by Pete Bodo
LONDON—As little as two weeks ago, Rafael Nadal appeared ready to trade his Nike grass-court shoes for a pair of flip-flops, his specially concocted energy and recuperation drink for a pitcher of sangria, and his Babloat Aeropro Drive for a Shakespeare Ugly Stick. But it turns out that what he probably most needed after another season in the red dirt is a return to the pale, cool green grass of London. Funny, what a change of scenery can do for a guy.
Nadal has looked rejuvenated and, well, happier, now that he's been rolling again at Wimbledon, and today he took another step toward a successful defense of his title by surviving a bitter, closely contested Centre Court clash with one of the few men capable of planting real doubt in his mind, Juan Martin del Potro. The match lasted almost four hours and didn't even go five sets. Nadal won it, 7-6 (6), 3-6, 7-6 (4), 6-4, playing as carefully and warily as if it were a Grand Slam final instead of the kind of humdrum fourth-round encounter that a guy working on his 11th Grand Slam title is expected to endure with little fuss or drama.
Nadal may not have a penchant for unnecessary drama, and he doesn't like to make much of a fuss. That isn't his way. You may not guess it from that borderline reckless game he plays, but Nadal is the soul of prudence. He's very good at crossing his "t"s and dotting his "i"s, and that was probably the outstanding meta-technical element of his win.
Del Potro, you'll remember, is the guy who's supposed to have problems on grass. Who's never survived to play during the second week at Wimbledon (never mind that he's just 21 and has only played here three times—losing to a former champ [Lleyton Hewitt] on one occasion and the defending champ [a guy named Federer] on another). The guy whose backswing is blah-blah-blah and whose movement is yadda-yadda-yadda. Nadal has probably heard those criticisms as well, but chronic t-crossers and i-dotters don't pay much attention to clubhouse lawyers and they never, ever, take any opponent less than seriously.
I broached this subject with Nadal in the post-match presser, and he explained: "Always is the same history. The same was wth me when I lost in 2005 in second round against Muller. My game is not ready for grass. After four years I played two finals, two champions. . . here I am (again) in quarterfinals. He (Juan Martin) is young. He has unbelievable potential. With this serve, he is always very competitive in these courts. And for sure (having been) No. 4, 5 in the world and winning Grand Slam titles, he's one of the favorites to win here. And why not? He has a very good serve, very good shots from the baseline, and his volley looks good. I don't seen no reason to think he's not gonna play really well here."
About that serve Nadal praised: It almost saved del Potro's day on any number of occasions, although it let him down at the time when Nadal was most vulnerable—at the end of the first set. Nadal had two set points with del Potro serving at 4-5, but the sinewy, 6' 6" Argentine produced first-serve bombs each time, the ball striking Nadal's racket as if it were a rock rather than a lively, rubber orb. Nadal had another break chance in the 12th game, but Delpo swept it away with a forehand approach-shot winner, then blasted his way out of trouble with an ace and an unreturnable to Nadal's backhand.
At that point, though, instead of lining up to start the tiebreaker, Nadal approached the umpire, uttered a few words, and plopped down in his chair. It turned out he had called for the trainer. After he was examined, Nadal took a full medical time-out and had his left foot heavily taped as del Potro, either baffled, irritated, or both, looked on.
Nadal explained later that he felt a sharp pain while hitting the forehand bullet that gave him his last set point before the tiebreaker. The pain was so severe that, he said, "I seriously didn't know at that moment in the match if I will have a chance to continue playing." Delpo must have asked himself the same question as he watched the trainer working on Nadal's foot. If you're wondering how Nadal rebounded and managed to keep his level high enough from that point on to win the set—and ultimately the match—all I can offer is his official explanation:
"The pain stay with me for the next points, for sure, and for all the match stays with me. But with the tape, I think we changed a little bit the direction of the support, and probably didn't hurt me much. But to run to my forehand (which Nadal regularly hits off his back, left foot) was very, very tough for me. I felt pain because I cannot push with the foot to defend my forehand. To go against my backhand wasn't a problem, I can run fast there. The biggest problem I had is when I had to defend my forehand."
Given this revelation, the first set tiebreaker looms like even more of a missed opportunity for del Potro. It started well enough for the No. 24 seed, when Nadal, presumably distracted by his inexplicable injury, drove an ugly forehand into the net. Delpo served up winner and elicited an unforced backhand error to go up 3-0, but Nadal controlled the damage, winning the next two points. The next five points all went against serve, but Delpo reached set point at 6-5 thanks to a forehand error. Nadal disarmed that threat with a service winner, and hit a whistling backhand winner to the back of del Potro's baseline to get a set point of his own. Then, del Potro double-faulted; it was an exquisitely self-sabotaging thing to do, and suddenly the pain in Nadal's foot probably felt more manageable for reasons not bio-mechanical.
It's always hard to assess the impact of injury on a match, and I'd just as soon stay clear of it unless, as in a case like this, ignoring it seems a willful oversight. In retrospect, there was only one inkling that all was not well in Nadal's world during play. It happened when del Potro decisively served out the second set, 6-4. As a wave of applause broke over Centre Court, Nadal just stood with head hanging at the spot where he had lost the last point, staring at the ground, disconsolate and seemingly inconsolable. It was so striking, and unlike Nadal, that I made a note of it. It just isn't the kind of thing he's given to doing, not when he's just split sets against a powerful rival. Perhaps he was worried about that foot, and feared that his chances were slipping away.
But Nadal quickly recovered from that sinking spell, and he controlled the critical third-set tiebreaker from the onset. He continued to pull ahead in the fourth and finally broke down del Potro's resistance. It was a typically meticulous, careful win by this superb i-dotter, who spent a his next hours trying to figure out when and where to have an MRI.
Once again, that beach, those flip-flops, and that fishing rod must look tempting.