The evening was universally labeled a “blockbuster” in the Melbourne papers, and flashbulbs popped all over Rod Laver Arena for much of it. From my perspective the tennis lived up to the billing, but it’s unlikely that most of the other spectators in the house agreed. "Lefties over locals" was the theme, as the last two Australian singles players in the tournament made their exits.
Let me begin with a little bit on Petra Kvitova, the 25th-seeded Czech who upset Sam Stosur in their third-round match. Her performance was a knockout, and it was also the perfect warm-up act for Rafael Nadal. She was just as clutch, she hit her inside-out forehand with the same sort of accuracy and acceleration (relatively speaking), and she played with an intelligence that reminded me of Nadal.
Kvitova had come from behind to snag a 6-5 lead in the first-set tiebreaker. She got a second serve to her forehand in the ad court. I was sitting right down that line behind her, and I thought she would try to crack it straight ahead for an outright winner. It was tempting, it was open, and it’s what most top women players would have done. Instead, Kvitova swung her return into the middle of the court, without being tentative about it, and made the obviously quaking Stosur play. Kvitova won the point and the set.
One more thing: In the second set, whenever Kvitova would win a point with a good shot, she’d keep running for a few extra steps, then do a little hop and turnaround step to stop herself. Why? She was savoring the moment. It looked like fun. Why isn’t she ranked higher?
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We got our annual good long look at Bernard Tomic tonight, and he looked better than ever. He has a special game, as Nadal acknowledged afterward. “He plays very easy,” said Rafa, giving Tomic one of the higher compliments you can give a fellow player. “Playing easy” is also something Nadal would love to do himself, but that just isn’t his style. Tonight he went through three soaked shirts, and it wasn’t even all that warm.
Nadal said he would be nervous for this match, and he was. Even after he broke serve early, he was still nervous enough to pull up early on forehands and send then flapping limply into the net. Nadal loosened up at the end of the first, but got tight again as soon as the second set started. Tomic had him on edge.
The legend of Bernard Tomic is that he can pinpoint an opponent’s weaknesses with one swift glance of his 18-year-old eye. He didn’t do anything that specific or world-changing against Nadal, but he did something almost as important and almost as improbable. He didn’t let Rafa get a good look at the shots he likes to hit. It was late in the second set when he finally got to take a tomahawk cut at a forehand from shoulder level. And his inside-out forehand winners were rare for long stretches. Tomic took the ball early and on the rise; rather than funk and junk, he was willing to hit his hardest.
“The people who have trouble with him are the people who give him time,” Tomic said afterward, sounding amazingly wise for a kid who has never played the world No. 1 before. “If you give him time to hit his shots, he’ll drain you right out. You have to step up and go after them.”
As Nadal said, it was hard to believe how easy Tomic made it look when he did connect. Like Gilles Simon against Federer the other night, he had success getting his flat shots to move through the air and skid through the court more rapidly than his opponent. On many occasions, Nadal was later getting to a ball while moving to his forehand side than he normally is. He looked fooled by the weird and hard-to-read Tomic delivery; the Aussie’s forehand spins away from his opponent, like a screwball or a slice in golf, and requires an extra step to catch up to. Nadal said afterward that he wasn’t hitting “long enough,” and it was true, his shots were sitting up at chest level for Tomic much of the time. For four games at the start of the second set, Tomic was controlling everything. Nadal said when he got down 0-4 that he was thinking, “Let’s try to win the third set.” But true to form, he didn’t let the second one go. On the verge of going down 1-5, Nadal made sure he stayed within reach of the teenager, just in case. It paid off.
Tomic changed speeds well, served well, and caught up to Rafa’s own rifle shots more capably than I thought he would. He didn’t seem overwhelmed by the moment, and was able to impose his game plan on his older and better opponent, which might be the most impressive aspect of his performance. Even the little cupped forehands he likes to play when he has the advantage in a rally didn’t hurt him too much. They kept Rafa guessing.
Still, Tomic came away with the same number of games that I thought he would get this morning. It wasn’t vintage Nadal—“I didn’t play well,” he said later. As far as his sweating, he said that he’d been getting tired more easily lately. “After Abu Dhabi, I was perfect . . . Now the body isn’t perfect. I don’t know what’s going on.” He even apologized for his subdued press conference performance. “I don’t feel so inspired tonight,” he said, shaking his head.
Despite all that, the second set comeback was one to remember. At 1-4, 30-40, Nadal hit two aces and held. At 2-4 on Tomic’s serve, he came back from 40-15 down to break. At 4-3, 40-30, he and Tomic ran each other all over the court before Nadal tracked down a forehand just in front of the net and lifted it down the line for a slow-moving winner. The match’s peak came at 5-5. Nadal went up 40-0, but then missed two forehands to bring it back to deuce. After the second forehand miss, he glanced toward his box anxiously—"what’s going on?" was what the look on his face asked. He seemed almost panicked for a second. Apparently he shook it off. On the next point, at deuce, Nadal got the same forehand. Anxious or not, tired or not, sweating like a madman or not, he hit it right to the same spot again. This time it was perfect.