passions at play, and they sometimes lead fans of one or the other player to have a go at his or her counterpart across the Iberio-Swiss divide, but I really think that denigrating either Nadal or Federer by necessity diminishes the other man. We've seen over the past two years how each of these men is directly responsible for making the other a better, tougher, more dedicated competitor. To some degree, I agree with the "weak era" argument, although you can't hold that against Federer in any significant way. Any era dominated by a single player is, by definition, weak. Duh!
And while you there's a lot of fat to chew on in that issue, this much is undeniable: the emergence of Nadal in the last few years, and the rivalry he's established with Federer, really overshadows any depth-of-field discussion. How weak an era can it be if it boasts both the Grand Slam singles title record co-holder and the greatest of all clay-court players?
In any event, this idea that in Federer and Nadal we have this yin-and-yang thing ought to be taken seriously, and if it isn't it may be because that label gets thoughtlessly slapped onto too many relationships where it doesn't fit nearly as comprehensively. Honestly, can you think of two players more different, in every respect, than Federer and Nadal - but by the same token, two players so intimately bound in destiny?
I must say, we all should have been more receptive to what happened in Paris as soon as Nadal snatched the Wimbledon crown off Federer's head last July. If it was (and frankly, it still remains) a bit of a stretch to expect Federer to beat Nadal on the Parisian clay, but we should have been more prepared to see Federer swarm the ramparts of Court Philippe Chatrier the moment Nadal unexpectedly lost there. I'm not one of those people who thinks that the quality of Federer's victory would have been appreciably greater had he beaten Nadal in the French final; guys like Federer and Nadal understand that measuring themselves against another man, rather than against a task, is essentially to be subservient to that man.
For that same reason, I don't think Nadal gives a hoot about who he beats for the Wimbledon title - although gaining a big title at the expense of a top rival sweetens any player's sense of accomplishment. It's a pleasant aftertaste to savor. So while Federer won Paris without beating Nadal, I still get the feeling that the French Open final was a game-changer in exactly the same way as the Wimbledon final was last July.
It's hard to say when any boy becomes a man, but if we restrict our considerations to tennis, it seems to me that the day Federer won Roland Garros is the day Nadal became a man. For now he's encumbered by the same burden that distinguishes all men from children: responsibility. For the first time in his career, young Rafa has given significant ground, instead of gaining it and that calls for a response. Another way to put this is that up to this point, it's all been net plus for Nadal, and it's a credit to Federer that he's never made a point of this (if he has, I'm sure you'll let me know, and we can forget this clause). But Paris was a net loss - a painful blow suffered right in the heart of his comfort zone, on his own turf.
The rumors that Nadal's parents are about to divorce keep popping up in the gutter press and in my inbox via emails from acquaintances and sources, and I bring it up for this reason only: there's a parallel to be drawn between how domestic turmoil might affect an obedient son who's never questioned the impermeability of the familial cocoon, and how losing dominion over a patch of earth where he has known only spectacular success might affect a young and still not fully formed tennis player.
And before I go on or forget - isn't it just another bewitching aspect of this rivalry that the families of both men seem so level-headed and down-to-earth?
At any rate, any great player will tell you that in some ways it's far less stressful to be the hunter than the hunted. It takes a particular sort of person to comfortably put on that shirt that Pete Sampras says has a "great big target on its back." We don't really know how Nadal will take to that role after he's really been tested a few times, not by new challenges but by losses. By surprises. By setbacks in areas where he expected none. This is all new territory to him, because he's been living an uninterrupted dream since he won Wimbledon, and even his mildly disappointing result at the U.S. Open was moved from the "net loss" to the "net gain" column retroactively, on the grounds that it was good experience that enabled him to win his first major hard court title just a few months later, at the Australian Open.
In one of those art imitates life developments, it seems that Nadal is changing and maturing - and probably facing new and in some ways unanticipated challenges - as a person at the same time that he's morphing into a tennis player with a revised mandate. Don't take this wrong, because I respect Nadal's fighting spirit and his game as much as I ever did, but I no longer feel the same degree of affection I once had for him.