We talk about a player’s form going into a tournament and try to predict the future from there. There’s not a whole lot else we can do. But you only have to look at the Rafael Nadal of two nights ago and the one who came out to Laver Arena for his match with Marin Cilic tonight to see how misleading those measurements can be.
From the first game, this was a different version of Nadal then the sweaty, anxious one who had been run across the baseline by Bernard Tomic. It wasn’t noticeable in the way Nadal hit the ball on Monday so much as it was in the energy he exuded. On the third or fourth point, before many people had even begun to focus on the match, he was already berating himself for moving back to hit a forehand, and that was on a point he won. After the next rally, Nadal did something I’ve never seen him do. He looked back into the full VIP section behind him, smiled, and said something. He was in good spirits. A few minutes later he broke serve and jabbed himself with a very early Vamos!
On Saturday, playing a local kid on a big occasion, Nadal had been nervous. And he didn’t shake those nerves until he was up two sets. Today he took a more proactive approach. He looked looser and more confident to me, but he made a point of saying afterward that he’d been nervous again. Cilic had won their only meeting, in straight sets last year indoors. “He’s a very dane-herous player,” Nadal said. But then he always says that, doesn’t he?
They must have been the good kind of nerves, because Nadal was moving well for inside-out forehands—usually a sign of how his confidence and aggression levels are—and at 3-1 and deuce he made one of the longest successful scrambles I’ve seen him make. He came charging from the behind the court on the ad side to dig out a drop shot near the net on the deuce side, and then send it skidding for a crosscourt angle winner for good measure. Another positive sign for Nadal fans: On important points on his serve, he was taking the initiative. He still doesn’t do that on break points, but of course it’s harder to grab control of a rally when you’re returning.
“This was my best match of the year so far here,” Nadal said afterward. He said he felt much better physically, and that he was much less drained—just what the rest of the guys in the tournament wanted to hear, I’m sure. “I played with very high intensity.”
The match was something like a typical Nadal encounter with Novak Djokovic, except that Cilic is simply not as good. A lot of it came down to whether the Croat could keep taking high topspin balls and knocking them off. The Tomic match had been a lesson in how tough this is to do for an extended period. The teenager seemed to pile up dozens of winners, many of them of the jaw-dropping variety, yet he was unable to win so much as a set. Djokovic himself has played half a dozen matches against Nadal where’s hit him off the court for long stretches and still lost because he just couldn’t do it enough. Cilic has the height to play Rafa, but not the timing. He missed at all the wrong moments. But it was always going to be tough with Nadal moving this well.
Best for Nadal was his serve. He made 73 percent of first balls, which is a winning number for him. As always, what was most impressive was his accuracy to spots. He worked the 6-foot-6 Cilic body relentlessly, but he did it to both the forehand and backhand sides, which takes precision. He also made a lot of first serves on important points. When it’s clicking, Nadal’s serve, in its way, is as effective as Roddick’s.
Or, as Rafa put it afterward, with admirable simplicity, “The serve is very important.”
This match came to a peak in the same place as the Tomic match, late in a close second set. Again it was Nadal's serve in this situation that made the difference. At 5-4, he went down break point, 30-40. For one of the few times all night, Nadal went down the T. He got a forehand on the next ball and put it away to make it deuce. On the next point, he served up the T again, and got another forehand. What a pleasant, and jealous-making, thing to be able to do: To save your best serve only for when you really need it, and then nail it each time. Nadal would eventually hold for the set and make the rest a formality. On every point from 30-40 down, he had maneuvered the rally so that he got an early look at a mid-court forehand. That’s pretty dazzling stuff from a tennis IQ perspective.
I’ll finish with a favorite moment that’s apropos of nothing other than itself. Two games earlier, serving at 4-3 in the second and 30-15, Nadal made his way to the net. Cilic looped a tricky high ball; it was neither a volley nor an overhead. Nadal jumped and hit what I'll describe as a flip-down forehand volley crosscourt. It didn’t come off the strings cleanly, but it went in, and in the direction Nadal meant it to go. Cilic chased it but came up a step short.
The shot had been an improvisation, and one that most players, including many pros, would have botched. Svetlana Kuznetsova hit a very similar shot 15 feet out when she was down set point in the first set against Schiavone. Nadal’s went in, and landed an inch out of his opponent’s reach. There’s tennis IQ; this was tennis DNA. There’s no way you can teach that shot.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that, for whatever it’s worth, Nadal’s in good form again.