The tank, after many months of turning, has finally set up and taken aim. Can you smell the fear from the rest of the ATP?
The tank I’m talking about, of course, is Juan Martin del Potro. That’s what his game reminds me of: something slow-moving, but merciless, machine-like, deadly when he gets set up—at his best, he takes a long, slow walk, and then drives right through you. And that seems to be what he’s doing again. Despite hurting his hip in his first match in Madrid, del Potro came back Wednesday and drove through a long-time rival of his, Marin Cilic, 3 and 0.
But now that irresistible force will meet the proverbial immovable object, in the form of Rafael Nadal. On paper, this promises to be the first blockbuster match of the clay season. Up to this point, Nadal has gone virtually unchallenged; he’s dropped just one set in two events, to Andy Murray in Monte Carlo. But as Rafa said in his press conference after his match on Wednesday, he’s braced for a real challenge from del Potro.
What are the large man’s chances? The Argentine has beaten Nadal three times on hard courts, but he’s 0-1 against him on clay. Not that that result will have much bearing on this match: Their one meeting on the surface came at the 2007 French Open, when a teenage del Potro was just getting his feet wet on tour and Rafs was already going for his third title in Paris. It was, not surprisingly, a straight-set win for Nadal.
Just as Nadal has a game well-tailored for Federer, del Potro’s matches up well with Rafa’s. He’s tall and has a two-handed backhand, which allows him to be offensive even with Nadal’s high-kicking topspin forehand. And his own forehand is powerful enough that he can go crosscourt with it and hurt Nadal on his backhand side. It’s a recipe that, along with Nadal's abdominal tear, led to a 2, 2, and 2 thrashing in the U.S. Open semifinals in 2009. Even a totally healthy Nadal was unlikely to win that match, considering del Potro’s form. Now he’s approaching that kind of level again.
I was there when the two met in Indian Wells in March. Del Potro looked good coming into that match as well, and he looked good to start it—he was on top of the baseline and controlling the rallies well enough to go up 4-1 in the first set. It didn’t last. Here’s what I wrote afterward, about how Nadal turned it around:
Nadal said in his presser 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, and exceedingly effective, adjustment. “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.
